The physics of dishes.

I like breakfast cereal, but I have this thing about milk. It must be whole milk and it must be cold. I don't enjoy it nearly as much if it's just in the fridge from the store or something (but we're talking breakfast here, so that's rarely an issue). One thing I've noticed is that thick porcelain dishes have a pretty large ability to transfer heat. It only makes sense that thinner ones or non-porcelain dishes (like plastic) transfer less heat.

I found this out because we only have thinner bowls in the mountain house, but only thicker at home. When I have cereal, I typically have two bowls. What I noticed was when I added milk and cereal for the SECOND bowl, I noticed my milk was much colder on that first bite than it was in the last bite of the first bowl. And thus it "tasted" much better to me. That's with the thick bowl at home. With the thinner bowl at the mountains, the difference wasn't NEARLY as pronounced. So I definitely prefer thinner bowls for cereal now.

I've noticed this same phenomenon with salad. I don't like my salad as much when it's right-out-of-the-fridge cold. I like it closer to room temperature. Put it in our thicker porcelain bowls and it gets warmer faster since it wicks heat out of the bowl. I often actually save my salad for the last part of the meal for this reason (when it's not the entire meal, anyway).

Why do I mention this? Well, because if you're temperature sensitive with some items like me, you might choose your dishes differently. Surely a few of you are as weird as me. Okay, maybe not. Humor me, then.

On a related note, if you like your cereal crispy, check out this contraption. Seems kind of neat. Not sure I'll try one, but let me know if you do! It's pictured above, too.