Food superstitions

[cakes]

I was taught by a Greek chef that you never hand a knife directly to someone....you have to put it down near them and let them pick it up. Otherwise the ungrounded metal will cause a fight between the two.

I don't believe it, but I remember it, and I pass it on for your amusement.

I suspect this is a safety thing. As a Boy Scout I was taught to always present the handle of the knife to whoever I was handing it to. Setting it down would be even safer.

[Gifted Gourmet]

I suspect this is a safety thing. As a Boy Scout I was taught to always present the handle of the knife to whoever I was handing it to. Setting it down would be even safer.

Don't you suppose that most superstition was initially grounded in practical reality? and that, over time, it became more simply a matter of tradition, and the original roots were lost in the mists of time ... the final product being much more interesting when repeated over and over ...

An example which comes to mind: a daughter questions her mother about why she always cut the ends off of her loaf cakes ... the response was "I don't know but that it the way we always do it in this family." Turns out that the great-grandmother had a serving plate for loaf cakes that was considerably shorter than the finished cakes and the ends were always trimmed! No big mystery after all ...

[KatieLoeb]

I suspect this is a safety thing.  As a Boy Scout I was taught to always present the handle of the knife to whoever I was handing it to.  Setting it down would be even safer.

Don't you suppose that most superstition was initially grounded in practical reality? and that, over time, it became more simply a matter of tradition, and the original roots were lost in the mists of time ... the final product being much more interesting when repeated over and over ...

An example which comes to mind: a daughter questions her mother about why she always cut the ends off of her loaf cakes ... the response was "I don't know but that it the way we always do it in this family." Turns out that the great-grandmother had a serving plate for loaf cakes that was considerably shorter than the finished cakes and the ends were always trimmed! No big mystery after all ...

A handshake originally showed that you weren't wielding a weapon.

I think this only works for right handed people though...

[Suzanne F]

I will not read the NY Times restaurant review before the date on which it is (nominally) published.

Bruni on Wolfgang's Steakhouse

What do you think? (Not so much about the restaurant but the review as a review and Bruni as a reviewer.)

I enjoyed it. I thought the story well told and provided a nice frame for the inevitable comparison between Wolfgang's and Peter Luger.

But damn, I've been tempted!

[WHT]

Whenever the department goes out for lunch and somebody asks for the salt, my boss passes both the salt and pepper and says:

"Never sever the salt and the pepper."

What's with that? He doesn't know, either.

In growing up I was taught that it was just good manners to pass them even if only one was requested. It also saves time since people sometimes do ask for the other soon after the first.

[howard88]

My personal superstition is if I do not eat two overflowing tablespoons full of Jif chunky peanut butter at 2:00 in the morning followed by a gulp of cold milk, I will not be able to fall back to sleep.

[Laksa]

Finally, you should use chopsticks with care. Leaving them standing in a bowl of rice is something done at funerals and so it symbolises death, as does passing food from your chopsticks directly to someone else's.

Japan

This has also been brought up in the Chopsticks etiquette thread.

In the Seven Samurai, the dead samurai were buried under a mound of earth, with their swords stuck vertically (more or less) in the mound. Incense used for the Chinese practice of ancestor worship are simlarly stuck vertically in a pot of sand.

My own superstition is that if you eat more calories that you burn, you'll get fat. It's just a superstition...

[phaelon56]

As a Boy Scout I was taught to always present the handle of the knife to whoever I was handing it to. Setting it down would be even safer.

I learned the same practice in Scouts. We also had to be sure the the blade faced down and the sharp edge (e.g. when handing someone an axe or hatchet) faced away from both people towards the side. We were also taught to say "Thank you" once we had the knife/axe firmly in hand and could not let go of the object until the other party said "Thank you" (in the event that were the hander and not the handee).

Can anyone confirm or deny that boiling wine corks with octopus makes them more tender? I think this is a pretty wide spread custom/superstition amongst Mediterranean peoples that eat a lot of octopus (i.e. Greeks, Spaniards, Portugese).

I just got Mario Batali's "Simple Italian Food" book today. The cork with the octopus tip is the first thing I happened to notice when thumbing through the book. There must be something to it if Molto Mario swears by the practice.

