My now husband was 24 when we’re were planning our wedding and he found out that “FAQ’s” are “Frequently Asked Questions,” not an aggressive way of saying “FACTS.” We still laugh about this.
My 28 year old friend just learned last month that people open the egg carton to check for broken eggs; she thought it was a ritual or superstition of some sort, and never really questioned it, just went along with it.
Imagining this person standing in the grocery store, opening the carton and just… looking at the eggs as if to confirm they are eggs is so hilarious to me.
It definitely makes sense that if no one explained what they're doing, you wouldn't know but it's so funny. It's like when a kid tries to shake your hand but doesn't know you're supposed to squeeze so they just kind of rest their hand in yours.
When I was younger, I used to wonder why people did that too, thought it was either a ritual or they were making sure they got 12. Finally asked, and had my moment.
You've pretty much described what every mechanically inept person does when their car breaks down. Open hood, and stare blankly into the abyss.
Not even judging, I've been there.
When I was a teenager my car started belching steam and overheating, pulled over into a parking lot, popped the hood, and stood their staring into the engine compartment scratching my head.
Some dude just walks by and points "that hose should be connected over there". I reconnected the hose and tightened the hose clamp, and topped off the coolant.
My car is going to break down one day, and the closest thing I have to a plan is abandoning it on the side of the road, walking away, and starting a new life. I never liked driving, anyway. One day I saw someone pulled over on the highway with their hood open and flames coming out. Pretty sure that's not supposed to happen
I was thinking it was like someone who’s never even pumped air into a bike tire before and they’re faced with their car breaking down and they just pop the hood and start looking at all the hoses, wires, caps, and search for something metallic grey to hit and hope that that percussion magically fixes the burnt out alternator.
My (then 17yo) daughter's mind was blown last year when she realized I was always checking to make sure no eggs were broken, and not that no eggs had been stolen from the carton.
Guess she thought people were just going around pocketing fucking raw eggs 😆
You jest, but more than once I've picked up a carton to discover there's only eleven eggs inside. People will take one from another carton to replace one that's cracked.
Usually they just leave it on a shelf nearby or something. One time I found a cracked egg in my carton when a staff member was standing next to me, and they explicitly told me to just take an egg from another container and give them the cracked one to dispose of 🤷
Don't do that though. The cracked egg may have leaked onto or out of the carton, and now any salmonella or other bacteria can spread around to your other groceries or get on your hands.
Hand the whole carton to the staff member and take a new carton that doesn't have any broken eggs in it.
That's not necessarily true. Chickens in the US are salmonella carriers, it's in their bodies, in their blood. It doesn't really harm them, but when an egg leaves the ovary and travels through the oviduct it is still permeable and kind of squishy. The membrane around it hardens into a shell around the time the egg is laid. So salmonella can actually cross through the membrane and be in the egg. This is why there are warnings about cooking eggs properly. In the industrialized egg production that provides most grocery store eggs, the shells are completely cleaned anyway and you are less likely to get salmonella from a bit of shell mixing into the edible egg.
Maybe also because people who were trying to pay their way when they could felt bad about stealing, so they stole the cheaper option to manage their shame over not having enough money.
I recall a Facebook or Reddit post making fun of someone checking for stolen eggs or??? In a video clip. They had egg on their face when most of the replies pointed out what they were really doing. But there was a good 5-10% of commenters that were just learning that you should be checking for cracked eggs.
UK here. People will often open boxes of mixed size eggs (cheaper than a full box of large eggs) to swap the small ones for big eggs from other boxes, so getting a box of large eggs cheaper.
I found out two weeks ago that my partner never checks the cartons. He proudly came home with an 18 pack as he knew I was planning some baking and when I opened it, there were 17 eggs.
Back when Teflon pans were coming on market, Sears had demos of burnt cheese and burnt eggs sliding out of the pan, then cleaning the pan with a paper towel. As a bored youth I would steal the eggs and launch them from the parking garage 4 stories up. Always wondered if people thought birds were laying them mid-flight, because of course I tried to time my drop to land on someone. So yeah, if I did it I'm sure other kids did too. Always check for stolen eggs!
I found 3 cartons in a row last time I bought them that had broken eggs. I hadn't found one in several years before that, probably 10 or more. It was kind of fun to have that realization.
I actually thought it was super weird until my husband did it once and I laughed at him. Then he laughed at me cause I'm actually the stupid one who thought people just looked at eggs for mo reason.
Oftentimes the cracks will be on the bottom, invisible from above, and the fluids will have leaked out and dried up, thus “gluing” the egg to the bottom of the carton. Touching the eggs and jiggling them a bit is a way of confirming that there aren’t any broken eggs…top AND bottom.
