I've laughed very, very hard reading this thread. Although I am not a germophobe and recognize that microbes are good, I don't want to actually witness them being added to my food.

My many years as a flight attendant cured me of putting my hands/fingers in my mouth or eyes unless they are well washed. I shudder when I see others doing it and can't help sometimes admonishing people who are chewing on their nails, etc. Do you know what lives under your fingernails? Best not to think about it.

Not long ago I witnessed one of the CNAs at work eating with her hands immediately after leaving the room of a patient whom she had cleaned up after a projectile diarrhea episode. Yes, I said something to her!

Siobhan, I'm amused by this thread because I recognize many of my own quirks in it and am relieved that I'm not the only one who has them. :-)

There's so much in food production that, if one thinks too closely about it, could put one off eating anything ever. That those who know most about food processing (all food is processed, even if it's just the act of plucking a fruit from a tree or bush and biting into it) still themselves eat is great compartmentalization. I'm reminded about the anecdote I read somewhere of the medical examiner who did an especially gruesome autopsy then went immediately afterward (hopefully after washing up) into the lunchroom and ate a ham & mayo sandwich with gusto. On the other hand...

My brother has a neighbor who I think is a bit quirky. While walking my brother's dog I ran into this neighbor by her garbage bin. She had a trash sack full of fresh, still beautifully green, partially shucked corn. I wondered why she was discarding it, so I asked her. She said she found a worm in the first ear she started to shuck (she said 'peel'); then she found a second worm in the next ear she tried. With the third ear and a third worm, she gave up and decided to throw the whole lot out. I murmured sympathetically, then I asked her if I could have the corn instead of her throwing it away. She gave it to me, although she probably thinks I'm quirkier than I think she is!

Anybody who raises corn (maize), and has ever shucked it, knows that corn worms (actually larvae) are natural. They typically are found at the top point and all you have to do is remove, kill, and discard them; de-silk and shuck. You cut off the tip, an inch or two, and the rest of the corn is perfectly fine. That the neighbor lady was so far removed from corn in the natural state that she was disgusted by 'corn worms' is a statement enough to prove my contention that she is quirky...in my opinion.

Friedag, more ignorant than quirky perhaps?
The witchetty grub is eaten mainly by Australian aboriginal people as "bush tucker" but my husband has tried them. He told me that there is a trick to eating them correctly. They must have the head and tail end bitten off and the "poop chute" blown out as swallowing that part could make a person sick.
I saw someone showing off on a TV show and to my dismay, he didn't do this. He thought he was being so macho eating a raw grub but wasn't doing it correctly with probable dire results!

Annpan, ignorance is a possibility. But this woman is five or six years older than me (I'm 63), so she must've had a very narrow, sheltered life. Quirky seems a bit kinder word even if ignorance is the real reason. She has done and said other odd things (in my opinion and my brother's and other neighbors' opinions, as well), so the 'corn incident' is the latest in an accumulative effect.

I've been told that roasting the grubs neutralizes the detrimental parts of the raw critters. Native Americans consider the 'corn worms' serendipitous protein. I don't think I would go so far as to try them myself. That's my quirk. :-)

So.....here's the scene:

I am serving ears of corn ( his very favor-wit) food to my little 4 year old grandson avec the worms /larvae.

He immediately notices that there is something "extra" in his corn.
I dismiss it by saying " Oh Honey, that's just some serendipitous protein !"

He knows worms and he knows corn........and he's pretty sure you don't eat one of those things !!

Funny, Yvonne!

But, dear grandmother (grandma, nana, mamaw, mimi...), how could you have let that wormy thing slip by you so that it is still with my corn?

Your grandson has already absorbed his culture's stance about what should and should not be. Kids are quick!! If he was a little Australian aboriginal or Native American boy, he could consider the addition a real treat. :-)

So true, frieda, and so sad! Not long ago I overheard a co-worker complaining about strawberries she had purchased, very red and ripe, and the next day ONE of the berries was moldy, and so she threw the entire pint away. Complete ignorance of how strawberries grow, and how to handle them once you get them home. And the most obvious - one moldy berry does not spoil the whole bunch.

