Friday, July 14, 2006

We were having a late supper and decided to make a quick pot of egg drop soup from a package. It all seemed good until I noticed the directions indicated that one must only stir in ONE DIRECTION. Which direction?... clockwise or counterclockwise? What would happen if part way through I haphazardly started stirring in the other direction? I was very curious... but we were too hungry to risk it.

5 comments:

  1. Why, your egg drops would break up, because they smash into each other when they change directions. Just like driving down the street!

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  2. I'm Chinese and when I was young, my parents would give me the job of mixing the egg and they always reminded me to go only in one direction. When I asked why, they would say it is going to taste bad/bitter if you change directions. But then again, they also told me that if I put the stamp on anything but perfectly straight, the mailman wouldn't deliver it. So there goes any trust in what my parents told me! :-)

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  3. I suggest stirring counterclockwise if you're in the Northern hemisphere, and clockwise if you're in the Southern hemisphere (no kidding around with the Coriolis effect ;)

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  4. Ah, I actually know the answer to this! When you make egg drop soup (from scratch, anyway - I don't know what's in the soup mix), you want the eggs to be long and thready, so you stir in one direction. If you stirred zigzag or changed directions, you'd have clumpy broken up egg bits instead of long threads.

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