From my childhood:

• If you swim in less than one hour after eating you'll get cramps and drown (this has been disproven)
  
• If you swallow gum it stays in your stomach forever and does not get digested
  
• Swallowing a spoonful of dry sugar will cure the hiccups (this really works due to sugar's granular nature - salt or sand would do the same thing but don't taste as good)
  
• Chocolate causes acne
  

[KatieLoeb]

As a Boy Scout I was taught to always present the handle of the knife to whoever I was handing it to.  Setting it down would be even safer.

I learned the same practice in Scouts. We also had to be sure the the blade faced down and the sharp edge (e.g. when handing someone an axe or hatchet) faced away from both people towards the side. We were also taught to say "Thank you" once we had the knife/axe firmly in hand and could not let go of the object until the other party said "Thank you" (in the event that were the hander and not the handee).

Can anyone confirm or deny that boiling wine corks with octopus makes them more tender? I think this is a pretty wide spread custom/superstition amongst Mediterranean peoples that eat a lot of octopus (i.e. Greeks, Spaniards, Portugese).

I just got Mario Batali's "Simple Italian Food" book today. The cork with the octopus tip is the first thing I happened to notice when thumbing through the book. There must be something to it if Molto Mario swears by the practice.

From my childhood:

• If you swim in less than one hour after eating you'll get cramps and drown (this has been disproven)
  
• If you swallow gum it stays in your stomach forever and does not get digested
  
• Swallowing a spoonful of dry sugar will cure the hiccups (this really works due to sugar's granular nature - salt or sand would do the same thing but don't taste as good)
  
• Chocolate causes acne
  

Perhaps this is a question I should pose to Mario during his Q & A!

Mario, can you explain the cork/octopus phenomenon????

[Dejah]

Mom was forever trying to get us to clean our rice bowls:

for my brothers: If you don't eat all your rice, you'll get an ugly wife!

for my sister and me: If you don't eat all your rice, you will BE an ugly wife

[Gifted Gourmet]

Possibly more of a none-too-veiled-threat than a superstition??

[ruthcooks]

Here's one: eating the pointy tip of a piece of pie as your first bite results in bad luck. I never pay attention to this advice...hey! maybe that's what's responsible!

[cjs]

always let someone else pour your Sake for you and then you pour for them.

also, this one is weird.... one morning trying in vain to get my hollandaise to thicken, I guess I was cursing and venting too loudly and the chef noticed. Now since we are good friends he didn't think anything of asking me if I happened to have my period, and I said "well yes I do, how nice of you to ask"?? and he said that was why my sauce would not thicken............anyone else hear this?

[KatieLoeb]

always let someone else pour your Sake for you and then you pour for them.

also, this one is weird.... one morning trying in vain to get my hollandaise to thicken, I guess I was cursing and venting too loudly and the chef noticed. Now since we are good friends he didn't think anything of asking me if I happened to have my period, and I said "well yes I do, how nice of you to ask"?? and he said that was why my sauce would not thicken............anyone else hear this?

Say WHAAAT?

That's gotta be the wierdest one yet...:shaking head:

This sounds like more old school patriarchal nonsense about women being "unclean" or "possessed" at that stage of the lunar cycle.

Not like I've ever gotten that way or anything...

Muwahahahaaaaa!

[StudentChefEclipse]

"carrots will make you see in the dark"

Actually, the vitamin A in carrots is related to developing good night vision, so maybe not so superstitious...?

Also, re fortune-cookies: I never eat the cookie unless I like the fortune. Though maybe that's not so much a superstition as evidence of incredibly detailed control-freak behavior. Hrmmm.

[mrsadm]

My grandmother believed that if you dropped a knife on the floor, a man would soon come to visit. Never did find out who would visit if you dropped a spoon or fork!

[Epice]

Here's one:  eating the pointy tip of a piece of pie as your first bite results in bad luck.

Hmmmmm.....I didn't grow up with this one, but a friend taught me to always make a wish on the point of a pie, which should be your first bite, before you cut and eat it.