Actually I'm pretty casual about things that I think of as natural contaminants - those little insects in heads of lettuce, dirt on the outside of a carrot - and not so casual about things like someone sneezing in my food. I guess that illustrates compartmentalization!

The first time I heard someone say she microwaved her corn on the cob in the husk, I asked what she did with the worms. Her answer was, "What worms?" Obviously, not a farm girl like me.

I have a similar reaction to people who wouldn't dream of eating perfectly good food because it wasn't refrigerated immediately a meal. Anyone else remember pie safes?

Circumstances alter cases too. I recall reading the memoirs of Michaela Denis, who said that when she was in Africa she shared food offered by villagers, with great enjoyment, a kind of pancake crawling with flies.
Isn't Google wonderful! I couldn't remember her surname but popped in a few things I recalled from the memoir, like being a double for Deborah Kerr once and up she came!

Siobhan, you may have caught the recent report on TV about the amount of food that Americans throw out each year needlessly -- WASTE -- because of the food's 'sell by' and 'use by' and 'best used by' dates stamped on the packaging. 'Sell by' is meant for the retailers, the date that they should rotate their stock. This of course doesn't mean that the food will instantly go bad on that exact date -- canned goods, for instance, can be used safely for years afterward. Even 'use by' and 'best used by' are merely rules of thumb and common sense and the users' eyes, noses, and sense of taste can determine if the food is still good enough to eat without consequences. But a lot of people apparently don't have enough common sense or don't trust their senses and don't want to take any chances, so they throw tons of food out and waste what could nourish a small country of less fastidious and less paranoid folk. It's stupidly obscene!

Carolyn, my dear S-I-L is one of those people who thinks everything should be shoved into the refrigerator as soon as possible after a meal. At my house one time, I saw her put bottles of yellow ballpark mustard and ketchup in the fridge. I told her that was unnecessary because those condiments were replete with salt and vinegar (and sugar in the case of ketchup) in which no self-respecting germ would inflict itself for long. Besides that, neither condiment in my house went unused long enough before it was used up (my boys were still living at home). She crinkled her nose in disdain and crossed her eyes, no doubt thinking that I was taking chances with my family's health. I tried to get her to let the casseroles get to room temperature or at least cool a bit before putting them in the fridge (warm-hot items will actually raise the fridge's interior temp, defeating its purpose). But I didn't have enough clout to change her mind and I saw that the thought distressed her so much that I gave in and let her stuff the fridge to the max. Now she really would have been distressed if she had seen what my grandmother, a Ph.D. nutritionist, did after a big midday meal: she threw a clean tablecloth over everything so that everything would be positioned for supper!

Carolyn, I not only remember pie safes, I have my grandmother's. I don't use it for its intended purpose because I don't bake many pies anymore. I have cookbooks in mine.

Annpan, yum! More serendipitous protein with African pancakes. Yes, circumstances do make a difference. I swallowed a fly once (it flew in while I was talking), but besides the gross-out factor it apparently didn't affect me much.

One of my very favorite stories to tell my grandson about his great grandfather ( my Dad) is........

One day Grampy was driving through the country and stopped at an old country store and bought some homemade vanille ice cream in a cone.
He loved ice cream and was really enjoying it as he drove along.
After a while he noticed that there was a chocolate chip in his ice cream.
"Hmmm." he thought.
"How interesting ! They must have accidentally dropped a little chunk of chocolate into the batch."
The more he licked the ice cream the more the little chip was exposed .........and suddenly he saw that it wasn't a chocolate chip, it was a housefly that had fallen into the vat when the ice cream was being mixed !!!!
He imagined that fly happily purring with each lick as it was slowly thawing .

What was left of his ice cream treat went right out the car window .

Friedag, leaving food out would depend on the room temperature.
I am now very careful in Australia to put food away or seal cooling food. I left out a plate of meat salad once for a short time and although I had covered it with a cloth, it was fly-blown and maggots had hatched!
Supermarkets here donate goods that have reached their "Use By" date to charities like "Second Harvest" who pick up and cook meals with this food for impoverished people.
I look for fresh food markdowns with a "Use By" (the next day) date stamp as I shop almost daily and sometimes can buy luxury things like fillet steak at a reasonable price to cook for that evening's meal.

