Couscous is made of durum wheat, so it is a grain. Quinoa is not a grain, is that what you mean?

Nevermind! It's a pasta! Doy...

@KirstenWI, no, I mean that couscous is more like pasta than a whole grain. (I recently had someone tell me that they're trying to eat more whole grains and therefore they're eating more couscous. I was all - wellllll... I hate to break it to you, but... ;)

^hahaha!

I just learned that Coriander is the seed for Cilantro. I actually got in an argument over it, INSISTING that it was not true, then google made me feel like an ass.

I didn't figure out until college that filet mignon is steak and not fish.

The best, though, was when my now-husband/then-boyfriend was first invited to my family's Thanksgiving. My mom made him responsible for bringing deviled eggs. Now, my whole life, whenever we made deviled eggs, we always cut them on the short side. My mom did it, my grandma did it, and I did it. It's how we did it. It was always an exciting crap shoot: some deviled eggs would be super deep, some deviled eggs would have the shallowest of dips. But that's what we always did, and we liked it like that.

My husband shows up to dinner, and his eggs are cut lengthwise. My mom THROWS A FIT. "How was I to know what was how you were supposed to cut them? You trying to make me look stupid!?!?!" To be honest, until I saw his eggs, it'd never occurred to me to cut them lengthwise, either. But now, a decade later, my husband is still in charge of the deviled eggs, and my mom still gives him grief about how he cuts them.

That when making marmalades, you should not discard the seeds, but put them in a cheesecloth bag and cook them with the pulp and rind. Apparently all the pectin is in the seeds!

My husband--nobody's cook--is always schooling me on the right way to store things. I thought bread lasted longer in the fridge and that it's OK to keep potatoes in the fridge, although I don't--wrong on both counts!

It took me SUCH a long time to stop storing my shallots in the fridge. They kept getting moldy before I could use them all, then I finally read something that said they should always be kept in a cool pantry. No more mold, they keep forever now!

Two stories that still make me laugh ...

When I was 16, I went to a fancy restaurant and ordered the halibut - I pronounced it "ha-li-BU" (I really thought that was correct). The very kind server did not correct me, but barely made it from the table with a straight face.

And, when I was little, I asked my dad what kosher meant - he told me it meant that some food had been specially blessed by the Pope. I was in my twenties before I straightened out that one for myself.

I just learned a few years ago that pickles come from cucumbers. I always assumed there was a pickle plant out there somewhere and that's why other things could be "pickled" such as pig's feet - they got put in a jar with pickles. Wah wah.

More amused than embarrassed, but when I was little I read in a book somewhere "those who live in glass houses should not throw scones" which seemed pretty apt (I'd never eaten a scone but they can look pretty hard/crunchy and could break a glass house).

I still prefer it over the real proverb!

When I was 16, I went on a fancy date and we had a platter of shrimp served with a side of marinara dip and lemon-flavored dip, which was my favorite! At least I thought it was lemon-flavored dip. Apparently it was the bowl to wash your fingers with. My date kept a straight face the whole time until we were almost done.

One word: sweetbreads

When I was 17, I decided that I would make my parents a special dinner for my dad's birthday. The recipe called for 3 cloves of garlic, and I did not realize that the cloves were the small pieces inside - NOT THE ENTIRE BULB! Mom took one bite and said oh, honey, I think ya messed something up. My dad, on the other hand, insisted that it was fantastic, but he's pretty doting AND will eat Lebanese garlic sauce by the spoonful!

That A1 steak sauce wasn't "Al" steak sauce.

My mother loves to cook with wine, so much so that I went to college thinking that food was sautéd in wine. Just wine. Sauté in fat? Deglaze? What?!

That marzipan is actually delicious and semisweet. I'd always thought it was an overly sweet goo that was best avoided.

I found out recently that prunes are dehydrated plums. Someone forget to send me the memo?

I always thought chocolate came from a bean, not fruit. When i was in Colombia photographing farmers, i accidentally stumbled upon cacao farmer (this guy http://www.jeremymerriam.com/asp_scripts/print_image.asp?WebsiteID=36139&GalleryID=111012&MediaID=3126596&Print=0 )

lol, it was such a tasty and sweet milky fruit. Be cafeful because the seeds are tempting to eat as I did, only to spend the entire night tossing and turning. They are super powerful like the affects of chocolate!

In fact just yesterday I was looking for chickpeas to make hummus. On the shelf there were navy beans, pinto beans, lima beans, garbanzo beans, but where were the chickpeas?? D'oh! I didn't realize garbanzo beans were chickpeas.

This winter, I learned that bacon and avocados are delicious.

