The Middle Ages

Why didn't I know about parchment paper until recently?  I'd seen it at the store and saw it mentioned on cooking shows and in recipes...but I don't think anyone ever conveyed the wonderful easy convenience of using parchment paper on your cookie sheets.  I don't even remember what recipe prompted me to buy it...but it sat in my drawer for awhile and one day I thought maybe it would help to make my granola on the paper since it makes a huge sticky mess on the pan.  I wanted to tell everyone everywhere I went that they should be using this stuff ALL the time.  You don't even need a spatula to get your cookies off the cookie sheet. 

So I wondered...what else have I learned about since reaching the Middle Ages? 

I learned that bread is actually pretty easy to make.  Why was I intimidated by the thought of flour and yeast?

Tomatoes are actually pretty tasty on a salad.  (Cue the Aunt Jay tomato story here, Tom and Beth)  I wonder how many pounds of tomatoes I rejected at restaurants in the past?

I had in my possession the best chocolate chip cookie recipe EVER and never used it.  My daughter-in-law makes the best chocolate cookies you have ever had and so Marty wanted me to get the recipe.  I have been using that recipe ever since.  A couple weeks ago I decided to look through my recipe box and clean it out and came across a recipe for chocolate chip cookies that I had asked someone for about 25 years ago.  I never made that recipe.  As I looked at it, I realized it was the same as Kath's famous and wonderful cookies.  I could have been making them all this time. 

Men actually can indeed wash dishes and do laundry.

A Club cracker with a spoonful of Parmesan cheese on top and wrapped in half a slice of bacon and put in the oven for 2 hours at 250 degrees just might be about the most delicious thing you have ever eaten.  I know I already went on about this on Facebook, but it needs repeated.  I'll probably repeat this again since I think about food a lot and most likely will wonder how those three ingredients can be SO YUMMY.  I wonder why I think about food all the time?

Vicks Vaporub is the best thing in the medicine cabinet. 

OK, so none of these things are earth shattering and my life probably wouldn't have been much different if I had known these things before 40...except maybe for the men and dishes thing because that would have meant that I had met Marty before the age of 40.  But it is good to know that there will always be something to learn about and new experiences to have no matter what your age. 

What have you learned recently that you wish you would have known about before?

One more thing...based on the average life expectancy in the Middle Ages, the middle aged Middle Age citizen would have been around 17 years old.