Re: Leaving food out for longer than mealtime

My rule of thumb ( Home Economist speaking here) is:
If the food has been cooked in preparation or mixed with any ingredient containing eggs ( mayo) then it needs refrigeration immediately..
Fresh fruits, fresh salads with greens are much less likely to be a problem.
When in doubt, refrigerate it.

With the advent of microwaves it's a simple matter to reheat if necessary.

A friend told the story of her son's wedding night spent in the emergency room due to the bride's gastric distress.
Apparently she decided to have a late snack and went back to the buffet table for a big plate of potato salad which had been sitting out since mid afternoon.
She was sick as a dog.

Egad, Annpan! You've got some super-fast maturing flies in Australia. I don't think the flies even in Hawai'i are that prodigious.

Yes, of course, summertime temperatures in non-air-conditioned rooms or outdoors will affect cool-down times. But putting warm-hot covered casseroles in the fridge and effectively raising the interior temp of the fridge to room temperature (or thereabouts) so that it has to cool itself and the food in it back down to a germ-inhibiting level has been proven to take longer than bringing the cooked, covered food to room temperature first and then refrigerating it. The first is working at cross purposes. I'm talking about the typical home refrigerator, not the industrial types.

Yvonne, you've got a wealth of funny stories!

Oh, I just remembered what to me was the perfect illustration of how putting hot dishes directly into a refrigerator with other already cold foods affects everything in the fridge. A hot, covered casserole dish was placed on a middle shelf and the already-congealed Jell-O salad, already-removed from its shape-making container (mold), below the casserole slumped into a puddle before it re-congealed. The butter in its container similarly slumped. Tests were run on the microbial levels of the foods that were affected by the hot casserole (those that went from cool to not-so-cool and back to cool again) and the activity level was significantly higher than in the control experiment where a room-temperature casserole was put into the fridge instead that didn't affect the other foods as much. This study was done a few decades ago but, unless there has been a vast improvement in home refrigerators since, it probably still holds true. I'm not sure that I want to put too much faith in the 'improvements', but to each her own.

I'm not exactly sure why this suddenly seems so important to me, except that I want to effectively communicate what I really mean. :-)

Just think about all the folk who have never had refrigerators. As late as the 1970s, one of my landladies in England had no fridge. She had a 'window cooler', a screened box that was placed in an open window where she kept her eggs, butter, and even milk as I recall. It worked well enough, but of course that was in England. It would be next to useless in most places I've lived.

I read a collection of short stories a few years ago, stories by chefs relating their biggest failure. It was quite amusing! One story stood out for me. The chef was making a lobster dish for a very chi-chi event, and she employed several people to cook and clean the lobster the day before, personally overseeing the production. The lobster meat was placed carefully in containers and immediately popped into refrigerators.

The next day she arrived early at the kitchen, opened one of the fridges and was horrified to be greeted by the unmistakable smell of rot. The lobster was all ruined. By placing the hot containers directly into the fridge, a self-insulating effect was created - the outside meat cooled and the inside remained warm.

I can't remember how she resolved this crisis, but she did not, of course, serve the lobster.

This link might help clear up the hot food/cold refrigerator concerns.

Also...my refrigerator has a special " Quick Cool Down" button that can be used when hot foods are put into it.

Let's also be clear that we aren't putting a dutch oven full of boiling beans or a roaster full of 350 degree meat into the refrigerator !
I'm going to assume that we are putting the leftovers in smaller containers before refrigerating.
If , in fact, you are going to put the dutch oven into the refrigerator you might want to do an ice bath first. ( not you , your pot !)

Here is a link that might be useful: food safety

I used to live in southern California, where ant infestations are pretty common. You come home one day and find your ficus tree is....moving. Getting rid of the critters is rather trying.

It had been some time since I had had an ant problem and I was unused to the experiences that one goes through. For instance, pouring milk on my breakfast cereal and discovering ants. At first, I was totally grossed out, lost my appetite, threw it away and skipped brekkie. Then I progressed to making myself something else. Then I progressed to - this is a big step - simply removing the ants and eating the food. Then the next big step - ignoring the ants and eating. By this time, the ants are pretty much eradicated and stop appearing in the cereal and other foods. And now I'm wondering, "Where are the ants? It's not breakfast without ants!"

