Remember when…? – Sugar or not sugar

Sometimes, we have fairly vivid memories of events when we were very young and this is one of them.

As a preschooler (i told you i was very young) one of my favorite “snack” was a slice of bread, with butter and sugar on it. Even before i could clearly speak, i would ask for “croute-sucre-beurre” (which would translate to “crust-sugar-butter”).

Although, i can guess that my mom would usually be the one making it for me, on occasion, i would venture to do it myself.

A real monkey

I still remember that the breadbox was on the counter and had a door that opened forward. Once open, it was easy to get the bread but, for a 3 or 4 year old who had climbed on the counter, that only left a couple of inches on the edge of the counter once the door was open. But i never fell, which surprised my mom.

In the pantry

If we used butter (we certainly didn’t have margarine back then), it must have been left in the pantry so it would not be too hard. But it surely was too high for me, so pulling a chair, i was able to get my last two ingredients for my “croute-sucre-beurre” treat.

Like a big girl

So that one morning, i decided to do it all myself: i got the bread from the breadbox, i got the butter from the pantry and i needed the sugar to top it off, of course. However, since i didn’t know how to read, and my mom had various containers that were similar, i was using my sense of observation to find the sugar. I grabbed the container, looked through the little holes on top and saw it was white. Yup, that is sugar. With all the ingredients in hand, i proceeded to complete my unique recipe.

Time for breakfast

Since it was early (my mom was still in bed), i guess that was going to be my breakfast. The first bite sent me shivers all through my body. YUCK!!! that is NOT sugar… that is SALT!!! I had looked through the holes of the salt shaker and confused the white sugar with the white salt!

I’m not going to tell

Feeling quite embarrassed, i didn’t want to wake up my mom to tell her, and for some odd reason, i didn’t want to throw away food, so i left the salty bread on the counter. When she did get up, she noticed that bread with one bite missing and wondered why i didn’t finish it. I had no choice but to tell her. But she had to taste it to believe me!

That taught me not to rely on the color to distinguish salt and sugar!

How about you? Did you ever make a funny kitchen mistake? Don’t let me be the only one in the world to have done something odd. Share your story too.

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6 thoughts on “Remember when…? – Sugar or not sugar”

  1. Shortly after we were married mu husband decided to try his hand at making bread, completely from scratch using live yeast. Just in case, he thought he would only make half the recipe, that way he would still have some yeast left to make another batch. Things went really well until he put the dough in a bowl to rise – he then realised he had forgotten about half measures and put the full amount of water in the mix! Well the dough rose, and rose, and started to come out of the bowl. We didn’t want to throw it away as we had visions of the dough coming up over the dustbin and taking over the yard – Revenge Of The Blob! So we cooked it: the outside needed a hammer to break open, the inside was still stodgy and wet. Big failure. Fortunately we had the rest of the yeast which Russell used to make a second batch of bread – this was perfect and tasted yummy!

  2. I love lemon meringue pie. I had a couple of misadventures in trying to make it early in my marriage and the sad part is that both of them happened while using a box!

    On the ingredient list it says to mix the package with a small amount of water (1/2 cup) and start cooking it. I couldn’t figure out why it was so thick. I reread the directions, but I ‘knew’ I’d done everything right, so I poured the thick gel into the pie crust. It was inedible! Turns out that further down the directions tell you to add 2 more cups of water. I missed reading this direction twice! My husband had a good sense of humour about my kitchen prowess and we still laugh about it today!

    The next time I made lemon meringue pie I followed the directions much more closely. I honestly have no idea what happened, but the lemon filling just wouldn’t set. I know I didn’t add the water twice. Of course this happened when we had company for dinner and I was stuck serving lemon meringue pie soup/pudding. Embarrassing!

    Thanks for the walk down memory lane!

  3. Ohhhh Carole… this is just a hoot!!!! LOVED reading this!! I’m going to have to think on this one… I’m sure I’ve got a story in there somewhere!!

  4. I’ve done plenty of odd things in the kitchen…it’s hard to choose just one. I was sent off to San Jose to pursue my Master’s degree (well, that didn’t happen) but my skill sets didn’t include much in the way of practical experience (my mother didn’t allow anyone else in her kitchen). One morning I decided to make French toast, set it on fire, put out the fire but lost my mind and set the very hot pan on the vinyl seat of a chair/step stool. As you can imagine, the vinyl melted and the pan was, well, pretty destroyed. Instead of a nice breakfast, I ended up having to figure out how to replace the vinyl (my mother must have had insight because she left me a roll of the vinyl she had used to cover the stool to begin with). I still have the stool, by the way, complete with the repair job I did decades ago. My other adventure (not the only one) had to do with one of those cake mixes popular at the time that only required adding vinegar and water. I didn’t read the instructions quite accurately so instead of 1 cup water and 1 tablespoon of vinegar, I added the reverse. Having that much vinegar in the mix resulted in overflow….lots of overflow. Instead of having dessert, I spent a considerable amount of time cleaning the oven. Now, doesn’t everyone else feel better about their cooking skills?

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