Wooden spoon prevents boil over

Comment: Putting a wooden spoon over the top of a pot of boiling water or
any other liquid will prevent it from boiling over.

And here I thought their primary use was for warming the bottoms of the truly deserving.

[Ali Infree]

Only within reason, DW broke one on the youngest son. This was many moons ago (he was two of his own now). Happened in the kitchen of the church basement, and aside from the spoon, no permanent damage. The story tends to make all the siblings laugh.

Ali

[GenYus234]

No, no, no. Wooden spoons are for misbehaving knuckles.

No, no, no. Wooden spoons are for misbehaving knuckleheads.

[A Turtle Named Mack]

I have noticed, particularly with foods that release starch into the water and thus make foamier boiling, that any object just above the top of the water will cause the bubbles to pop fast enough that boilover is extremely unlikely. i will move a spoon - wooden or metal - across the top of the pot to prevent boilover while turning down the heat and letting the boiling get less intense.

Originally Posted by Barbara

And here I thought their primary use was for warming the bottoms of the truly deserving.

and how does one qualify for this?

[ganzfeld]

Originally Posted by Ali Infree

The story tends to make all the siblings laugh.

That's a frightening story. I must be missing something - a certain sense of dark humor perhaps; I fail to see anything funny about hitting anyone with a spoon, especially a child.

[Latiam]

You're 15 years younger. It's the generational gap. While I don't consider the time my mother broke a brush on my behind to be funny, I don't consider myself scarred by the incident.
My brothers largely did not get spanked. They are younger than I am; my brother was born 7 years after me.
It was not considered abuse.

On the other hand, I vividly remember being slapped in the face by my uncle as a very young child and being literally shocked speechless for several minutes; I was midsentence when it happened. Every time I see that uncle I think "That's the guy who slapped me."

I'm not defending spanking. But that is the way it was.

[Sue]

My brother and I were watching old episodes of (I think) the Little Rascals once and one of the kids put a book down his pants so when his dad spanked him he'd actually be hitting the book. My brother thought this was a genius idea and spent the rest of the day trying to goad my parents into giving him a spanking. This was the '60s and spanking was a pretty common punishment. Except not in our house. Finally my mom figured out what was going on and gave him a mercy spanking and pretended to hurt her hand. We still laugh about that.

[Cervus]

Originally Posted by Latiam

You're 15 years younger. It's the generational gap.

Huh? Everyone who's posted in this thread (besides me just now) is older than you. Ganzfeld, who you're responding to, is four years older than you according to his profile. Can't be a generation gap when you're all in the same cohort.

[ganzfeld]

Oops, updated that age thing. Yeah, things did change even from when I was small (and got smacked, unfortunately) but hitting someone with a hard object would have been considered abuse, I would guess even by many of the people in my parents' generation.

[Ali Infree]

The wooden spoon incident is notable because DW is notoriously calm and unflustered by children. It was an aberration and the result of the spanking was DS laughing about the spoon breaking on his behind. I don't think the spoon was long for this world in any case. No injury to DS and my wife realized she was over-reacting. So it became a story about what not to do.

I think ATNM may be right about starchy foods and boiling over, especially lowering the temperature.

Ali