We have ants in Maine, but nearly as bad.

Thanks, Yvonne, for the link. The site I tried to link to (that didn't take, obviously) explained it essentially the same way. I knew that there were reasons why you don't put large, hot dishes immediately in the fridge but I couldn't remember the specifics. My freezer has a "Quick Freeze" feature but my refrigerator doesn't have the "Quick Cool Down."

The worst ant infestations I've ever had to deal with have been in the American South, southeast Texas and Louisiana. Fire ants love hot/humid climates. My brother had a second refrigerator in his garage for cold drinks and overflow from his inside-the-house fridge. The garage fridge quit working one winter day, although it was not very old. When my nephews moved this fridge, there was a large pile of dirt under it...what the heck? It was a fire ant mound. The ants had come up in a crack in the concrete and had found the perfect warm place for their colony, the coils under and behind the fridge. They eventually ate through the insulation of the electrical wiring and caused a short. When I swept the garage there were two large pails full of dirt and dead ants. The crack was packed with poison and was sealed over. A few days later a new mound appeared just outside the garage in the flowerbed. Fire ants are loathsome. Their bites raise pus-filled blisters, and burn just like fire. I don't mind those big black ants, though. They don't infest walls and seem quite friendly. Unfortunately the fire ants are running off the big black ones.

My best refrigerator story is one winter when I was home because of a city-wide-shut-down blizzard--and we don't have many of those. In sheer boredom, I decided to defrost the fridge and simply set the food out on the porch, where it was colder than the fridge's freezer compartment, during the defrosting process.

Here's my theory....

If we all stand perfectly still for a while the vermin will take over the world !!

We were walking back to our hotel in midtown Manhattan one evening around 1 am and it shocked/astounded/disgusted me that the rats come out to play when the sun goes down.
They were like alley cats !

I am certain that the carpenter ants, which have shared the wooded acreage with us since our home encroached upon their world some 40 years ago, have the organization and intelligence , ablity and desire to get rid of us given half a chance !!

Frieda, you are right about fridges in England not being needed as they are in the hotter climes. My US cousin described mine as no more than a filing cabinet.
We spent a few days one summer with 'relatives-by-marriage' and the wife was pushing the boat out and roasting a turkey (unusual over here as they are nearly always served just at Christmas). After the meal the carcass was left on a side table, just loosely covered in a piece of foil . . . and there it sat for another couple of days, certainly 'til we had gone home.
This same person, when I asked for a bath towel, or any towel come to that, told me there were plenty in the bathroom and when I looked I found a heap of them, rather smelly and damp, on the floor. Was I expected to choose the driest and least wiffy?
On another visit (the only one!) to future M-in-L, at the end of the stay I asked should I strip the bed etc and was told "You don't think every guest gets clean sheets do you? Just leave them."
The same 'clean sheets' issue came up on one of the BBC flagship programmes Woman's Hour. The presenter casually remarked that surely no-one changed the sheets between guests, especially if they had stayed only one night. Apparently the 'feedback' was overwhelming . . . and all strongly in favour of fresh linen.
To me it's rather like being expected to share ones toothbrush with a third party. Yuk!

Carolyn....Hurray for winters in the dear old northeast !

Whenever I make a big pot of soup I always put it out on my deck to chill down. It usually stays overnight .
My refrigerator is at 37 and it's considerably colder on the deck !

Okay....I MUST comment about the bed linen and towel situation.
Ummm.........nope.
I NEED to have clean towels ( we do use it on all the bits and don't need to be caressing ourselves with a towel after someone else has dried THEIR bits !!!!).
I guess I'd have to pack my own.......or search the house for something clean and dry to use in lieu of a designated towel ( Tablecloth? stack of kitchen towels? MIL's nighties??)

The linens?
I would be sleeping ON TOP of that bed if it still on used linens on it.
Again.....see above reference to bits.

Next visit be certain I'd pack my own towels and sheets .

