Conference thebay::joyoflex

The phrase I've always heard was "Don't try to teach Grandma to *set* eggs".

Presumably, setting eggs was/is a field of grandmotherly expertise, although 
I'm not sure what it means.  Does it have to do with incubating eggs (either 
by placing them in an incubator or under a hen?)

Anyhow, setting eggs sounds much more genteel than sucking eggs.

Larry

   No, the phrase is "suck", as in "Go teach your grandmother to suck eggs."
   There's also the old phrase "He looks as guilty as an egg-suck dog."
   
   I believe that it references the practice of poking holes in both ends of
   an eggshell and sucking out the contents.  Something chicken-stealing,
   poor, hungry folks (or dogs) might be willing to try.  

   And if someone tells you to teach your grandma how to do it, it implies
   that you *know how* (meaning you're less than the "salt of the earth"),
   and that you're "shiftless" enough to not be able to get your grandma
   food any other way.
   
   Both of the phrases come out of the depression-era South, I believe.

   -- Sam

In these days of good dental care, it's rare to have old people who must 
suck eggs any more.  It was an expression that referred to the fact 
toothless people preferred to eat eggs -- usually softboiled -- and of 
course, you couldn't just bite in to them, you had to suck them off the 
spoon.  I imagine women who lived long enough to be grandmothers back 
then had a fair amount of experience.

Chicken farmers still refer to "egg sucking dogs" when they chase 
off/shoot dogs who eat the eggs. 
					>>>==>PStJTT

    "Grandma" Helen Stone uses the expression in "THE ROLLING
    STONES" . (Robert Heinlein - mid 50's ? )

  Re: .4

  Actually, Heinlein evidently had some trouble with the expression, 
  too.  In at least one place he changed it to:

      Don't teach your grandmother how to steal sheep.

  This has a nicer ring to it, don't you think?

  JP

>   I believe that it references the practice of poking holes in both ends of
>   an eggshell and sucking out the contents.
    Isn't this the method used to preserve the eggshell whole (for painting
    and decorating and such)?

    "Don't teach your grandmother how to steal sheep" is a Westernism.
    I couldn't begin to explain to an Easterner the depth of knavery
    conveyed by that simple phrase. See, sheep aren't worth stealing
    in the first place, so if you know how to steal sheep, it means
    you've got so little property, and integrity, and other human virtues,
    that you're stealing what no decent person would willingly even
    own. 
    
    There are a number of related expressions, such as, "A man (woman)
    who would do that (whatever you don't like) would steal sheep."
    
    Which reminds me of the supposedly true story of the hippie wedding
    in Montana in 1972. Two kids from Deer Lodge decided to get married
    in the true 'love generation' spirit -- the ceremony was held beside
    a lake at a local park, the bride wore a white muslin dress and
    carried only a few local flowers, the groom had long hair and a
    headband hand-embroidered by the bride. After they exchanged vows
    promising equality and honor to each other, the guests were treated
    (using the word loosely) to a reception of herbal teas and vegetarian
    dishes.
    
    The bride's elderly aunt didn't think much of it. She plumped herself
    down on a picnic bench with a plate of hummus and whole-wheat pita
    bread. "Hmph," she said to her friend. "I don't know what this world is
    coming to. Something like this could never have happened when *we*
    were young!"
    
    "That's right," agreed her friend. "Imagine, a cattleman's son marrying
    a sheepman's daughter!"
    
    
   
    
    

    Re .4:
    
    The expression is far older.  Egg-sucking goes back to at least
    the Medieval period, and is, as was suggested earlier, a relatively
    unmessy way to consume the contents of an egg, if the eater doesn't
    mind raw eggs.  Presumably, "grandma" knew how to do this long before
    the listener was born, nor is it a terrible difficult technique;
    hence the expression.
    
