Wow, hard to believe they were ever that young! Love the connection, Nancy! You are so clever. So, yes, spoon is the answer. **** for Nancy, Annette, and TM. From The Atlantic: Dr.Margorius/Shutterstock/Rebecca J. Rosen Spoons -- along with their companions and rivals, chopsticks and forks -- are definitely a form of technology. Their functions include serving, measuring, and conveying food from plate to mouth, not to mention culinary spoons for stirring and scraping, skimming, lifting, and ladling. Every human society has spoons of one kind or another. In and of themselves, these utensils are mild-mannered -- certainly in comparison with the knife. Spoons are what we give babies -- whether ceremonial silver christening spoons or shallow plastic weaning spoons containing the first gummy mouthfuls of baby rice. Gripping a spoon in the fist is one of the earliest milestones in our development. Spoons are benign and domestic. Yet their construction and use has often reflected deep passions and fiercely held prejudices. Spoons hold up a mirror to the surrounding culture precisely because they are so universal. There are fork cultures and there are chopstick cultures; but all the peoples of the world use spoons. The particular form they take is therefore very revealing: a pretty Chinese porcelain blue-and-white spoon for wonton soup is part of an entirely different culture of eating than a Russian spoon filled with sticky preserves or the ladle-like wooden spoons used in poor European households to eat soup from a communal pot, passed from mouth to mouth. Functionally, a spoon is an object that aids with ferrying food into the mouth. In the 1960s, Jane Goodall saw chimpanzees fashioning sort-of spoons from blades of grass, to make it easier for them to slurp up termites. In the distant past, humans lashed shells onto sticks and used them to consume foods too liquid to be eaten with fingers. The Roman word for spoon reflects this: cochleare, which comes from the word for shell. Romans used these little spoons for eating eggs or scooping out shellfish. For pottage-type dishes they had a larger spoon, the pear-shaped ligula. At different periods, people favored various spoons, depending on what they most liked to eat. Mother-of-pearl egg spoons reflect the Edwardian fondness for a soft-boiled egg (mother-of-pearl or bone was used because egg yolk stains silver). Hanoverian mustard spoons hint at what a vital condiment this fiery fluid was in the English diet. The Georgians of the 18th century loved roasted bone marrow and devised a series of specialized silver spoons and scoops for eating it. Some of them were double-ended, with one end for small bones and another for large. The idea was to hold your piece of roasted bone in an elegant white napkin and use the implements to tease out the soft, fatty nuggets of marrow. Marrow spoons were akin to the complicated series of spoons, needles, and picks that accompany a French plateau de fruits de mer, a sumptuous seafood platter. Mother-of-pearl spoon (Wikimedia Commons/Rebecca J. Rosen) The marrow spoon is obsolete (though the fashion for roasted bone marrow and parsley salad recently started by the London chef Fergus Henderson may yet bring it back). Other spoons, however, have succeeded in making the leap from specialist tool to universal implement, none more so than the teaspoon. The teaspoon first came into existence when the English started adding milk to their tea in the second half of the 17th century. It was needed to amalgamate the milk, sugar, and tea in the cup. It was a wealthy person's utensil, separate from the main dinnerware. On the face of it, it seems odd that the teaspoon should have made the leap from the rarefied atmosphere of an English tea table to cutlery drawers around the world. The utensils of the Japanese tea ceremony -- the bamboo tea scoop and whisk -- have not traveled in this way. Nor have other accoutrements of an English tea -- such as sugar tongs and tea strainers, which have remained the preserve of those who still enjoy the ritual of stopping for a full bone-china afternoon tea, complete with scones and cream: a dwindling band. You only rarely encounter anyone polite enough to use tea tongs now, not least because sugar cubes themselves have passed out of vogue. Yet teaspoons are still everywhere. The teaspoon did not immediately travel the world. In 1741, the inventory of the French duc d'Orl�ans included 44 silver-gilt coffee spoons but not a single teaspoon. The French are still likely to use the smaller coffee spoon as a unit of measurement over the teaspoon (abbreviating it to cc, short for cuiller � caf�). But elsewhere the teaspoon reigns supreme, even when tea itself is not drunk. From the 19th century onward, the teaspoon became a basic element of flatware in the United States, despite the fact that coffee was more usually drunk; and thence, its influence spread. But why? How did the teaspoon make the leap into the mainstream culture while other specialist spoons did not, such as the Victorian berry spoon with its lacy trim or the small silver salt shovels that were made in profusion in the 18th century, some like mini-soupspoons, others like tiny ice-cream servers? So, in extremis, one spoon can definitely be used for all meals, which is not to say that it will work equally well for all foods. Because the end result is always the same -- getting food in your mouth -- it is seldom recognized that an eating spoon can operate in at least two different ways. The bowl of the spoon can be a kind of cup, from whose edge liquids are drunk. Or it can be a shovel, designed for ferrying more solid mixtures. A very clear example of the spoon-as-shovel is the kafgeer, a large flat spoon used in Afghanistan for serving rice, rather like a spade. Throughout the Middle East, there are special shovels and spatulas for serving rice, and when you use them, you notice that they really do a much better job of picking up every grain than our rounded, oval spoons. Similarly, when you look at early European spoons, you can detect radical differences in shape, reflecting different usage. From a nunnery on the remote Scottish island of Iona, medieval silver spoons have survived that have a distinctive leaf-shaped bowl: definitely a shovel, though a much smaller one than the Middle Eastern rice servers. These spoons would have been ideal for scooping up thick porridge, but not much good for liquid soup. For this, medieval spoon makers made large round spoons, whose bowls were too big to fit in the mouth, but just right for sipping. Now, mostly, we don't think too hard about how spoons work. The reason for this is partly that the modern spoon with its ovoid bowl marks a compromise between the cup and the shovel. Pick a dessertspoon from your cutlery drawer. Could you use it to scoop up mouthfuls of pilaf, say? And could you use it to drink thin broth? The answer to both these questions should be yes. Your dessert-spoon is probably not perfect for either task: too shallow for soup, too deep and rounded for rice. But it will do. For John Emery, this compromise was not good enough. Emery was a spoon fanatic, a historian of cutlery who experimented in the 1970s with making replicas of historic spoons and testing what could and couldn't be eaten with them. From the perspective of function, he lamented the trifid and all its successors. In Emery's view, the compromise between cup and shovel was "seldom really satisfactory." And it was made still worse by the annoying habit food had of oscillating between the states of solid and liquid. Sometimes soup was thick and lumpy like porridge, and sometimes porridge was thin like soup. Etiquette told Emery to use one spoon; function, another. So, slurp that ice cream, soup, tea, whatever and enjoy. Cynthia