Ach! Vee, I don't understand the towels-on-the-floor compulsion of some folk. Several months ago I had guests that I thought would be more comfortable in my house's 'master suite' so I turned it over to them, with clean bed linen and the bathroom well-supplied with clean towels of every dimension -- bath, super-size bath, face, and hand towels and a stack of washcloths. I have twelve towel bars, rings, and a double-pedestal rack plus the sliding glass door of the shower over which wet or damp towels can be placed.

These guests were there two-and-a-half days and two nights. The morning after their first overnight, I had to retrieve something from my bathroom and saw that nearly all of the towels were off the holders and laying all over the counters and carpeted floor, some very wet. I picked up the mess (to schlepp off to the laundry room), and I replaced the bath linen. Well, you guessed it: the next day after they left the bathroom was in the same mess. My opinion: SLOBS. I don't want these people as my guests ever again, and if they ever are, they certainly won't be sleeping in my suite. Naturally I stripped the bed which I would've done anyway, but I even replaced the blanket and the counterpane because the thought of them being in my bed gave me the creeps.

I always put out fresh towels for our use every day as my husband said that he didn't want to be drying his face on the same towel that he dried his backside on yesterday! When someone commented on this extra work I pointed out that all I had to do was pop them into the machine and hang them out. I didn't have to iron them! They dried quite quickly in the Australian sun and had a lovely fresh feel to them.
I think that the ability to dry clothes quickly was the difference between laundry habits in the UK and Australia with regard to changing sheets so often. Also we didn't sweat so much there but my constant washing of his shirts and undies caused some comment in the communal laundry!

Love this thread!

I did post something about customers licking their fingers to get money out to pay, and how awful that is, also when men get coins out from their fob pockets and it's warm - not their fault but a bit icky. Seems I hit the first button and not the second and it disappeared.

With regard to food, if I have cooked a casserole in the oven with a lid on, I am quite happy to leave it in the oven to cool as there shouldn't be any germs left in a sealed container (my theory anyway).
I leave things to cool before putting them in the fridge and unlike many of my acquaintances never refrigerate tomato sauce (ketchup) or jam (jelly). However, on my mother's advice I do keep walnuts in the fridge, as she (who had her own walnut tree) said the oily nuts would sometimes go off.

I was very surprised when we went to live in Wales in 1985 to find the kitchen only had what we would call a bar fridge, with the tiniest freezer only capable of making ice blocks for drinks.

With regard to linens, I hate the thought of sleeping on sheets someone else has used, but we use our own towels for a week. I might have wiped my backside on it, but I washed said backside well first :)

Kath, my first mother-in-law (who lived in West Texas) always left casseroles, roasts, and leftover barbecue brisket in her oven. In the case of the brisket, it might've stayed there for days. Her advice: The oven has to be the most sterile place in the house. Whether that's true or not, no one ever seemed to suffer ill-effects from eating her oven-stored food. However, it always seemed to me that West Texas cooks could do things that people in other parts of the world could not get away with. She kept open
(I mean gaping open) bags of potato and corn chips in a kitchen drawer. They never lost their crispness and didn't taste stale. Low humidity is wonderful, except for mucous membranes and dry skin.

I also refrigerate or freeze nuts. You don't even have to thaw them because they're delicious frozen (macadamias and pecans, yum!). I keep a lot of things in my freezer or refrigerator that might seem bizarre to some people. I freeze bags of cornmeal, masa harina (flour used in making tortillas), shortening, bacon dripping, and several kinds of dried herbs and seasonings. If I'm going to be away from home for several weeks, I might put dried pasta in the freezer. The reason I do this is to inhibit any infestation of those detestable pantry moths. I hate opening a package of pasta to find the webby and white-spot evidence of those nuisances on my macaroni or spaghetti. The little devils adore red chiles, especially the flakes, and I'm pretty sure that's how I imported them into my house. I've had all sorts of eradication 'experts' tell me that pantry moths are hard to get rid of because you unknowingly re-import them so often, usually from your supermarket in things such as cornmeal.

I was going to do a rant on 'group-think' or group mentality, but I'll spare you all. :-) But I'm really appalled at what normally nice, sane people can do when they are in a crowd... or as Charles Mackay titled his study: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. And I'm not letting myself off the hook. I've done things with groups that are just idiotic or insane, maybe.

Here's something else..........