    Re .6:
    
    That's known as "blowing out" an egg: instead of sucking out the
    contents, they can be blown through the hiole away from the person's
    mouth.  I suppose which method is used depends upon how hungry the
    person is at the time. ;-)  Because of other connotations, the verb
    isn't used that often these days.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
     

    RE -1: and blowing out an egg is nothing like blowing out a tire.
    

    And an egg with a small hole pierced in each end is less susceptible to
    being spilt than a spoon by someone with old and shaky hands. 

    In addition you can only blow the contents of an egg out by blowing
    in the hole at a specific end; the one with the air sac. It won't
    work if you blow through the other end. 
    
    I don't know about 'sucking eggs' though; Grandma never taught me.
    

Reminds me of a magic effect we used to love to do as kids.

The effect is that you present a milk bottle (remember them???) with
an egg inside, clearly too large to have gotten in there, but it's
in there just the same.  HOW DID HE DO IT ?

Answer:

Soak an egg (yes, soak, not suck) for a few days in a cup of vinegar.
Shell disolves and egg gets rubbery, kind of like a water balloon.

Now, throw a lit match into the milk bottle, and put egg on top.
As match burns (or is it after it goes out ?), low pressure sucks
egg into bottle.

If egg doesn't break as it hits bottom of bottle, you've got your
effect (or is that "affect" ??).  Now just fish the match out.

/Eric

    Re .12:
    
    To maske it work better, once the egg's establisged a seal, turn
    the bottle on its side.
    
    Also, beware some of the current crop of thin-shelled eggs.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
    
    P.S.:  Now how do we relate this to words?  How about the expression,
    "Funny as a rubber egg"? :-)

    > The effect is that you present a milk bottle (remember them???)
    
    Yes.  Three delivered on my doorstep each morning.

    When my now-teenaged daughter was about 4, she asked me,
    
    "Mama, doesn't it hurt the cow when the milk bottles come out of
    her udder?"
    
    (There, those are words!)
    
    --bonnie

    	And I thought that they bred the hen inside the bottle, and
    the problem was getting it out again after it had laid the egg!

    You wait until the hen dies and then you pick it out bone by bone. 
    
    --bonnie
    

    Hey!  That reminds me...  Have you ever seen a bottle of brandy with a
    whole peach in it?   What they do is stick a branch with a flower on it
    into the empty bottle and let the fruit *grow* inside.  When the fruit
    reaches maturity, the branch is plucked away and the bottle is filled. 

    John M. 

    Re .18:
    
    Makes it rough for the pollinating bees, I'll bet. :-)
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    But what kind of seeds do you plant if you want to grow a ship? 

    --bonnie

    
     Re. -1
        
     Please be specific.
     Exactly what kind of "ship" do you want to grow?
     :-)

     jc   

Mrs O'Toole: What's in the bottle ye have in the kitchen, Mrs. O'Taber?

Mrs O'Taber: Faith, 'tis prob'ly me hoosband Patrick.


					>>>==>PStJTT

    Re .21:
    
    You can use the seeds of consideration if you want to grow a
    friend_ship_.
    
    You can use the seeds of attraction if you want to grow a
    relation_ship_.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
    

    Thank you, all, this will no doubt help my garden and my liquor
    cabinet.
    
    However, I was thinking more of those little wooden clipper ships
    you see in the windows of tobacco shops and such.
    
    Maybe you have to grow the pine trees first, and then cut them down?
    
    --bonnie
    

    You know how when you lap a lollipop, it gets smaller?   Well, those
    vessels you've seen in bottles have been ship lapped.

    re.23,.24 put a calf in the bottle and grow bull_ship.
    Great fertilizer. :-)

    re: .25 --
    
    I thought maybe the ships just shrank from being in the salt water
    so much -- start out with a clipper, after 20 years you have a fishing
    boat, after 50 years you stick it in a bottle and sell it to the
    tourists.
    
    --bonnie
    

    Re .27:
    
    Actually, what's done is that you mold a _humungous bottle, march
    in some shipwrights.  Then you sprinkle the whole thing, inside
    and out with alom.  When the bottle is small enough, you put in
    miniaturized wood.  The shipwrights buld a miniatyure clipper or
    what-have-you, then they march out the neck of the bottle.
    
