There are certain things, like chocolate pudding and mashed potatoes, that I believe have only of right way to be made. What are you hard-line about? For what do you believe that there is only one right way to do it?

-- Kymm (hedgehog@hedgehog.net), September 18, 2000

Answers

For a great many Jewish people, there is only one way to make matza balls. However, this varies. I believe that the matza balls should be so light and fluffy that they float over the pot. My best friend swears that matza balls must have the density of a white dwarf star. When people ask why he and I don't get married: well, that is the answer. Forget the fact that he wants kids and I don't; it's the matza balls that keep us apart.

-- Dorothy Rothschild (dorothyr@spies.com), September 18, 2000.

Well, Kymm, you're just wrong, but I love you anyway. I believe mashed potatoes should be an utterly smooth, uniform-textured puree, but for pity's sake not thin - I want it thick enough to make a model of Devil's Tower on the dining room table. And lumps in pudding would probably put me off my pudding forever. Eww. To me that sounds like someone didn't mix the ingredients well enough.

-- Columbine (columbine@inu.org), September 18, 2000.

Of course mashed potatoes have lumps- otherwise they'd be whipped potatoes...

Thinking over the question, I'm realizing that almost everything has a single right way to do it. Didn't know I was such a rigid person.

-- Moira (profundum@yahoo.com), September 18, 2000.

It's true about the matzoh balls. Floaters v. Sinkers can destroy a marriage.

-- Sara Astruc (astruc@astruc.com), September 18, 2000.

Making the bed. It is the one chore that I actually ask my husband NOT to help with, as his attempts always end with me unmaking his try and redoing it myself. We're talking hospital corners, sheets and blankets tucked in along the sides, and pillow shams over the pillows, which are over the quilt. And the bed must be made every day, or I will not sllep in it. I have been found making my bed at 1 in the morning, only to then pull back the covers and crawl in.

-- Kathy S. (ksinniger@comdt.uscg.mil), September 18, 2000.

No, no, lumpy pudding is the best! If you like the skin, that's what it is, you see, lumps of skin. If you cook it incredibly slowly so that it builds up on the bottom, and then you scrape it up an stir it in, it ends up being extry-lumpy. Yum!

-- Kymm (kymmz@yahoo.com), September 19, 2000.

There is only one right way to eat pizza. You fold it. Eating pizza with a knife and fork is strictly forbidden and punishable by death. And it marks you as a tourist.

-- Bart Tangredi (Bart565@cs.com), September 19, 2000.

lumps/skin is the very reason that Instant Pudding a gift from the gods. Otherwise, I'd end up wasting so very much pudding!

Potatoes are a variable for me, but without gravy they're wasted anyway...

And what can only be done one way? Potato salad. My way. The way my mother taught me. Cubed, boiled potatoes, chunks of hard boiled egg, and a dressing that is mostly mayo but corrupted appropriately with mustard. Which is as strange as heck, as I don't like either, seperately or in any other capacity.

Jas

-- Jason Packer (jpacker@us.ibm.com), September 20, 2000.

I just realized: ice cream sodas. There is exactly one way to properly make an ice cream soda.

In a proper soda fountain glass, combine about half a tablespoon of vanilla ice cream and whatever flavour syrup you're using (I like chocolate best, me). Stir them together by hand until creamy, then squirt about 1 1/2 - 2 oz of soda water into the glass. Stir together to thin the syrupy/creamy goo.

When blended, add about 6 - 8 oz soda water and GENTLY stir watery syrupy/creamy mix into the soda water. DO NOT OVERSTIR, or else you stir out all the carbonation, which is WRONG. Gently place a scoop of whatever flavour ice cream desired (again, I like chocolate best) on top. Upon contact with the ice cream, the soda water should immediately produce a foamy head.

Eat joyfully, using a long-handled spoon; try getting some ice cream and soda water in every spoonful.

-- Michael (mwalsh@lynx.neu.edu), September 20, 2000.