Heavy, cloying scents or fragrances in which some women ( and men ) marinate themselves.

There was a woman at work who used the ladies room in the morning and whenever I would happen to go in after she'd been there I would reek of her perfume the rest of the day !

I am not a fragrance-wearer.
I think there are too many smells/scents out there and no one needs one more added to the mix.

There is a woman in our church choir ( a tight space) who at some point always feels the need to moisten her lips and liberally applies a STRAWBERRY GLOSS.
The smell of this artificial, heavy smell is stomach-turning.
Is she a five year old !?!??
What woman in her 60's uses MissKitty lip gloss.

Restaurants are another close space that is ripe for this kind of assault to the senses. Inevitably as I'm enjoying a lovely meal someone will take a table nearby and a cloud of their stenchy perfume will settle over our meals.
How can anyone enjoy the taste of food when the reek of
someone's cologne or aftershave is dominating the space?
It is so very offensive .

Dear MIL used to douse herself with the most horrible "fragrances" .
One year when we ended up schlepping her along with us to the Adirondacks for the family vacation I warned her not to bring her perfume because it would attract bears !!
Hey....don't judge me .
Desperate times call for desperate measures !

I know what you mean, Yvonne, although I don't think my olfactory sense is as sensitive as yours.

A few years ago my DH was working out of Naples, Italy when they were having a garbage strike there. When I arrived at our apartment I thought I could never get used to the stench, but apparently I did. A couple of days later I was blithely driving my motor scooter, weaving around the garbage piles and barely noticing the smell. I was more offended by what the garbage did to the views.

A few weeks after that I went to Paris, the most 'scented' city in the world I think. Where I might normally have noticed and been assaulted by too much perfume after being long away from it (I'm not a scent-wearer either), I began to wonder if Parisians were not using as much 'fragrance'. Nope, I was joined by a friend who had just flown in from California and her main gripe about Paris was perfume, perfume, perfume everywhere. I told her to bear with it; she'd get used to it. She did too.

I actually sent a complaint into Walmart about the cashiers licking their fingers to open my bags. They called me to discuss this and now I see they have little containers of either a pink wax or a wet sponge to use. I did catch a youngster (with a ring in his nose) opening my bag with his licked finger. I ask him where his container was and he said, "oh, I don't need that". I said, "yes you do and please do not lick my bag". There are just too many germs in the world and I don't need any more.

Friedag,

I am going to suggest that all that olfactory garbage overload in Naples short-circuited your nose !!

Seriously......years ago our black lab got into a disagreement with a skunk during one of her middle of the night " I have to go out now or I'm not responsible for what happens" moments.

It was mid winter and freezing outside....what was a skunk even doing out then?!
I opened the door and she raced inside and immediately the entire house reeked of the strongest skunk stink.
Horrible.
We still laugh retelling the story about DH taking the dog into the shower with a gallon of tomato juice and "heaving Jonah" in there with the dog !!

From that day on I have never really been able to smell skunk odor as strongly. And DH can still gag just thinking about his own experience with it ! ( That was 20 years ago )

One of my little brothers and a cousin chased a skunk down once. My cousin still remembers that my mother had company and wouldn't let them in the house when they returned.

Regarding handling food........and history......

I am reading Bill Bryson's AT HOME and am absolutely astounded and fascinated by his accounts of how food handling and preparation has evolved.

We've come a long way ......and just recently !

Love your skunk memories, Yvonne and Carolyn. But I guess they're funny because they are in the past and probably weren't funny at the time. Whew!

I think I'm lucky, in a way, that my sense of smell may not be as good as some people's. My DH would change our boys' diapers only when they were wet, but if he got a whiff of poop, he left the dirty work to me. He would gag and be histrionic and I thought he was silly.

I could change diaper after poopy diaper without even thinking about it, with the smell hardly bothering me. But I was babysitting my niece one time when she loaded her diaper, and I nearly puked when I tried to clean her up. I was ashamed of my reaction. Somebody told me later that mothers become inured to their own kids' stink, but another kid's unfamiliar stinkiness can be revolting. I remembered that when decades later I was taking care of my granddaughter and the first messes of hers I had to deal with nearly knocked me over. But after about the third stinker, I guess her poop became familiar and no longer affected me.

