Love meat tender
I love my family eccentrics dearly. Gran's a prime example; we're never sure if her habits devolve from her pragmatic, Depression-era upbringing or if there's moderate dementia present. For example: Collecting all plastic bags = good. Flattening and folding every single bag into a neat square, to ensure they're stored with maximum efficiency = ...unusual.

Here's one of my favourite recent incidents.

Dad on the speakerphone, calling from his mum-in-law's place:

"I'll put the phone close to Gran. Can you hear what she's doing?"

...there's a noise like chopping, but dulled, somehow.

Dad: "She's tenderising the steak."

There's a grin in his voice.

Me: "Oh, she's got the meat tenderiser going?"

Dad: "No."

Me: "What? Then what's she using? (I shout genteely:) WHAT ARE YOU USING, GRAN?"

Muffled complaint from Gran about Dad.

Dad, chuckling: "Gran's tenderising the steak... with a real hammer."


Me: "... What?"

Dad: "She calls this a meat hammer, but it's the same as a normal one, only smaller."

More muffled complaining, more thudding.

Dad, to Gran: "That's right, it's a meat hammer. And it's got the claw on the back so you can pull the nails out of the steak."
(bezoar, Mon 3 Nov 2008, 2:06, 2 replies)

My mother washes out used baggies
then hangs them over the faucet to dry. Once dry, she folds them and stacks them in a drawer.

She is not from the depression-era.
( flirting with badgers What? It sounded good at the time., Mon 3 Nov 2008, 2:48, closed)

^^^ I do this
never thought of it as eccentric though.

Or pennypinching.

Just making the most of the excess of plastic that majorises (is that a word . . .as in, provides the majority of ) my kitchen
(maggotriddendirtbox fast, feral and sharp as a tack since, Mon 3 Nov 2008, 4:08, closed)