    Don't know what they do with 'em afterwards....
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

The flower only needs to be pollinated once.

So, as long as the bee be done before the bottle is put over the flower,
we're all set.

That's a cute idea about the peach !  It might be interesting to do
it with some sort of vegetable that doesn't rot, such as a gourd,
just to have a gourd-in-the-bottle on the living room coffee table
as a conversation piece.

/Eric

    Re .29:
    
    If you fill the bottle with a strong enough alcohol, any fruit or
    vegetable would last indefinitely.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
    
    To make this even relate vaguely to grammar, I suppose one choive
    of bottle contents might be a certain pome fruit.  Then, we could
    hand the bottle to the orchard man and say, "Pears this."

I had a dill pickle in an old soda bottle once.  The bottle was placed over an
immature pickle, rather than a flower.  When grown, it was pickled.  The vinegar
would preserve it nearly forever.  It was grown and pickled by the mother of
a friend of mine.

I read somewhere the Japanese grow cubical watermelons by placing them in boxes
when small.  The idea is so they would stack nicely in stores, after the boxes
were removed from them when grown. 

-Mike

    Isn't an excuse to make bad puns an adequate reason? 
    
    Besides, pearsing syntax is one of our main jobs!
    
    --bonnie
    

Your discussion back there reminds me off an old definition of BOAT:


BOAT   n.

	A hole in water, surrounded by wood, into which one pours money.



/Eric

    What is Cecil the Seasick Sea Monster's favorite meal?
    
    
    
    Fish and ships.

    That's Cecil the Seasick Sea *Serpent*!
    							Ann B.

    Where do you get seeds for plants that grow pickles - is that
    like the velcro and veals (cf Dave Barry I think)?
    
    Bonnie J>

Alright, it was a cucumber plant!  I think they have varieties of cucumbers
bred specifically for pickling, though.

-Mike

    Yes there are cucumbers bred just for making pickles but that takes
    all the fun out of it :-).
    

    Sandwiches have strange names - hero, reuben, submarine, hoagy.  I've
    invented another sandwich - the Idea.  Now you can relish it.

Re: .39

Something interesting is that three of the sandwiches mentioned are the 
same thing:
		hero 		(because it's large)
		submarine 	(because it's shaped like one)
		hoagy 		(from the name of a place that made them)

I've also heard the same sandwich reffered to as:

		Italian 	(which leads to...)
		grinder 	(for "organ grinder.")
		spuckie 	(who knows why?)

In fact, I think that particular sandwich must be the sandwich with the 
most names in the world.  Are there any more?  Does anyone know where 
"spuckie" came from? (Had anyone ever heard it before?  I've never heard 
it outside the northern suburbs of Boston.)
						>>>==>PStJTT

    Re: 39 
    
    "The Idea", a great name for a sandwich. I suppose next you'll
    claim that it's food for thought.       
    jc
    
    (mea culpa.... I couldn't resist!)

    I haven't heard 'spuckie' for years -- my dear departed grandfather,
    a gentleman of considerable temper, brought it home from Europe
    with him after living in Italy for a number of years after World
    War I. I believe he spelled it "spucci."  He used it in an
    unquestionably derogatory sense, when he was upset with my
    grandmother's cooking, as in "I can't eat this thing. You might
    as well serve me a spuckie."
    
    Hoagies didn't move into our part of Montana until the 50's or so, and
    then mostly thanks to the snack counters at Woolworth's.  There was,
    however, an older version called a Shepherd's sandwich that consisted
    of sliced roast meat (usually beef, venison, or horse), sliced onions,
    and perhaps other sliced vegetables in a split loaf of round bread (the
    kind the Basque shepherds make), usually wrapped in a cloth.  You don't
    eat it all at once, you just take out your handy-dandy knife (the kind
    Basque shepherds use to slice each other up) and cut out a wedge, then
    wrap the rest of it back into its cloth.  When the bread gets too
    dry, you soak it in your water first. 

