But it's all right if you act like a turd, cos I like...

[venta]

Every so often - usually when cooking - I notice that I'm doing something exactly the same way the mother does it. Of course, it's possible that this is because there is one right and obvious way to do it, and everyone else on the planet does it the same way too.

Apart from it being every woman's tragedy to turn into her mother, I quite like it. It gives me a nice sense of continuity, and of family, in everyday life.

I realise that I have, not quite consciously, stocked my kitchen with many very similar bits of equipment to the kitchen I grew up observing. Not in deliberate emulation, but just because those things strike me as being the proper tool for a job. So I have a beige-on-the-outisde, white-on-the-inside heavy ceramic bowl to mix bread dough in, and a Kenwood food mixer, and a set of Lakeland "add and weigh" scales. I prick eggs before I boil them, and I store my fridge boxes exactly like my mum stores hers. My spices live in a box in the cupboard, not on a rack. Recently, I've begged, borrowed and stolen what I think of as proper "kitchen cutlery" - second-hand heavy, white-metal tablespoons and forks, and flat-bladed knives with yellowing (fake-)bone handles. Kitchen cutlery is used only for cooking, and never makes it to the table for eating with.

Yesterday I was making custard (from powder, not from scratch) using a big, old tablespoon (did you know that a modern tablespoon measure holds slightly less, and if you make custard using one your custard will come out thin?) and I emptied the tin. Getting the new tin of custard powder out of the cupboard, I was suddenly struck by the end of one of these little similarities. Never again will I turn the spoon round and use the handle-end, with its distinctive heart-shaped pattern, to lever off the lid - something I watched my mum do at least once a week for years. They've changed the design, and instead of a lid which resembles that of a tin of paint, the new plastic lid is now easily removable with fingers alone.

It's a much more sensible design, but I can't help slightly regretting the old one's passing. Maybe in another thirty years I'll have got used to it.

Comments

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

You can still enjoy spoon-leverage on golden syrup.

Your childhood kitchen sounds a lot like mine, except there wasn't any custard about because my dad allegedly didn't like it.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is possible that everyone of a similar age grew up in a broadly similar kitchen :) The apple crumble which went with the custard was made in a pyrex bowl with pictures of fruit on it, which both t'other half and I agreed was the correct vessel for such things, based on both our mums having made crumble in identical dishes.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

YES THIS!

I now really need a Pyrex bowl with a frieze of fruit around it. Why did I never notice this was missing from my life?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Well, I didn't realise until I owned one ;)

Mind you, I was donated mine from t'other half's mother. I wonder if this means she can't make crumble any more? Blimey. I hope she had a spare...

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Our childhood Pyrex bowls had snowflakes on -- I think that design postdates the flowers / fruit. They certainly seemed very modern and funky at the time (early 70s).

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

We had those ones as well - and my grandma had ones with a pattern of brown and orange squares.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, I think I've seen that in charity shops. Post-war Modernism kind of style.
I've got distracted now. Some of these old patterns are really nice. They must have had some inspired designers at work.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Hmm. My mum has some with a pale blue and pale green geometric patten on. Don't think they were snowflakes though. I'll have to check when I'm home next week!

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

Ooh, didn't have that, but both the beige bowl and the Kenwood featured heavily.

And a red plastic salad spinner, bought in France before they were known over here (I'm pretty sure).

[ar-gemlad.livejournal.com]

The rectangle one with a glass lid?

(My nannan was the one with that beige/cream bowl and that cutlery :) )

[venta.livejournal.com]

No, this one is round with a glass lid.

And when I looked closely, it's actually one of the flowery ones, not the fruity ones. I think my brain just edited in fruit :)

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

You've not bought custard in a long while, I can tell :-).

Don't worry, treacle/golden syrup/black treacle/similar still all come in tins.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Ah, the treacle family of tins are slightly different - you can lever the lids off them with a variety of things. Whereas when making custard you *always* have a tablespoon in your hard, ready to measure the custard powder out, so it's *always* levered off with a tbsp.

I have just looked at the best-before date on the lid of the recently-emptied custard powder tin. Oh crap, don't tell anyone!

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

Oh crap, don't tell anyone!
Hahaha!

I bet you'd be able to tell if it had gone bad, because it'd have gone clumpy and full of ick things and so on. Or so I'd guess - I've never found gone off custard powder.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Well, it looked normal and seemed to produce viable custard, so I'm willing to stand by my theory that (for some foods) best-before dates are a load of old toss.

[sea-of-flame.livejournal.com]

best</> before, rather than use by, is with many things akin to a serving suggestion - use by is the one you need to be careful with.

Except for eggs. Which have BB dates, but are clearly perishable...

