Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Scrabble

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On the 4th, my bro called to see if I had a copy of the Chex-cereal snack mix my aunt used to make, back in the mid-1960s.

Why, yes.  Yes, I do.




At some point, when I was in jr. high, I decided it would be a good idea to type some recipes on index cards. The reason I decided to type them, rather than writing them by hand, is lost in the dust of history.  This card predates my first typing class.   Hunting and pecking, and throwing out cards with too many mistakes, must have taken me dozens of times longer, per recipe, than writing them by hand would have taken.

I still have several of these hand-typed cards, for important things like pumpkin pie, and the marshmallow-cream fudge we make every New Year's Eve.  The recipes I've made many times tend to have hand-written notes, with my revisions of the original recipes.

I'm not sure I've ever made the one above.  I don't remember making it, and the card is pristine.  Just as it was typed.  No notes, no crumbs, no drops of oil.....

My brother was able to reach our sister (who is the one of us who most often makes Scrabble), later that evening.  She has this same recipe, but with annotations from our mother, who suggested baking it at 325 for one hour, turning every 15 minutes.  My brother and I agree that the nuts, already toasted, probably don't need to be in the oven for an hour -- let alone two! (For the last 5 minutes, maybe?)  He and I also agree that less is better, when it comes to salt.  He thought he might put in a tablespoon of garlic powder, rather than garlic salt.  I'll be interested to hear how it comes out.  I would skimp on the oil, if I were making it.

Isn't it funny that there is no information as to the size of the boxes?  Perhaps there only was one size, at least in suburban groceries?  (I bet there were smaller boxes in urban ones.)  Also funny that there is no more description of "seasoned salt"  -- after all, "garlic salt" is "seasoned salt"........  And -- "salad oil"?  As contrasted with what -- motor oil?


I remember sitting on my bed with our old portable typewriter, working on these cards.  Looking at this one reminds me of things I hadn't thought about in a long time.

Things like "A human-powered typewriter leaves evidence that some keys are struck harder than others."

Things like "A destructive backspace is one of the true boons of modern technology."  Anyone who has ever had to erase their typewritten mistakes (yes, *with an eraser*) knows what I mean.

When I think how much time we had to spend, in olden times, producing the final version of our document, it seems incredibly ... primitive.

SO much time, in the hours before a paper was handed in, spent producing the document.

Not on revising the writing.  Not on tightening up, not on rearranging order, not on fact-checking.  NOT on making the writing better.

On sitting there, mindlessly typing the final copy of the paper.

When I think how much better my writing could have been, if I had been able to spend those hours revising the REAL work, rather than producing a pretty copy........

Ah well.

I am extremely grateful for all of the improvements that make the present version of this process VASTLY better than it used to be!  !!!

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2 comments:

Jeanie said...

I really love this. I love that you typed them, that you have favorites. I think every family has favorites. I always called it Chex Mix but I like Scrabble better -- although all I use are the wheat checks and nothing else unless I splurge on pretzels or nuts!

I need orange said...

Thanks! :-)

I am still amused at the "box of this" and "box of that" with no mention of the size of the box! I think about the tiny boxes one finds in big-city downtown groceries, and then the giant ones on the bottom shelf at Meijers.... You'd get a really different end product if your boxes were the teeny size rather than the giant one!

I don't eat shredded wheat otherwise, but I like it in Scrabble. It's one of my favorites.

My sister puts in random stuff -- sometimes she finds pretzels in the shape of Christmas trees, and one year there were cheese crackers with letters on them (like alphabits, only they were crackers, each with a letter stamped on it). Croutons. :-) She puts in anything that is about the right size and right consistency.