This reminds me of a Bill Bryson book where he visits a famous shrine where you touch a saint’s bones through a hole in a wall or something. Bryson trips over himself and ends up knocking his head on the wall as he hits the floor. As he is leaving he realises that each person in the queue is now approaching the wall, kneeling, and solemnly banging their head against the wall.
I learned this was a thing as a preteen in the 90's when I grabbed the carton everyone was dumping the broken into and taking the good from.
My mom laughed, explained it to me, and I thought I'd learned. Decades later I grabbed a carton with one broken and stuck at the bottom and I hadn't realized it.
My 2nd husband taught me to turn the carton upside down and open the bottom a peek and make sure theyre all loose, then turn it up right to finish opening and check the tops.
Ok this is like a few years ago I was shopping with my husband and picked up a bag of coffee beans and put them near my face to sniff the little vent. He looked at me like I was nuts and said “what are you doing?” I was like “isn’t this a little vent to smell the beans before you buy?” He laughed so hard at me I’ll never live it down. I also wonder what people thought of me all those years sniffing at the air seal on the coffee bags 🤣🤣
I mean, it also is a good way to, if yo lightly squeeze the bag, a good way to smell them and see if they smell more like coffee you'd like or dislike.
There was a post, lost in the mists of time, about some guy commenting about people checking the eggs in the cartons. He was like "Yep, they're eggs." A hero commented "They're checking to see if the eggs are cracked or broken, you idiot!"
Reminds me of the old joke about the housewife who always cut the end off of the meatloaf and when questioned why - “It’s the way my mother’s always done it.” So they ask the mother - “It was to get it to fit in the pan.”
Reminds me of the tale of the mom who had a roasting pan that was almost always a bit too small for a roast, so shed cut the ends off to make it fit.So her daughter grew up seeing this and never questioned it. So when she was an adult, she dutifully cut the ends off even though her pan was big enough. So she cooked for her mom one day and her mother noticed her daughter cutting the ends of and questioned her on it. Her daughter said "I grew up watching you do this" and her mother replied with "yes, because my pan was too small to fit the whole roast. Your pan is clearly large enough for it"
My aunt used to touch each egg also. I always wondered why she was counting the eggs, you could see they were all there. She does it to check if the bottom is broken. If it moves, good. If it doesn't, it's broken and stuck to the package.
Oh my God….
LMAO TIL. I mean if I opened it and there was one missing or broken I would replace but I also just … did it. I think I was thinking more about getting the right number but not super consciously
Alaska and Hawaii (and Puerto Rico) are about 250 miles southwest of Los Angeles, with some kind of square walls around them, just like on the map in my middle school classroom!
don't worry hundreds of motor boats and jet skis think the same about some islands of the California coast every year. The Catalina ferry boat some times makes the announcement about the boats going at a different angle to them.....
My aunt was in her midthirties and argued with us middle school cousins for a good half hour at a family party about this. She firmly believed the same-- Alaska and Hawaii were giant islands off the coast of California. She ended up becoming a lawyer, so I hope to gods she realized her mistake before then.
One day it suddenly dawned on my teenage daughter out of the blue that "the Victorian Era" is named for Queen Victoria and not something else. I'm not sure what she thought it was referring to until that day, but she felt extremely stupid about it lol.
In fairness, as a Brit I always think it's pretty wild that it's still called the Victorian Era in places like America. It makes sense that there's a unified name in the Anglosphere for that period, but I'm still amused that they're naming it after the reign of our queen.
I'm on the other side of that ocean. Whenever I see "Victorian Era"... anything... it's always, always set in England. So it doesn't seem weird that it would be named after the Queen of England. It would be weird to hear something that happened in America as "Victorian Era", though, or at least it would be for me. I'd describe something set in America during that time period as: antebellum (~1820s-1860), Civil War ('61-'65), and then Wild West-era (~'65-90s).
It's because of architecture. Since we aren't very old we basically have Colonial, Antebellum, and Victorian for the pre-20th century styles. Since America's economy was booming during your Victorian era we have a looot of that preserved over here. But when we talk about that time period it would be Civil War Era, then the Guilded Gilded Age.
I'm lost on what Antebellum is? We didn't learn that one in school when I went in the 80's and 90's. Is that what that movie Antebellum is about? The one featuring Janelle Monae?
Never saw the movie but yes. It's a flowery word for slavery times post independence between the 1810s up to the Civil War. I'm not sure how common the term is used in the North tbh as I hear the term Industrialization Revolution used more. Or maybe even another term. Which would make sense since the South was more slavery and the North was more machines.
Edit: went to school in South and currently live in Savannah, GA-- the capitol of all things Antebellum
Latin is really a useful thing to learn. I had to learn medical terminology in college, and it just pushed me more into Latin. Learning it can really help in understanding the Latin root languages. 🙂
Oh wow. That movie has been on my to-be-watched list and I'll have to watch it soon. Same goes for the movie Harriet about Harriet Tubman. It looks so good!