    The common lunch in our part of the country was the pastie or pasty, a
    small meat pie.  The miners in Butte brought it with them from the
    Balkans (places like Serbia and Dalmatia and Croatia). If you're in the
    old part of town at lunch time, you'll still see the old men sitting on
    benches in front of the saloons, each with a mug of beer and a pasty
    wrapped in brown paper. 
    
    --bonnie

    Re .39:
    
    "Grinder," I'd been given to understand (and I'm always open to
    correction) didn't derive from "organ grinder" (although I'm sure
    that a case could be made for that origin if it was filled with
    chopped liver) but rather from the idea that such sandwiches were
    frequently used by college stuidents right before midterm and final
    exam times, when they were "grinding" -- that is, studying long
    into the night.
    
    I've gone to Greek estaurants where their (very tasty) "gyro"
    sandwishes are pronounced approximately "hero."  Is that the derivation
    for "hero"?  [As an ex aerospace type and pilot, "gyro" means something
    else to me, anmd I trip all over myself pronouncing it "hiero,"
    in Greek restaurants.]
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr

Well, when I was a kid, the "long" term for grinder was "guinnea 
grinder" and the explanation was that it was the sandwich carried by the 
Italian organ grinders. (We actually had a organ grinder in the 
neighborhood.  A hurdy-gurdy man to be more correct; he had a giant
push-cart with a handle coming out the side. Turning the handle produced
absurd music that sounded like a series of regular explosions in a band 
locker.  I can still hear it to this very day... it sounds like summer 
to me.)

In the Boston area at least, the Greek restaurants pronounce it "YE-roo" 
with a slight rolling of the "r."  I have wondered if it elided into 
"hero" too, but I don't know.  Gyro is usually served in syrian bread, 
so I tend to believe the people who say it is "hero" because of its 
size. (Large things have heroic proportions, after all.)

My neighborhood was very Italian with sprinklings of just about every 
other group that emigrated to the U.S. through Boston, so "spuckie" 
could indeed be the Americanization of "spucci."  Does anyone who knows 
Italian know if "spucci" is a word?

					>>>==>PStJTT

    Re .44:
    
    I don't kniow Italuan, but the -ucci ending has always been an "oochie"
    ending when I've encountered it, making the sandwich pronounced
    something on the order of "spoochie."  Of course, if "spuckie" came
    from an Americanization of the written form (just as I tend to
    pronounce "gyro" as "djeyerow" rather than either "kheero" or "yeerro"
    when I see it), then it seems like a legitimate evolution.        
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
    
    P.S.: "Idea" for a sandwich title would probably be corrupted quickly
    to "I.D." and then to something like "hidey."  That's word biz.
    
    

    Regarding the location of the Nauga-breeding industry (.37).  You've
    heard of Naugatuck CT, perhaps?

    "Spucci" is, indeed an Italian word.  It is a generic term used
    to decribe pudding-like foods.  The derivation of this word is,
    indeed, Latin.  The root is "spuntz"; interchangeably either a verb
    or noun describing small explosions of (organic) material, or the
    substance yielded from such an explosion.  Admittedly a rather
    distasteful term, it was used in rome to describe the bursting of
    large acne deposits.  When squozen, the pimple would surely "spuntz".
    The material that wound up on one's fingers, was called, simply,
    "spuntz", the noun.  In more loose usage, this word was used to
    describe other, even more distasteful, explosions.  The common factor
    in all the usages was the pudding-like appearance of the substance
    involved.  This probably explains the current day use of the Italian
    form of the word to describe pudding.

re: < Note 344.47 by MARRHQ::MALLONEE >
>     				In more loose usage, this word was used to
>    describe other, even more distasteful, explosions.  

   The mind boggles at the prospect.  Yuck. 
   
