If a pregnant woman ate it, would the baby be born with a barcode on it’s forehead?
Wouldn’t that be cool!
Her use of “don’t be obtuse” was a judgement against you, not the directions, so their simplicity doesn’t really figure into her use of the word. Apparently you were supposed to know exactly what was offensive about the directions. I’ve known other women who expect everyone to be mind-readers and it sounds as though you’ve encounted one.
I personally am offended by poorly written directions. Such as on my package of Ghirardelli shortbread cookies. Step 2 tells you “Scoop dough by rounded tablespoons and shape into 1 inch balls.” It’s not until the last step, the one that tells you to cool them on a wire rack, that they reveal that this recipe “makes 24 cookies.” How many balls ought to have been included in step 2. If you make the wrong number of balls of dough, you won’t have the right number of chocolate drops to place on them at the end. I may read the entire set of directions before cooking because I’m that anal rententive, but how many people do?
I bought a butternut squash recently. It came with directions on its sticker. I remarked to my husband how helpful I thought that was. I’d never cooked butternut squash before. Of course I had already dug out the cookbook for instructions, but if I didn’t have my “Joy of Cooking” around I wouldn’t have really known what to do with it. (but then there’s the wonderful internet!)
Stickers - saving time and electricity for PWSES (people who seldom eat squash) everywhere!
I didn’t care for the squash.
Personally, I love directions on food products because I can’t cook. I can’t see why someone would be offended or made about them.
I just made a very good leek and swiss chard tart. A medium leek is not real big, but is bigger than a green onion. And I always use the white and pale green parts of a leek.
I have seen a size chart somewhere, for all kinds of veggies etc, but I haven’t been able to find it. It was online or in a book. I’ll look some more.
I agree, though, how large is large? Sometimes they’ll also state cups or ounces. That helps.
mangeorge
Squash. Yum. Acorn squash with cornbread stuffing! Butternut squash soup! Spaghetti squash! I love squash. I also love saying the word squash. I would buy squash every time I went grocery shopping, but my wife would eventually use that squash to bludgeon me to death.
I don’t resent the directions, but I do usually pass them by in favor of more interesting ideas, which I usually get online or from our cookbook library. I only resent it when they use Gorilla Glue to affix the label to the food. Some of those labels are damned difficult to remove.
The thing is, unless you’re baking, it usually doesn’t matter. A little more or less leek isn’t going to make or break a recipe.
“White parts only” means only the white part. “White and light green” or “light parts” mean the white and light green parts. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a recipe call for the whole leek including the coarse fibrous top dark green bits.
But here’s a leek tip that should be on a sticker: they need to be washed very well. Not just on the outside, but between the layers. The easiest way to do this is to clean the outside, and then cut off the root end and then split the leek lengthwise. The layers will then be easy to fan out like a hand of cards and you can rinse out all the sand and grit that got stuck in there as the plant grew.
Yes, but, stopping cutting the leeks where I did, I had 1 cup of leeks–to 4 cups squash, and an awful lot of stuff which might have been perfectly edible that I threw away. Had I kept cutting further into the light green part, I might have had 2 or 3 cups leeks to 4 cups squash. Since I don’t frequently cook with leeks, I was a little concerned about whether my end product was going to end up tasting more like leeks than like squash. Mostly, though, that’s not so much a labeling issue as a recipe issue. I like it better when the recipe gives me more than one way to estimate the amount of raw veggie I need to make the recipe according to directions like “one medium onion, about one cup, chopped”. Then I get to decide whether my onion is close enough to the right size to toss the whole thing in, or whether I should stop chopping at the half-way point and save some onion for the next recipe. Not much point in saving leeks–who knows when I’ll cook with leeks next.
I am aware that they need to be washed very well.
Or you can wash cut up leeks in a bowl of water. Two or three cycles and the clean water will tell you you’re done. Then put them in a salad spinner. Sometimes you want to keep the rings intact.
Leeks, already chopped, do freeze well and are very handy.
Moved from IMHO to CS.