Sariqa your email addy is blocked so if you want to play please send me your email address " TODAY" FRIDAY If I don't have it by 7pm tonight then I'm really sorry But all the names are out & you will have to wait till the next robin . I do hope you will see this note in time love to have you. I hope everyone will forgive a few of the goof;s i have made this was the biggest robin to keep track of we have possible 28 players so far :))) If anyone else wants to sign up they have till 7pm . so send me all your info be sure to send your email addy & mailing address gw name also . I need for you all to sign your gw/name to your email when you write to me or I don't know who to answer or why :)). many I don't know by name but just your garden web names . ty u all for playing susie /skohler welcome selah

Good Morning. Besh - sorry about your friend. I had an immediate member of my family attempt suicide and it was a very traumatic experience. I can relate to your friend and his family. Very deep issues. Suzanne - Your night out to the theatre and dinner sounds like my kind of night. Where is BJ, I haven't read a post from her. I pretty much caught up from my mia months. QOD: We will have a low key Thanksgiving. My DH's mother and sister are visiting us now since Wednesday and they leave the day prior to Thanksgiving, so we have been having special dinners and going out to eat quite a bit. So I may just make soup and salad for Thanksgiving dinner -- hahahahhahaha. I made a turkey breast yesterday and it was YUMMERS. I hear them in the kitchen now making a italian cookie/biscuit my MIL used to make my husband when he was younger. Oh such happiness -- brings a tear to my eye. GMWAS (Gag me with a spoon). (wink wink) I know my DH is enjoying every minute of it. We drove to he east coast of Florida on thursday and went to a Bloomingdales. I love it. We do not have any here on the west coast(at least that I know of). So my husband bought me a Dooney and Burke purse (which he did a year ago this time when they came down for a visit) So you can bet your bottom dollar that I am hoping this is a yearly thing. Patti - my parents also celebrated their 50th anniversary last month. My husband and I threw them a party at a party center in Ohio (where I am from)and had 130 people there with a band. It was quite a challenge organizing it from Florida. Plus my mom gave her input too.....so... I took a lot of deep breaths and went forward the entire time. I had a blast. A good time was had by all and it was worth all the effort and aggravation just to see how happy it made my parents. We even had my cousin who is an Catholic Deacon renew their vows. Not a dry eye in the joint at that point. Man this is a long post. I better save some for tomorrow. Take care everyone..... Lynn

You must be so excited, Linda! I would be!!! Tonight is the in-state rival football game between CSU (my alma mater) and CU (my son's alma mater!) so we will be watching that. Tomorrow we are going to the Tour de Fat bike parade / music fest in town. 20,000 plus bicyclers in costume ... http://www.newbelgium.com/events/tour-de-fat/fort-collins.aspx We also have dinner out Sunday & Monday nights - woohoo. I took my Pfaff in for service a couple weeks ago and got it back and was able to finish 5 of the vests I am sewing for our Lions Club. Then the bottom thread started messing up and my straight stitches looked more like zig-zag. Yesterday, back to the repair shop. ... they have to replace the "hook" mechanism ... $350 MORE than I already paid for service. ($110). They are not going to charge me any service fee, just the part, but OUCH, it sure hurts! Hope they get it finished soon!!! I need to finish vests and aprons before any large quilting takes place. I did sew 6 potholders on my Featherweight last night, so that was good. Will be kind of a mixed bag for me so we will see how much gets done! Sue