adrian_turtle: (Default)
adrian_turtle ([personal profile] adrian_turtle) wrote2023-09-11 03:08 pm

generational shift

Last year, I bought something called a "soup sock," that isn't as silly as it sounds. It's a cheesecloth bag, big enough to hold an entire chicken. If you want to make chicken soup and strain it through cheesecloth for a clear broth, you don't need to pour the pot of soup through a strainer. You can just put the chicken in the cheesecloth bag before cooking it.

They include a recipe in the package, because of course they do. I've kept the recipe card because it IS silly, especially for something called "Mama's Old Fashioned Chicken Soup." It contains a whole chicken, 2 onions, and 2 tablespoons of fresh cracked pepper. So far, so good. It also contains 3 cups of diced celery, and 2 packets of sugar substitute.

It shouldn't feel so very peculiar that "Mama's Old-Fashioned" could refer to a Boomer or Gen-X woman who relies on artificial sweeteners (because she doesn't have a teaspoon of sugar in the house? Because she can't imagine using a half a cup less of celery?) But on the other paw, I know my grandmothers used saccharine tablets everywhere it was appropriate and some places it wasn't, and my mother preferred aspartame. I have cousins-in-law who are already mothers of college students, and they cooked with sucralose for decades, though generally the kind that can replace sugar cup-for-cup.
kareina: (Default)

[personal profile] kareina 2023-09-12 04:34 am (UTC)(link)
Perhaps that bag could be useful for applesauce or jam with apple in it, just toss in the apple chunks without peeling and after cooking press everything but the peels out of the bag?

I would so not try their "old fashioned" soup--they lost me on both the celery and the artificial sweetener, neither of which I use in my cooking. But then I don't think sugar belongs in a soup, either.
kareina: (Default)

[personal profile] kareina 2023-09-15 05:44 pm (UTC)(link)
Having never learned to like vinegar (or wine for that matter), in any form, I never learned the appeal of sweet and sour soups. But I understand how your parents could both feel strongly enough about the one right way to do a certain soup that it was easier to just never make it.