   :-)
   
   -- Sam

    Re: .47  Has this verb gained strength in its travels?  :-)
    

    Re .50:
    
    So let's "unrevolt" it.   Specifically, are there any equivalent
    phrases that spring to mind that are analogous to the title phrase?
    Such as "Don't try to teach Scrooge to be a miser"?
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    MLNOIS::HARBIG
                    What about:
                               You can't have your cake and eat it.
                               Taking coals to Newcastle.
                               A wink is as good as a nod to a blind
                               horse.
    
                               and numerous other energy consuming
                               futilities.
    
                                  Max

    OK, if you insist, I'll desist.  Seeyalaterbye.

    when surrounded by numerous members of the opposite sexgender:
        "There's more girls here than you can shake a stick at."

        "...  if that's your idea of a good time."

Having just read the discussion about the different names for a particular
type of sandwich, I recall another name for that type of sandwich. In the
Midwest it is sometimes called a poor boy sandwich. The reasoning I heard
for that name was that it was the only kind of meal a poor boy could afford
to buy.

			- - -   Karl

Does anyone remember the song, and who performed and wrote it, the one
in which someone states

	You know what a WISH SANDWICH is ?
	That's when you have two pieces of bread and you WISH you had
	some meat.

/Eric

    two groups which come to mind are Sha Na Na and The Blues
    Brothers...they also discuss a Cool-Water-Sandwich on a
    Sunday-go-to-meeting-bun, bow...bow...bow.
    
    Any one else have any clues - it came out maybe late 70's, early
    80's, but the song style sounds older than that.
    
    -Jody
    

   I believe the name of the song is "Rubber Biscuit".  It's "Elwood Blues"'s
   (aka Dan Akroyd) big song.
   
   It's on the Blues Brother's _Briefcase Full of Blues_ album, thought, as
   with all the songs on that album, they didn't write it themselves.  It's
   an older song.  I'll try to remember to look up the credits (and verify
   the name of the song) over the weekend.

   For those unfamiliar with it, that album is *fantastic*.  They use the
   same band as from the movie, "The Blues Brothers".  Great band, and it
   shows a side of both Belushi and Akroyd that you'd never believe.

   "A rubber biscuit is the kind of a biscuit that you thow against the wall
   and let it bounce back into you mouth.  If it don't bouce back, you go
   HUNGRY!  Bow, bow, bow..."
   
   Whaddya want for nothing, RUBBER BISCUIT?
   
   -- Sam

But back to the previous tangent... :-)

re: .55

   I've always understood a "Poor Boy" sandwich (usually heard pronounced,
   "poah boi sammich") to be something very specific.  Maybe something like
   a "sloppy joe"?  Not sure what's in it, but I had always thought it had
   specific, and cheap, ingredients.

   -- Sam

    re .59:
    
    Depends on where you are. In some places, yes, it's a "sloppy joe." In
    others, it's a sub, a.k.a. grinder, a.k.a. hoagie, etc.
    
    	Jon

Around here, a "sloppy Joe" is some type of roll covered with meat cooked in a 
spicy sauce. The sauce varies greatly and so does the variety of meat.

A grinder etcetera is generally a sandwich of almost any filling on a long 
(French or Italian) roll.

Being new to this file, I'd like to comment on the original subject of this 
note.  In "The Hobbit" by J.R.R. Tolkein, in the chapter called "Riddles in 
the Dark", Gollum remembers the time in his youth "...sitting under the 
riverbank teaching his grandmother to suck eggs..."
This is a British story and I doubt that it has any origins in American 
sub-culture.  However, just what the significance of the reference is, I don't 
know.

Dave

    
    In Biloxi (biLUXee) Mississippi, a Po'Boy was made on a hot dog
    roll with leftover whatevers from the fridge (there's a word to
    play with, eh?) and was wrapped with bacon. You broiled a Po'Boy
    and then smeared catsup or mustard all over its outside.
    
    Perry