Thanks for the comments on Corningware. I haven't decided, but your input helps. Here's the paragraph I'm pondering, as it stands at the moment. The cadence needs work, and a verb in there somewhere couldn't hurt.
Setup: a man raised on a farm remembers the day of his grandfather's passing.
In the afternoon, there were church ladies in dark clothes and small colorless clouds of perfume, bearing food in Corningware dishes topped with aluminum foil, with their names discreetly etched on the bottoms, on strips of masking tape. There were sad hugs and cookies for a while, until Dad said there was something for the men to do.
“Preparations,” he said.
Metaphor 
Yes, and you're right – we didn't have Corningware in our home so my consciousness never knew the lost or warped lids! :)I think part of my thing is that most of the time when I take "covered dishes" to things I see the nice ones with lids and feel inadequate with my bowl covered in either foil or Saran wrap (bought special for that day b/c we rarely use it). I probably never notice all the ones with foil b/c I'm so busy looking at the ones that look 'picture perfect.'Covered dish envy! Can you believe it? :)What really matters is whether the dish goes home empty.
Thanks for these thoughts, Billie. In my observation, the plastic lids never lived long. They warped in hot dishwater, and wouldn't fit. (The ladies in my family use hot water for utensil sterilization. We're talking autoclave.) So they wound up in a drawer. And for casseroles, foil held the heat better. … It is amazing, what sticks in a writer's mind, isn't it?
Love the excerpt. Wanted to add one thing – when I think Corningware (and yes, I know exactly what it is when I read it) I always think clear lids that fit the dishes, sort of steamed up a little by what's inside. So the aluminum foil immediately made me wonder: did the lid get misplaced? Did someone drop it and it broke?Which could add to the characterization or distract from it, depending on the bigger context of the scene.