A chipotle pepper is just a dried jalapeno pepper...

mayo is just egg whites and oil...

Yam vs. sweet potato.
That vanilla is an orchid; tomato is in the nightshade family.

That pumpernickel bread wasn't made of pumpernickel flour/plants/seed, whatever. I pictured fields of waving pumpernickel......

It took until my fourth year of college to discover that not all meat was dry, stringy, and tough and not all vegetables were mushy, bland and canned. My mom's cooking has improved a bit since then but she still cooks steaks until they're leathery.

Yesterday the cashier at the grocery asked us how we had the patience to peel kumquats! My husband explained very tactfully the best way too eat them.

mayo is egg *yolks* - not whites - and oil

chuckle...mayo is egg *yolks* and oil

I didn't realize how Brussels Sprouts grow (or that they're called BrusselS sprouts and not Brussel sprouts) until a couple of years ago when I saw them on a giant stalk at a farmer's market and was all "What is THAT?!" I never really ate them as a kid so I guess I never stopped to think about how they grow.

I learned that a dead mouse under the refrigerator smells just like old onions.

Chilean sea bass was originally called toothfish. Canola oil was originally rapeseed oil. Most "crab" in sushi restaurants is in fact imitation crab. Oh, marketing, how insidious you are.

That things that seems SSSSOOOO scary to make aren't really scary at all.

Crème brûlée (http://www.joyofcooking.com/recipe/creme-brulee), chocolate truffles (http://www.globalgourmet.com/food/medrich/0998/truffles.html#axzz2Lwvtrxq1), osso bucco (http://www.williams-sonoma.com/recipe/osso-buco-with-gremolata.html) and prime rib (http://www.lawrysonline.com/all-recipes) have to be the easiest things to make, thanks to the great recipes I have discovered over the years.

Growing up having these "fancy" dishes at restaurants I just thought I'd have to go out to eat them. Nope!!! I make them at home and impress all my friends and family.

I was at the farmers market a few years back and asked what are those?
The farmer said those are "gourds".
I said "I never tasted those before, are they good?".
He said "You do not eat them, they are for decorations".
I said "Well then that explains why I never tasted one"
And added "I learned something new today and that makes this day a good day".

So, i just learned that chipotles are dried jalapenos. Totally missed the boat on that one and feeling pretty dumb right now. More so because i was about to comment that they are in fact NOT THE SAME THING... that is until i google'd it. Whoops. :)

My friend watched me in awe the other day as I cut an avacado. She was always struggling to peel it before cutting it off the seed. I blew her mind when I cut around the seed and used my knife to remove the pit.

I also had a roommate who didn't know the rack in the oven was removable! I had to explain to use an oven mitt to pull it out!!! Crazy!

I will rat out my 22-try old son...he took a dozen eggs out of the fridge that had been given to me by a co-worker who has free range chickens. The eggs were in a recycled egg carton thus the expiration date on the carton had passed. The extremely smart son (3.8 GPA soon to be college grad) asked if the eggs should be tossed since they had turned brown!

Last year I realized that baking soda needs an acid to become activated. It was a revelation, thanks to Joy the Baker.

oops ;) ... still learning

That filberts are hazelnuts

We went out to dinner once and my dad ordered a bottle of Merlot. The waitress replied, "Oh, you mean Mer-LOT?" Her pronunciation was especially humorous since my dad is a winemaker...

Many (many!) years ago, I occasionally did some work for a caterer, just working at parties to serve food, refill trays, etc.

Well, I arrived to one party and was informed I was going to play bartender. I had NO idea how to tend bar, was only 20 so had never been IN a bar. I protested but was put behind the bar.

I got club soda & tonic mixed up all night, and compounded the problem by being sort of ... belligerent ... about it when people questioned/complained about their weird drinks.

& bonus, this isn't about food, but I JUST realized about a year ago that "Twinkle twinkle little star" and the alphabet song are the SAME song, melody-wise.

- In my mid-20s, I went to a fancy wine-tasting which included a bottle which would now cost a couple of hundred dollars. Wow. Light-years better than the Gallo and Almaden served at my family dinners. I finally understood why people could get serious about wine.

- that blintzes are folded after rolling; my mother didn't fold the ends and the cheese always leaked out into the pan.

- that the secret to good potato salad is to toss the hot drained potatoes with vinegar, then cool them and add the mayo or sour cream.

I'm sure there are more recent ones, but I just remembered as a kid learning what 'on the rocks' meant when my brother ordered his glass of milk that way in a restaurant and the waitress kindly obliged. We just thought it was something adults said to be fancy.

