Jump to content
  • Welcome to the eG Forums, a service of the eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters. The Society is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of the culinary arts. These advertising-free forums are provided free of charge through donations from Society members. Anyone may read the forums, but to post you must create a free account.

food folktales


TurtleMeng

Recommended Posts

I was eating a pork bun and a piece of rice cake this morning, the rice cake being the Chinese New Year thingy with red bean paste and sweet. Suddenly I heard my mom's voice, from distant childhood

EATING SAVORY AND SWEET FOODS TOGETHER GIVES YOU HEAD LICE

I almost felt the itch in my scalp.

Anyone else has one to share?

"Mom, why can't you cook like the iron chef?"
Link to comment
Share on other sites

nutmeg is addictive, and grating too much of it into my hot milk will turn me into a raving nutmeg junkie (this is actually based in truth, but it terrified me when I was younger)

Cutting the lemon/the knife/leaves a little cathedral:/alcoves unguessed by the eye/that open acidulous glass/to the light; topazes/riding the droplets,/altars,/aromatic facades. - Ode to a Lemon, Pablo Neruda

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My nursemaid used to tell me that blowing bubbles in my milk would make my nose turn up on the end. Talk about scarred!

However I never needed a nose job either.............

"There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass!" Terry Pratchett

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Don't drink Coke on an empty stomach, or you'll get a horrible stomachache. So saith my Mother; this is definitely a Filipino thing. :hmmm::huh:

Joie Alvaro Kent

"I like rice. Rice is great if you're hungry and want 2,000 of something." ~ Mitch Hedberg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Rub the end of a cucumber back where you sliced it off, or the cucumber will be bitter.

"It is just as absurd to exact excellent cooking from a chef whom one provides with defective or scanty goods, as to hope to obtain wine from a bottled decoction of logwood." -Escoffier
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I love ginko nuts! I can eat them like potato chips (once you eat one you can't stop). My parents always told me that the magic number to stop at was 17 (or was it 19?) or my bladder would explode from holding too much urine and toxins or something like that. Sure enough I read an article about a small child dieing from exceeding the limit.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My dad used to tell me that if I swallowed watermelon seeds, they would sprout in my stomach and eventually would grow to the point where I exploded. 

I'm scarred for life.

When i was pregnant I told little kids that I swallowed a watermelon seed and it sprouted and grew into a full sized watermelon and that was why my stomach was so big at 9 months!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've heard the one about seeds sprouting in the stomach before. An old childhood girlfriend believed that, but I don't remember believing it. I think her mother tried to convince her of it and my mother kind of joked about it.

Michael aka "Pan"

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My parents are firm believers in the East Asian triptych of faith, belief, philosophy, worldview "thoughts", I can't think of an appropriate English word for it (Buddhism, Taoism and Confuscianism). My dad is an acupuncturist and herbalist. The Taoist experimented on themselves (called "Doh" in Korean) . They ate pretty much anything and everything, while noting the results. If the first man who ate an oyster was brave, the Taoists must have been super heroes. :smile:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Rub the end of a cucumber back where you sliced it off, or the cucumber will be bitter.

That's one I've heard from my Japanese friends. You're supposed to rub the two cut sides together until you produce white froth. Is your mom Japanese?

Edited by SuzySushi (log)

SuzySushi

"She sells shiso by the seashore."

My eGullet Foodblog: A Tropical Christmas in the Suburbs

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The only one I can remember (and this is curious, because I was never really allowed to help in the kitchen) is my mother telling me that you always have to stir a cornstarch pudding (or anything thickened with starch) in one direction, or it won't set.

I can't remember though whether the direction was sunwise or widdershins.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I remember being told that when you swallowed gum it would take 7 years to dissolve.

My mil tells us that eating dairy products with fish will give one an upset stomach.

"Some people see a sheet of seaweed and want to be wrapped in it. I want to see it around a piece of fish."-- William Grimes

"People are bastard-coated bastards, with bastard filling." - Dr. Cox on Scrubs

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"Widdershins" means counterclockwise. In the folklore of the British Isles (and perhaps other places, I'm no folklorist); walking around a church/standing stone/whatever "widdershins" could place you inadvertantly in fairyland, where all kinds of bad shit might happen to you before you got home.

“Who loves a garden, loves a greenhouse too.” - William Cowper, The Task, Book Three

 

"Not knowing the scope of your own ignorance is part of the human condition...The first rule of the Dunning-Kruger club is you don’t know you’re a member of the Dunning-Kruger club.” - psychologist David Dunning

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Eating the crusts of bread would give you curly hair.

Curly hair? Where, on your palms? Pimples on your face too? :shock::raz:

It is true!!

Try cutting a 'slicer' cucumber (you know ...not the long english variety) and just let it sit for a few minutes. Come back to it and you will see it is "weeping" (pronounced liquid build up on the cut side) Now lick it!!!!! Bitter.....I never believed this one until I tried it. By rubbing the two ends together I think it may blend the bitterness back into the cuke where the "underlying" bitterness resides. (a trait of all good cukes)

I still think the traditional cuke gives a much better bite in it's raw form than the hybrid/GM version.

John

Ooops...wrong quote.... I was quoting the cucumber debate..just up a few posts!!

JB

edited to let you know I suck at posting!!

Edited by dodger (log)

It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.

Hunter S. Thompson ---- R.I.P. 1939 - 2005

"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society."

--Mark Twain

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My grandmother used to always tell me that eating porridge/soup/or any number of foods would put hair on my chest. My rebuttle; I'm a girl, why would I want hair on my chest.

Oh, and she used to always do the cucumber thing and my mom and I decided to test this little bit of folklore. It seemed to make a difference.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"Widdershins" means counterclockwise.  In the folklore of the British Isles (and perhaps other places, I'm no folklorist); walking around a church/standing stone/whatever "widdershins" could place you inadvertantly in fairyland, where all kinds of bad shit might happen to you before you got home.

I'd never heard this one before... gracias chromedome.

Joie Alvaro Kent

"I like rice. Rice is great if you're hungry and want 2,000 of something." ~ Mitch Hedberg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Rub the end of a cucumber back where you sliced it off, or the cucumber will be bitter.

That's one I've heard from my Japanese friends. You're supposed to rub the two cut sides together until you produce white froth. Is your mom Japanese?

That's true. In India, most cucumbers had to be rubbed at the end, sometimes with salt, otherwise they'd be too bitter to eat.

From my grandma:

Don't eat melon on an empty stomach.. will make you want to throw up.

Don't have milk with anything sour.. upset stomach.

Don't have yogurt at night.. this is really weird.. will weaken your brain!!

"I look around (the Amazon rainforest) and see a green wall. They (the Machiguenga Indians of Peru) look around and see a supermarket." -Austin Stevens

Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...