Yvonne, Bryson's book sounds right up my alley. Food history -- any part of it -- is long-time favorite reading of mine. What's something he related that especially fascinates you?

Friedag,
I am fascinated by every bit I've read so far.....his description of the amounts and kinds of foods that were regularly served during Victorian times is staggering. What also surprised me was the amounts of actually healthy foods that people consumed....in some cases double what we do today.
Mrs. Beeton's book on household management was so rife with inaccurate and biased facts that during the Victorian times they gave up salt and seasonings all together and concentrated on serving foods at the highest temperatures possible. Sir Arthur Middleton of Newcastle became so obsessed that he would plunge a thermometer into every dish and send it back to his kitchen if it was not hot enough.

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review.

AT HOME by Bill Bryson (A Short History of Everything) takes readers on a tour of his house, a rural English parsonage, and finds it crammed with 10,000 years of fascinating historical bric-a-brac. Each room becomes a starting point for a free-ranging discussion of rarely noticed but foundational aspects of social life. A visit to the kitchen prompts disquisitions on food adulteration and gluttony; a peek into the bedroom reveals nutty sex nostrums and the horrors of premodern surgery; in the study we find rats and locusts; a stop in the scullery illuminates the put-upon lives of servants. Bryson follows his inquisitiveness wherever it goes, from Darwinian evolution to the invention of the lawnmower, while savoring eccentric characters and untoward events (like Queen Elizabeth I's pilfering of a subject's silverware). There are many guilty pleasures, from Bryson's droll prose--"What really turned the Victorians to bathing, however, was the realization that it could be gloriously punishing"--to the many tantalizing glimpses behind closed doors at aristocratic English country houses. In demonstrating how everything we take for granted, from comfortable furniture to smoke-free air, went from unimaginable luxury to humdrum routine, Bryson shows us how odd and improbable our own lives really are.

Queen Elizabeth I's pilfering of a subject's silverware...!!
nutty sex nostrums...

I'm hooked, Yvonne. Thank you for the review and the tantalizing tidbits. I look forward to reading the whole of it.

I was thinking just recently of how much food and eating and tastes have changed in just the past fifty years. My great-grandmother got cranky about some broccoli she was served: "This is barely cooked. I'm not eating it." It was crisp-tender; but like many folk of her generation, she wanted everything cooked very soft -- to a mush, in other words -- which I thought was off putting or downright disgusting.

My grandfather was one of those men who complained about cooked food that didn't scorch the roof of the mouth. I think the only way to have satisfied him was to set his chair in front of the stove so he could eat right off the hob.

I'm leaving shortly to join a tour that I got talked into. This is not my idea of splendid fun. I am not a good tourist because I prefer going off to do my own thing and I chafe at itineraries. These people are supposed to be mature (mostly 50s, 60s and some 70s), but that doesn't indicate their mental age, especially in a group, where people tend, in my experience, to get a bit wacky in the group-think sort of way. Wish me luck!

Carpe diem !!

Enjoy :0)

Frieda, I should think it unlikely that Queen Elizabeth herself pinched the silver. It is probably that her retinue (several hundred strong) had a few light-fingered members. Certainly many nobles were seriously out-of-pocket if not bankrupt after a Royal Progress, but they continued to show off and try and outdo each other to give her a good time.
Poor old Mrs Beaton; she is always given grief for recipes starting "Take 10 eggs", which she apparently never wrote. Her famous 'Household Management' came out in the 1850's and was the first book of its kind 'though many later editions added much more information. She died of complications following childbirth while only in her late 20's, leaving a small son and a baby and was much better known after her death than during her short life.

Yoyo, I'm worried about all this venting and hope you are wearing a face mask while reading all these interesting facts and feelings expressed here. Can't be too careful with all those germs, skunk effluvia, baby smells etc floating around!

I'm just thankful I don't live in those times.
There were no boundaries between "icky" and "non icky" things !

According to Bryson , he writes that the Lord of the manor witnessed Elizabeth slipping the silver into her bag.

The entire book is such an interesting read.

Elizabeth wasn't the only Royal with taking ways! I recall reading that people would hide favourite bibelots when Queen Mary, who was the wife of George the Fifth, came visiting. She didn't pinch things she fancied but admired them in a meaningful way!

