To Sifting the Shortening

Third grade. Nancy came home from school with me and I wanted to impress her. This was the first time she’d been to my house. 

Nancy is funny. She’s fearless in a way that’s unusual for a third grader. She laughs a lot and makes faces. Whatever allows her to do that, whatever freedom she feels, I want to feel it, too. I want to know what that feels like.

So she’s agreed to come over and we decide, after it’s clear I don’t have the good Barbies and our backyard swing set is boring, that we should make a cake.

“Oh sure,” I say, “My parents won’t mind.”

So we pull out the Betty Crocker cookbook for kids and find a recipe for yellow cake. The kids in the book are waving chocolate coated spoons in the air and wearing spotless aprons. That should have been our first clue. Kids with chocolate are never spotless.

The instructions read: “Sift the first 4 ingredients”

They did not state in what order the ingredients should be read. They did not state, “Reading this list vertically, sift the first 4 ingredients.” They did not state, “Sift the dry, powdery ingredients.” They did not clearly state which ingredients can be sifted.

We read the list left to right: flour, shortening, baking soda, salt.

It didn’t take long before we realized something was terribly wrong. One cannot, in fact, shift shortening.

It’s so obvious to me now. Just looking at the sifter should be the clue. But we didn’t have well-developed critical thinking skills yet. We were still in that phase of education where one follows directions carefully to the desired outcome. We had not yet learned to question.

My mother walked in. We looked at her dumbfounded. “It said the first four ingredients!” I explained, pointing to the book. The children with the raised spoons now seem to be mocking us.

Mom is tired but kind. She drops her head a little. Perhaps this is one of those days where, in the grand scheme of things, a messy kitchen and a ruined sifter are the least of her problems, but she doesn’t get mad. She helps us clean up but does not allow us another chance. “Find something else to do,” She says, sponge in hand.

I never read recipes the same. Figuring out what they meant by “first four”--or rather, not taking the time to figuring it out--was my first real lesson in critical thinking. 

Ask questions, I learned. Even when you think you know. Even when it seems clear. Especially when all the tools you are working with seem to be failing.