@Elizabeth Lena, a Spanish friend who speaks otherwise flawless English also once ordered the hal-i-boo. He will live it down half past never.

At a seafood restaurant, my then teenage sister: "Wait, shrimp have heads?"

After asking what was on tap, ordering a Woodchuck, and drinking most of it:
Friend: This is the worst beer I've ever had.
Me: That's cider.
Friend: Well, then that's why.

When we were kids, my brother (he was actually probably about 16...) was cooking a can of condensed soup and couldn't figure out how much a "can" of water was :)

Been almost crying with laughter as I read down thru these. With you on the coriander/cilantro; I only learned that this year. After under/over baking hundreds of dozens of cookies, it finally dawned on me that--wait for it--YOU CAN USE A SEPARATE TIMER FOR EACH OVEN SHELF! Woohoo! I'm only 57, there are lots more cookies in my future.

NOW I know for sure that a clove is the little piece in the big garlic! ;) I was never sure and luckily I was one to just toss in a few little's to a recipe, not peel all the little's in the BIG clove and toss into a recipe. YES, laughing at these posts..haha.especially,,'what does Kosher mean and the dad's answer' :)

I missed years of fluffernutters at daycare as a kid because the only white stuff in a jar we had at home was mayonnaise, and I knew I didn't want a peanut butter and mayo sandwich. I was a teenager when I learned the truth.

After being a vegetarian for many years I was working with adults with developmental disabilities and during my FIRST cooking lesson I was helping a guy make chicken breasts. I said "well first you want to turn the heat up really high so it cooks fast." We seared the chicken breasts on both sides and it LOOKED beautiful- then I sliced into it, and as you would assume, it was bright pink aside from the outside. I totally panicked, had no idea what to do- I was 27! The fire alarm eventually went off and I ended up buying this guy a sandwich at the deli down the street. It was actually thanks to a great how-to on the kitchn that I learned how to make really incredible chicken breasts.

Recently found out that most boxes of plastic wrap, tin foil, wax paper, etc...have "push-in tabs" on the ends of the box. No wonder the roll would always come out when trying to tear it off!

JazzyCat,

Since we're clearing up misunderstandings here...chipotles are smoke-dried ripe jalapenos and mayonnaise is an emulsion of egg yolks and oil.

Sherri S... I never knew that about the boxes of plastic wrap, tin foil, etc...

Mind Blown.

I had that moment too about three years ago at the Jean Talon Market in Montreal. I actually gasped out loud! It just made the vegetable more magical to me... :)

Oops - that in response to @kerry81480 regarding brussel sprouts.

Um, what's all this about plastic wrap/tin foil?

I didn't know the vinegar + milk = buttermilk thing until waaaaay late. Far, far too many weekend morning trips to the store JUST for buttermilk for pancakes have been made.

At age 9 i was home alone (dont remember why), hungry and wanted pancakes but did not know HOW but was hungy enough to risk it.... then it dawned on me the box had instructions on the back so in fact I COULD made them .... about a month later i figured the instruction on the back of the boxes were recipes and if i can follow one i can follow the other... so i could use the old recipe book and make my own meal without having to wait for my mom to get back or up and do it for me. (and the result would be edible)

Around this time my mom decided to "teach" me for security sake after she discovered i had no idea how to properly grab a knife, or any idea of how to dice a tomato or not to mix hot oil and water but i would try to cook eitherway.

Bonus: At almost 50 my dad decided to learn to cook and asked me how to make pancakes...i pointed out the instructions on the back of the box... he could not believe that was it.

My son's disappointment and astonishment when the pizza he took out of the oven was still cold and rubbery after the 10 mins stated on the instructions - he'd never been told about preheating!

My partner eating prawns whole, head, carapace and all, always seems to amuse people.

It's more an international thing, but I was terribly confused when I started reading American cooking blogs. Different names! It took me a while to realise that cilantro meant coriander (we use the same name for the seeds and the leafy part) and that arugula was rocket. I actually have a recipe jotted down which has a footnote to find arugula somewhere, when we had a salad that night with rocket in it...

After reading 14 pages of comments on a pregnancy message board about this topic (not about food, just generally) the tabs on plastic wrap and foil were the top answer followed by a really disheartening number of adult people who had been using their teeth or even pliers to remove that cap thing on a new container of deodorant.

Whoa, what?!? Game changer.

57 years old, and I'm just learning that there are tabs to secure the wrap rolls?

I was 18, I think, when my younger sister and I were home alone and about to bake some freezer pizza's.
I actually asked her if I was supposed to take off the plastic before putting it in the oven... Probably avoided a house fire there.

