Other Obsolete Home Procedures--Cooking

Eggs.
Once upon a time, the family cook would break eggs into a separate dish before adding them to ingredients in a recipe.  The reason for that was--back then--obvious:  eggs were often fresh from the chicken.  Uncandled.  (Eggs are passed by a bright light--candle--to observe blood spots on the yoke.  Blood spots aren't dangerous to ingest but not very appetizing.)  Breaking them into a separate dish allowed the cook to see the yoke before including it in the rest of the ingredients, plus allowed the cook to pick out pieces of shell, just in case. 

Since most people now purchase eggs from commercial sources--eggs that are candled--I don't know of anyone who breaks them into separate dishes anymore.  In fact, in all my years of cooking, I have only run into ONE egg that had a tiny little blood spot that had apparently been missed in the candling process.  Why dirty up a separate dish for nothing? 

Well!  Over the holidays, with a houseful of people to cook breakfast for, I was breaking eggs into a pan for scrambling when I dumped one--a bloody mess--into the skillet with the rest.  Ack!!  Where did that come from??  It wasn't just a blood SPOT.  It was as if someone had cut a vein over the pan!  I couldn't get it out of there fast enough!  These were commercial eggs.  This one couldn't have simply been missed.  Someone obviously put it in the wrong batch, with the acceptable eggs.  Thus, it's back to basics with me.  I now break eggs into a separate dish again!    

Flour.
In our very first cooking lesson in Unified Arts in middle school, students were taught/shown that flour can "pack" if not sifted and can change the outcome of a recipe significantly.  For years, I obediently sifted flour when cooking with it.  And then they came out with pre-sifted flour.  (It still packs, but we are lulled into believing that sifting is no longer necessary.)  I don't even own a sifter anymore!

A couple of years ago, I bought flour from Aldi's.  All-purpose flour.  Cheap flour.  It was awful!  It didn't work properly in recipes.  I couldn't figure out what was going on, until I realized that this flour wasn't listed as "pre-sifted".  Ever since, I've been careful to check the label of the sacks of flour I am buying to make sure I am getting the pre-sifted variety. 

I mean, flour is flour, right?  Wrong!  Reminds me of a time when, as a young bride, I was making homemade shortcakes for a strawberry shortcake dessert, with a new sack of flour.  The resulting cakes were so salty we couldn't eat them, even though I had followed the recipe to the letter.  On the phone with my mother thereafter, she told me to check to see what kind of flour I had bought.  I'd just picked up a bag of flour...but this was "self-rising" flour, containing salt.  I had no clue!  I threw out the whole bag and started over again.  Live and learn!

Butter. 
Once upon a time, my family was friends with a family that had a milk cow.  One milk cow.  Sometimes, Mrs. Clark would give my mother some homemade butter, but it was awful!  I wouldn't touch it.  Mom explained that the butter didn't have salt in it.  I didn't think that would make a difference, but then Mom started working salt into the butter from the Clark's.  It made all the difference in the world!  Salt is supposed to be the enemy of folks, but I'm here to tell you that unsalted butter will never be on MY table!

Beef.
With all of the emphasis on organic foods these days, people are buying grass-fed beef--paying a premium for it, actually--with the thought that this is a natural food.  So???  There is a reason why cattle are sent to feed lots and fed grain before they are slaughtered for meat.  The reason is that grain naturally tenderizes the meat.  The cows don't know the difference.  They will eat grass or grain...whatever is fed to them...but the consumer will know the difference.  Grass-fed beef is tough.  Grain-fed beef is tender.  Thus, if you are in the mood for a nice, juicy, tender steak to plop on the grill, better not go organic.  I am truly my father's daughter; I want grain-fed beef!  So sue me!

Enough of this.  I am heading for Illinois tomorrow to help out my sister who has come down with a serious case of Shingles.  I'm just going to help out.  Hope she understands that I don't cook as well as she does and don't clean as well as she does...and don't iron clothes as well as she does.  (Iron clothes??  Talk about an obsolete home practice!  Still, that explains why she always looks like a million bucks and I just look like a frump.)  Help is on the way, Shari!  As Mighty Mouse would sing, "Here I come to save the day!"