[Sca-cooks] oddities of stuff, was canned gravy??????

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Kirsten Houseknecht:
>my mom occasionally strings celery.
>i understand that many of the relatives on both sides and back string
>celery... i never understood it myslef except for the most tough and
>"stringy" bits..... and usually those get chopped into stock, so it doesnt
>matter.
>it seems to be an "issue" with some of my family.

I wonder if this is a throwback to a time when "genteel" people ate a 
relatively low-fiber diet, with a lot of the vegetables, when eaten, 
were largely pushed in the direction of baby food. What was that 
recent "reality" TV program called? Manor House? Didn't that address 
certain requests from the family/master of the house for a 
higher-in-fiber diet than their historical counterparts would likely 
have eaten?

I was taught in culinary school to destring celery. I think it's 
silly, and don't do it, but I was taught it, very likely because 
someone like Careme or Escoffier decided it was necessary, and nobody 
ever bothered to change that viewpoint in any official capacity (as 
opposed to, say, more recent views on what constitutes properly 
cooked pork, which have been more or less "officially" updated).

>likewise the norwegian side peels all radishes! they looked at me eating a
>whole radish like i ate peanut shells or something.....

My mother-in-law is like that with certain fruits (and therefore, so 
is my lady wife). These people come from a culture with perhaps the 
single highest fiber diet on the planet, but an apple skin bothers 
them? Again, it seems to be a genteelism on the part of some people 
with agricultural backgrounds: you peel fruits and vegetables with 
tough skins before eating them. You feed the skins, or the whole, 
unpeeled fruits, to the animals. By extension, if you eat such a 
thing with the peel on, you must be an animal.

>and the absolute insistance on "peeling" a cucumber is . odd to say the
>least.

Actually, I can see it for cucumbers. Depending on the variety, some 
cucumber peels are kind of waxy and bitter. Those nearly-seedless 
English cukes don't need to be peeled, but the standard mature 
American cucumber (not Kirbys or gherkins) usually does.

Adamantius