Sherri S - Now thats something they dont tell you on food netwrok.. and I just had to get up from my seat n check that !!! thank you!!
sweetbreads, took me a while to figure out... I thought it was bread with fruits n nuts...
Couscous I found out about after 2 years of cooking pasta, that it was not a grain... so I was very skeptical about Quinoa :)
milk in the US does not need to be heated before using.. In India all milk bought needs to be boiled before use.
and am still shaking my head and laughing at a few of the above!!!

I was thoroughly embarrassed when an older friend corrected my only-read-in-cookbooks pronunciation of cumin. I said "come in" and was devastated to be be schooled like that in front of our friends. Of course, the thousand times I've been wrong since have made me realize I likely do have more to learn.

I remember learning that a tiny pinch of salt in cafe con leche makes all the difference...

That "Arby's" is is just a funny way to spell "RB" or roast beef. Had always assumed that a guy named "Arby" started a roast beef sandwich restaurant.

I've always pronounced "gratin" the way it's spelled, the ugly American way. Gra-tin. The snooty person at my local kitchen supply store corrected me most snootily. Apparently it's grah-teen.

Whatevs. She coulda sold me a nice Benriner but she was so snooty I gave my dollas to Amazon!

^ WTF? I thought it was some guy name Arby as well!

^ WTF? I thought it was some guy name Arby as well!

Rice Crispies are made from actual rice.

Being from a different country, I had only had pizza a few times (age 5 back then)... I decided to make my own pizza with mom's help of course... I used pita bread for the crust, ketchup for the sauce, and american cheese on top. My mom let me bake it–probably laughing whenever she left the room. I ate it a bunch of times apparently and enjoyed it (I was a weird kid)... When I was in college, I had those same ingredients in my fridge and nothing else, so I tried making it thinking, it might be good. I gagged and choked so hard, I couldn't eat (real) pizza for a really long time afterwards...

I'm not very visual, so I felt stupid when I first read about the push in circles at the ends of rolls in a box. I found them only on aluminum foil and immediately pushed them in and it really helped. However, the next box didn't have them. I just checked in the drawer right now. I have 4 boxes, parchment, plastic wrap, aluminum foil and wax paper. Only the "Saran Wrap" has push in circles at the ends.

When I was a child and read directions to " hand mix" batter...well...I plunged my bare hands right in and started mixing : )

As an adult, that red, green, orange, and yellow peppers can be from the same plant.
They are different degrees of ripeness.
That there isnt a seperate green bell pepper plant and red bell pepper plant. Haha!

I used to think the sickly, sugary, overly sweet frosting on grocery store cakes was "icing" and that the wonderful buttercream version was "frosting." Until years ago when I was detailing how much I hated "icing" and much preferred "frosting." My coworkers pointed out my error and now I know that there are different kinds of frosting, that "icing" is something different altogether and it's good!

When I was cooling newly steamed lobster tail in an ice bath recently, from my peripheral vision, I saw a bubble coming from one of the tails, similar to while
debearding mussels in cold water. As I looked directly to the tails, it happened again. Is that osmosis or what?

The color of a chicken's egg is the same as the color of its earlobe.

dont put barley in a slow cooker for 8 hours!!! unless you want to make glue

Great posts :)

For myself -- Over 30 years ago, making dinner for the first time for my in-laws and found out the hard way that rice really, really expands in the rice cooker.

And just last week, learned that baking powder has baking soda in it.

I was always a picky eater growing up; lots of things were no bueno as far as I was concerned (especially Seafood!) and for the most part, soup was my main go-to meal. My favorite soup was clam chowder. (Manhattan OR new England...didn't matter- loved them both). I was 12 before I figured out clam chowder =seafood chowder. BUT! True to my seafood hating self, I never realized why I left those little rubbery things in the bowl while I ate everything else UNTIL I realized at 12 that they were the clams...ie, the seafood that I still didn't like. I am consistent with that, even in the present!

>> I JUST realized about a year ago that "Twinkle twinkle little star" and the alphabet song are the SAME song, melody-wise.

Now I want you to sing Baa, Baa, Black Sheep...

According to <http://www.arbys.com/about.html>... it "stands for R.B., the initials of the Raffel Brothers - although many suspect the R.B. stands for roast beef."

They had a commercial where they sang that it stood for "America's Roast Beef, Yes Sir!" so I always thought it was a five-letter acronym! Mark me as learning something new today...

actually, all the pectin is in the peel, not the seeds!

There are push-in tabs? WTF!!!!!!