[dougery]

The other topic on Chopsticks covered this but my superstition is sticking chopsticks straight down into your rice. I once did this when I was small in front of my aunts and cousins visiting from Japan. Needless to say, they were mortified and my mother got so mad! I later found out that chopsticks were placed in food like this to "feed the spirits of the dead" as my mother said. To this day if I see anyone sticking their chopsticks straight into their food (like TV antenna's) I get really irritated.

[Kayakado]

My Irish grandmother used to tell us if we drank our tea with milk and sugar we'd get worms.

After visiting the UK many years later, it seemed I was one of the few who didn't put milk in their tea.

[Cpalms]

Never, ever bring bananas on a fishing boat....a banana on board will guarantee that you will catch nothing and the boat will probably sink....charter captains have been known to inspect their unknowing customers lunches before they board the boat.

[PopsicleToze]

My Irish grandmother used to tell us if we drank our tea with milk and sugar we'd get worms. 

After visiting the UK many years later, it seemed I was one of the few who didn't put milk in their tea.

My parents just took for granted that if we grew up on a small farm (well, not a farm, but with a garden, milking cow, chickens and pigs to kill, etc. -- kindof a farm) that we would get worms. So, every year, when they wormed the animals, they wormed us. It was a thick mess of red-colored liquid the consistency of blood, and my sister and I would cry and beg not to take it before we had to swallow it and immediately had to vomit, to which my mother would think was 'on purpose' and feed us another dose. It was a helluva way to grow up, but we were never sick, besides the one case of chicken pox, we never even went to a 'regular' doctor

Edited to Add:

Actually, thinking back, maybe we were afraid to get sick.

Edited July 9, 2004 by Rhonda Graham (log)

[KatieLoeb]

My grandmother believed that if you dropped a knife on the floor, a man would soon come to visit.  Never did find out who would visit if you dropped a spoon or fork!

My mother, may she rest in peace, was the original "Old Wife" and source of this sort of nonsense superstitious crap. Once when I dropped a fork while washing dishes she said, "Ooohh, Katie. You know what that means, don't you?"

"No Ma, I don't. What does it mean," I said.

"It means you'll be having a male visitor." (slight variation to previous poster)

Without skipping a beat I looked her dead in the eye and said," Well shit - if I'd known that I'd have dropped the Barbeque Fork!"

The look on her face was priceless.

She never repeated any of those silly superstitions to me again.

[Pickles]

The cork thing reminds me of the superstition about adding the avocado pit to a bowl of guacamole in order to keep it from browning.

(Which does work... for the guacamole directly underneath the pit, not the rest.)

No offense to anyone.....please...but some of the posts in this thread are about Household Hints or Food Tips and not "superstition" regarding foods. Avocado pits in the guacamole is a food tip.

Main Entry: su·per·sti·tion

Pronunciation: "sü-p&r-'sti-sh&n

Function: noun

Etymology: Middle English supersticion, from Middle French, from Latin superstition-, superstitio, from superstit-, superstes standing over (as witness or survivor), from super- + stare to stand -- more at STAND

1 a : a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation b : an irrational abject attitude of mind toward the supernatural, nature

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book...ition&x=20&y=12

[Pickles]

always let someone else pour your Sake for you and then you pour for them.

also, this one is weird.... one morning trying in vain to get my hollandaise to thicken, I guess I was cursing and venting too loudly and the chef noticed. Now since we are good friends he didn't think anything of asking me if I happened to have my period, and I said "well yes I do, how nice of you to ask"?? and he said that was why my sauce would not thicken............anyone else hear this?

Say WHAAAT?

That's gotta be the wierdest one yet...:shaking head:

There all ALL SORTS of superstitions regarding women baking and cooking during their periods. Everything done during "this time of the month" is supposed to go HORRIBLY wrong. Bread will not rise. Don't even try it!! And if you like shark....jump in the ocean!! You'll attract, and catch a tasty one during your menses!!

[Chris Amirault]

I always heard that eating the last (your choice here) will make you an old maid.

Isn't that just 'cuz it'll make you fat?

I think that rule is more specific: eating the last bite of a half-gallon of ice cream no more than 45 minutes after you have eaten the first bite of the same half-gallon, using the same spoon, alone -- that'll make you fat!