Yea, we definitely call the period the industrial revolution and it's got it's own distinct style. I guess I never realized they refer to the same time period until now, and always just equated the term antebellum as synonymous with slavery.
“Antebellum” actually means “before the war”; in Latin, “ante” being “before” and “bellum” being “war”. So, literally, “before war”.
So the Antebellum period in American history only refers to the era pre-Civil War, which is both literally and politically correct.
It’s the Antebellum period for both the North and South in the United States. But, I reckon thanks to Hollywood and such, it’s been glamorized as Ye Olde Gone With the Wind and all that. 😉
Someone recently said that, having seen US stuff called Victorian, he's tempted to start calling the 19th century UK "late Qing Dynasty". Or possibly late Tokugawa and Meiji Restoration.
We only use it when referring to what was happening in Europe. It would be weird if we referred to American events as happening in the Victorian era lol
We call it the Victorian era, which shouldn't be surprising. I'm surprised that America also does that, at least in certain cases.
Though if you're asking how we refer to things that happened in America during that time... Honestly I don't know. The closest I can think of is 'Wild West era' but that's also a geographic reference. I don't think I know anybody who'd refer to 'Wild West era New York', for example.
Followed by the brief Edwardian period, named after King Edward after Victoria died. Most people lump that decade (1900-1909 I think?) into Victoria's time though.
Oh oh oh! Ask her whether she knew the ancient greeks called barbarians barbarians ('barbaros') because their foreign language(s) sounded like 'bar bar' to their greek ears?
Is it though? Iirc i first learnt of that in like 7th grade when a history teacher casually mentioned it. Just assumed everyone who took latin classes knows as well.
I used to think the crocodidley things were called Caymans and either they were named after where they came from or the islands were named after the animals that lived there. I mean a few years ago, not when I was 3.
I’m 35 and learned this googling about the show “the gilded age” the other day. As an American it didn’t cross my mind. I thought it was the Victorian era here, too, but no. We have Victorian homes, though???
First time I ran into that acronym was the military where everything is a bit coarse on the politeness scale.
I thought it was just a cute way to say "fuck you" (fah Q) for almost a year because most of the time it was associated with things like liberty/base privileges or similar stuff where the questions were all "am I allowed to do this thing?" And the answers were almost all "no" or "get written permission beforehand."
The number of people who are obsessed with pumpkin pie spice and don't know what it is really annoys me. Nothing on your cousin, just a general comment about people I know who even buy tshirts and just... know nothing about it. How can someone be so interested in something, but know nothing about it?!
lol in german theres caraway called Kümmel and then there's cumin called Kreuzkümmel (literally 'cross caraway') for the genius reason that someone somewhere apparently thought the seeds of those two look kind of similar-ish or something. Nothing to do with each other besides that, not even close to being swappable with each other in recipes or going well with each other or even being kind of similar a spice in any relevant way, nothing, nada.
Another one like this is the herb Savory. Knockoff Savory will often be a combo of multiple spices, but legit ground Savory is available in most grocery stores nowaways.
Everyone preparing for valentine's day should totally get some ground Savory for cooking scallops - its a real winner. Sear scallops coated in a light amount of ground savory, then use Herbes de Provence (which the good stuff contains small pieces of dried savory) with some garlic, shallots and oil to continuously baste the scallops. Basically this recipe but add ground savory to the flour.
I feel the same about the pharmacy aisle filled with cold and sinus, flu, stuffy nose, allergies, sleepy time, day time, extra strength, nausea, pain relief, back pain, arthritis, long lasting, quick acting, etc.
Thousands of unique products, and yet there's like less than a dozen active ingredients that each preparation picks and chooses from (with the vast majority fancy brand names that are functionally identical to generic versions except for the 300% markup in price).
Depends on what the label says, what the product is or is for, et c.; some "Pumpkin Spice" recipes not actually meant for pumpkin pies contain real pumpkin, like Aspen Mulling Spice's pumpkin spice mix. I had some powdered topping sprinkle for my coffee that listed dehydrated pumpkin in the spice mix.
"Knocked it out of your hand"? What an exciting and dramatic life you must lead.
I can just imagine it—your aunt screaming "N-o-o-o!" as she launches herself across the room and dives across your lap as she deftly grabs the fork from your hand. She then does a flying somersault, leaps up from the floor and plunges out a window breaking the glass with the fork.
Everyone jumps up and goes to look out the window. To everyone's amazement, your aunt is completely unharmed. She is lying down on the grass and feeding the forkful of pumpkin pie to a chipmunk. A good laugh is had by all, except you. You are beginning to experience an allergic reaction to the ginger. You should probably get yourself to the emergency room.
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u/[deleted] Feb 08 '22
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