I never learned about hot sauces until my mid-twenties. I had never worked with Tabasco in my life, and used half a bottle to make one bloody mary. A few years later, my boyfriend introduced me to Sriracha, explaining that it's a mild garlic chili sauce. I was left unsupervised with the bottle and a plate of eggs.

I learned how to peel ginger with the flat back side of a knife. I was ridiculed by my vietnamese friend for using a real peeler and wasting ginger...

I did not know that you shouldn't put eggplant in the fridge. And I only found out in the last 6 months that aubergine is eggplant (I was so annoyed reading some recipes.)

Oh and that brown rices TAKES TWICE AS LONG TO COOK than white. And if there is any water on your vegetables, your oil will spit back at you in anger. Thanks for the scars, grapeseed.

Seriously? I have never heard "gratin" pronounced any other way than "grah-tin". And if my college French serves me, it could be "grah-tan" but grah-teen? Yeah...no.

Seriously, different colored peppers don't come from different plants? Gonna say that is my "I can't believe I didn't know that before."

Discovering that a glass, pyrex dish can't withstand direct heat from a gas burner... of course I learned this valuable lesson while hosting my first Christmas dinner for my entire family.

Glass. and. vegetables. everywhere.

growing up I always thought Brussels Sprouts brussel sprots lol were baby cabbages

Calm down about those foil/plastic-wrap tabs everyone: they really don't work that well.

When I first moved to Boston, my brother explained to me that I should never use hot water directly from the tap because it leeches lead from the old pipes more than cold water.

Also, when I was 5 I heard "chopped liver" as two words for the first time and stopped eating it forever.

When I was 15, an ice storm knocked out the power in the house for two weeks. My dad brought in the old gas camping stove from the garage so we could cook food. The first day everyone was gone and I was left to my own devices to try to cook something, I turned the knob on the stove and couldn't figure out why it wasn't getting hot. I turned it to high, and nothing happened. I eventually turned it off and ate something else. My mom got home a bit later and smelled that the house was full of gas, so we had to open all the doors and windows to air out the house (and let in the freezing temps).

It wasn't until college when I had a gas stove that it all made sense.

Hey, I still do that! I find it's the best way to mix cookie dough :) And then I really can say I made them by hand!

@Elizabeth Lena--I'm a little late to this thread and don't know if you'll see it but I just have to tell you how hard your halibut comment made me laugh. I'm still laughing. It's so cute and hilarious!

It's actually grah-tehn, the French way, no "een". You could've snootied her back!

Many of these revelations are blowing my mind. Chipotle peppers? Tabs in foil wrap? Amazed.

I went to a Thanksgiving dinner where the host discovered, upon removing the roast ham from the oven, that he hadn't removed it from the plastic wrap, so he'd lovingly basted a plastic wrapper for hours.

My cousin had to make vichyssoise for her French class potluck, and her mother went into the store asking for the ingredients to make "Vicky - o- see".

If you twist the ice cube tray all the cubes fall out very easily. Prior to learning this 6 months ago, I broke many trays by banging them on the counter and having the cubes fall everywhere.

Always good to learning something new every day! After learning about these tabs, I promptly activated mine where it was learned that the wax paper people are apparently as clueless about the virtue of roll holding tabs as many of us have been.

You can stick the ice cube tray in a ziploc bag, and then bang away - I discovered this last summer.

As a youngster, if I was making pasta just for myself, and not the entire box, I thought I had to reduce the amount of cooking time proportionally. Never dawned on me to try the pasta, so I ended up eating a lot of practically raw noodles.

For me, it was the fact that Pam cooking spray has chemicals in it. I honestly never thought about how they made the oil spray from the aerosol can, though now it seems like the most obvious thing ever.

Here at the hospital working a night shift and trying SO hard not to laugh out loud! "hand mixing" is one of my faves.

Being a nurse I felt remarkably stupid when I realized 3 years ago (age 26) that ribs are from RIBS. I was really grossed out by the thought! I think I still ate some though, yum ;)

duh.

So many of these are funny! And some are the same things that once embarrassed me too. : )
I have to out a dear relative because it is also funny. She is older and very polite and considerate. She says "war-chester-shire sauce", while I say "whist-er-sher sauce". I learned of our difference while teaching her a recipe that called for Worcestershire Sauce. I kept hearing her whisper something but couldn't make it out (I have very bad hearing). I finally managed to lean in toward her at the right time and heard what she was saying. She was trying to correct me without letting my family hear! I finished out the cooking trying to remember to just say "the sauce" and then had a chuckle to myself when she was gone. I tried explaining it to her the next time I saw her, but she's convinced she's right. We agree to pronounce it differently. :)