Maybe the queens were just losing it. My dearest aunt took my silver cake server home with her from a dinner at my house. I saw that she had it with her things, said to her that that one was mine, and put it back with my cake. But she took it anyway. I did get it back from her later by stopping at her house and asking if it had gotten in with her stuff. We didn't realize until some time later that she was beginning to have trouble.

Frieda, I can't wait for a trip report on your tour.

To really be fair, Elizabeth not only took from her host's but she and all the Royals regularly left gifts which were discovered after they had departed.
The story goes that the staff would regularly find that their guests had defecated in corners and closets all over the castle !!
( That would have been such lovely alliteration had I used the less delicate "crap" instead of defecate ....teehee!)

Yoyo, hence the origin of the voice production exercise..."He crept into the castle and crapped in the crypt"?
Our drama teacher was a bit...well.....different!

I think you'll find "take ten eggs" is from Hannah Glasse, who predates Mrs Beeton by about a century, veer.

And the health folks have decided that unrefrigerated mayo isn't the hazard it was once thought to be: the vinegar content in the mayo prevents spoilage. Other items mixed in with the mayo may not be so robust though- especially in potato salad if there are hard boiled eggs, for instance.

Not changing the sheets between guests and leaving damp towels anywhere than on a towel rods is just ick.

Australian flies don't hatch quicker than others: there is a fly species called a blowfly which gives birth to live maggots. DH (the biology graduate) didn't believe me until I demonstrated with one- when you kill them they eject all the maggots in an attempt to keep the line going I guess.

I am very sensitive to perfume as it triggers terrible headaches in me; I can tell even if the person put perfume on hours before by the pain in my head. Lots of perfume makes me want to be sick (my mother never understood this). Once when I was working a coffee machine I had a customer on the other side of the counter who was wearing so much perfume I could smell it over the coffee I was making right in front of me. :-P Another time DH and I were walking down the street and passed an over-marinated young woman whose scent we could still smell about ten metres down the road :-/ What I also can't stand is the smell of smokers: clearly they don't realise how badly they stink to others.

I'm working in a roadhouse/truckstop cafe and the number of customers who come in to buy food, who have filthy, verging on black hands, is stomach churning. I feel like suggesting they might want to go wash up first.

Even though I used to smoke myself, I cannot stand the smell of smoke on people. Worst of all, for me, is cigar smoke! As for perfume, I try not to overindulge, but it does lift my spirits when I am feeling down.

I made my bed last night using sheets that had been in my wooden linen chest all last season but I had to remake it after a short while. Even though I had put the sheets on the outside lines to air, they smelled musty! I just couldn't settle down to sleep with that sour smell in my nostrils! We have had a very rainy Winter so that must have caused the problem.

My local supermarket puts food that is past its sell date in an open fridge they call the "environment box" (it sounds better in Swedish). This box is my best source for expensive French cheeses at half price or less. The sell dates are ridiculously short and I often have to let the cheeses mature in my fridge at home. A good camembert should not taste as bland as a cream cheese!

I found a Camembert at a supermarket which was just right for eating, but because it had gone one day past its "best before" date I had to insist very strongly that I wanted _that_ cheese and would be very upset with the assistant if she took it away and disappeared it.

We've come a long way !

In continuing to enjoy AT HOME by Bryson, he notes that during the 19th century dining was burdened with protocol and rules for behavior.

John Jacob Astor , who was not know for his civility, actually leaned over during a dinner party and blew his nose on the gown of the lady next to him ! !
The accepted book of dining etiquette of the day stated that you were allowed to wipe your lips on the tablecloth but were not allowed to blow you nose on it.

If you wanted to sip your wine, you had to find someone
at the table who would drink with you, often sending a servant to the far end of the table to invite a person to imbibe with you. Then you were expected to gaze at that person, raise your glass, wait for them to look at you and lift their glass....then bowing to them, you took your sip.

Frequently there were nine wine glasses set at each place just for the first course!

I'm glad we have come a long way because back then, the way the class system worked, I would have been a scullery maid and would have had to wash snotty tablecloths and a zillion wine glasses. ;)