[venta.livejournal.com]

From my own empirical testing: you can use eggs way past their best before date without ill effect. So it's clearly not a use-by. Although I might not take with eggs the liberties I did with the custard powder ;)

[ar-gemlad.livejournal.com]

Custard powder won't go off - it can go damp and/or get weevils, but it won't go off. Ooh - or it could explode, but only if you tried really hard ;)

[lnr]

I have one of those in the cupboard too. It can't possibly go off can it? *grin*

I did just have a tidy out of the baking cupboard and throw away several items with BB dates going back as far as 2006. Levering sticky glace cherries out of their tub (in order to put them in the appropriate recycling) without bending the spoon was a bit of a challenge.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Oh crap, don't tell anyone!

Let me guess... it has East India Trading Company embossed on the lid?

[venta.livejournal.com]

You've obviously eaten my custard before :)

[sea-of-flame.livejournal.com]

Heard a marvellous story once about a young woman who always chopped the end off a joint of meat, and cooked it alongsidethe main piece.

Asked why (with the expectation it would be to add flavour to the pan juices or something), she answered that she had no idea, it was just how her mum always did it.

...so the question was bumped up to her mum - who was only able to give me the same reply.

...so they asked the grandmother - who pointed out that her roasting pan was too small to fit the whole joint in otherwise ;)

[skorpionuk.livejournal.com]

I like this!

[hjalfi.livejournal.com]

I will always associate butter icing with the smell of ozone. This came from the incredibly ancient food mixer my mother always used to mix the stuff, which was powered from my father's equally ancient electric drill power controller. The combination of the two used to spark like buggery. (Butter icing was the only thing it was worth getting the mixer out for.)

I have a modern food mixer that doesn't do this. As a result, my icing doesn't taste right. Does anyone know a good way to make small quantities of ozone?

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes! Ours was like that too. In fact, I have vague memories of many whirry spinny things that made that smell when I was a kid.

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

"I prick eggs before I boil them"

Really? Why? As someone who boils a lot of eggs, I want to know if I can improve my method!

"did you know that a modern tablespoon measure holds slightly less"

I thought so! When I was a kid, tablespoons seemed huge! But my modern tablespoon measure seems teeny.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I like very softboiled eggs, so don't want to exceed the regulation three minutes. And if you put eggs in cold water and heat it, it's difficult to know when to start the clock.

If you put eggs into already-boiling water, they often crack.

If you prick a tiny hole in the shell (I always do it on the roundy end, I don't know if that's necessary) the air scoots out the hole when you drop them in boiling water, and the shells don't crack.

You can prick them with a pin or a sharp knife, but it's a bit of a carry on and risks cracking them before you've even started. I have owned a variety of egg-pricking devices of various designs, currently one of these (http://www.lakeland.co.uk/egg-piercer/F/keyword/egg+pricker/product/10897).

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

Ah, rightio. I like mine very hard boiled, so will continue my 'start cold and boil the crap out of them' approach.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yes - in your case the egg-pricker does sound like a solution for which you don't have a problem :)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Ah, now I have the same general philosophy, but I always prick them at the pointy end, because I was told "that's where the air bubble is".

It is always possible I suppose that it doesn't really matter :-)

[venta.livejournal.com]

The pointy end, you say? Good heavens.

I suspect it may not matter :)

[satyrica.livejournal.com]

So I have a beige-on-the-outisde, white-on-the-inside heavy ceramic bowl to mix bread dough in

gosh, yes, I have one of those too, which slightly surprises me as the colour of the bowl staying consistent strikes me as less predictable than particular pieces of equipment (like the Kenwood we also obviously have)

[venta.livejournal.com]

I have a vague idea that those bowls are actually all made by the same company, which has been around for donkeys years.

[satyrica.livejournal.com]

I expect that's true (even though I'm pretty sure mine came from Tesco . . .)

[cuthbertcross.livejournal.com]

It's mason and cash- they make all sorts of bowls and varients, in every size from dolly-bowl to huge industrial school dinner size.

I bought one almost exactly like my mum's too....

[cuthbertcross.livejournal.com]

http://www.rayware.co.uk/MasonCash.aspx

[skorpionuk.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link! Now I know what you're all talking about.

Yay, once again, not growing up in the UK means that there's stuff I don't know about... and do differently.

Venta, I don't do my cooking a la Mum, mainly because a) we're in different countries now, and b) I didn't really learn to cook from her. But there are other things I do similarly: mainly things to do with crafts, which she did a LOT of.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's not completely limited to cooking... I also do various sewing things like my mum, and I coil cables like my dad, and... etc :)

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

did you know that a modern tablespoon measure holds slightly less, and if you make custard using one your custard will come out thin?

I guess you've never seen me make custard. The spoon hasn't been made that could make it come out thin.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

The downside being, I did once rather embarrassingly have to abandon a pan of custard and start again, because it basically set solid just before it got to temperature. With several people watching. Or at least present - possibly only triskellian was actually watching.