My wife and I used to have a microwave steamer. We received it as a wedding gift. It was a round Tupperware-type container about 8 inches tall and 8 inches in diameter. The bottom was concave rather than flat, but it had a flat bottomed basket to put inside. The differences in shape would keep the water in the bottom of the container and the veggies suspended above it in the basket. It also had a lid with a small vent. We loved this steamer because it quickly produced perfectly steamed veggies..slightly soft, but crunchy. It beats stove-top steaming/boiling any day.
(As a technical side note, the frequency of electromagnetic radiation produced by Microwave ovens is specifically tuned to heat water molecules. When a microwave cooks your food, it is actually heating the water in your food. The increased water temperature then heats/cooks the rest of your food. For an illustration of this, put two microwave-safe coffee cups in a microwave - one half full of water, the other one empty. Heat them on high for one minute. Feel the outer surface of the cups. The coffee cup containing water will be significantly warmer than the empty cup. This is because the microwave heats the water, which then heats the cup via conduction. In the case of the veggie steamer, the microwave heats the water in the veggies, as well as the water in the bottom of the container. The water in the bottom turns into steam. The steam rises through the basket and also cooks the veggies.)
Anyway...one day a few years ago my wife made something in our steamer to take to church for a lunch function. (I don't remember what she made. We often used it for non-steaming applications without the basket.) After the lunch, my wife went to retrieve our steamer, but it was gone. As this steamer was a rather unusual looking item, it is unlikely that someone mistook it for their own container. (It's a sad commentary that someone at church would steal someone else's food container.) Needless to say, we were disappointed. We were unable to find another steamer like it anywhere locally. For several years, we simply did without.
Last year, I searched online for a new microwave steamer. That's when I came across the Joyce Chen microwave rice steamer. It was a similar design to our old steamer. It was for rice, but I figured it would do just as well with vegetables.....and it does! We are happily eating microwave-steamed veggies again.
Because of this product, I became curious about Joyce. Was she a real person or just a marketing figure? I Googled her name and found lots of info. Cooking classes, cookbooks, restaurants, line of utensils, etc. However, I noticed Wikipedia didn't have an entry for her....so I started one. It's probably the source for the blog post I mentioned above. (hence, full circle)
During my research on Joyce, I read about how people in the Boston area came to use the word "ravs" for dumplings. It makes sense once you know the history. Where I'm from, dumplings are simply known as "steamed dumplings" or "fried dumplings" depending on how they are cooked. You will occasionally hear "pot stickers" for the fried variety.
I travel quite a bit for business and I am in the Boston area 2-3 times a year. If you've never been to the Boston area, you might be a bit surprised (if not slightly annoyed) at the way native Bostonians talk. There's the dialect (vocabulary) and the accent (way of pronouncing words). For example:
- You know those chocolate sprinkles you can put on ice cream? They call them "jimmies."
- The inexpensive, white canvas shoes (like Keds)? Bobos. Yes, bobos.
- A milk-shake is a "frappe."
I realize Bobos is an actual brand of shoe, but I'm not aware of any area where that term is used for shoes that are not actually Bobos. (Sort of like how some people use the word "Coke" for any type of cola, even if it's Pepsi.)
Then there's the way Bostonians pronounce words. Of course, there's the stereotypical dropped "r" like "pahk ya cah" for park your car., but there are some other unexpected variations:
- Peabody is "PEE-b'dy" not Pee-body.
- Stoughton rhymes with Dough-t'n -- not Stow-ton (rhymes with out-in) or staw-ton.
- Newburyport is "newbryport" not new-berry-port.
- Haverhill is "hayvril" not hayver-hill
On a particular business meeting in the Boston area, one of my customers asks me how far away my hotel is. Not knowing if I took the best route from my hotel to their office, I wasn't sure enough about the distance in either miles or minutes, so I simply replied that my hotel was in Woburn. I pronounced it just like it's spelled: Wo-burn - where Wo sounds like woe as in "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!" (Matthew 23:29)
The reactions of the customers varied from obvious confusion to all-out laughter. Had I stayed inordinately far away? Is that a bad area of town? No. They were laughing at my pronunciation of the word. One of the men says "Wo-burn? What's Wo-burn? It's woo-bin!" Woobin? How do they get woobin out of Woburn?
Then a lady says, "It must be his accent. That's why he says it wrong." (referring to me). My accent? My accent? No, no, no, dear. It's your accent. I dare say that the rest of the entire English-speaking world would pronounce Woburn just as I did: Wo-burn. The fact that the local populace removes the r, replaces the u with an i and inserts an extra o in the word, doesn't mean that I'm wrong. However, they were the customers, so I bit my tongue and proceeded to say "woobin," no matter how wrong it felt. Now, I'm just waiting for someone to tell me how to pronounce Faneuil.
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