The Cream of Tartar Story

There are family stories that are passed down and around until they practically become mythology.  And then, there is a very specific jubilance when you realize that someone you're talking to has actually not yet heard that story.  

This is one of those.  And somehow I haven't already documented it here on the blog.

My dear Andy.  My sweet, wonderful Andy.  

We had been in our apartment for about a month or so, if memory serves.  I was working on making dinner one night, and I realized partway through that I was missing an ingredient for my chicken pot pie recipe, namely cream of tartar.  Out of the goodness of his heart, Andy offers to pop to the store and pick it up for me while I keep working on the filling.  

The grocery story, mind you, is less than three minutes down the road.  So I was a little bit confused why it took closer to twenty minutes for him to get back.

The door opens.  I call out some greeting, but immediately Andy bursts out with "Did you know that cream of tartar is not a soup?!"

I started to stammer that, yes, in fact I did know that but Andy was already on a roll:  "I found cream of tomato, cream of potato, cream of cheddar, cream of broccoli, I even checked the Progresso ones to see if it was just a weird one..."

At this point, I'm DYING and unable to hold in the laughs.  

"So I pulled open my phone and asked it 'Campbell's cream of tartar' and my phone basically looked at my like 'BUHRH?'  So I asked it for 'cream of tartar' and gave me potassium bitartrate and I scrolled down like 'no, NO, maybe? Okay,' and I went over to the baking aisle and it was RIGHT THERE in front!"  

It will never not be funny to me.  My folks took a label maker and "corrected" a cream of chicken can for Andy once that stayed on our stovetop as a decoration for along time.  Some folks will fess up that they wouldn't have known that either, might even have tried the dairy section; others immediately shake their heads with that indulgent but disbelieving headshake.  

Of course, I had set a potato bag on fire a few weeks prior, and Andy hadn't let me forget that either.  And at this home, Mike and I were greatly intimidated by the pilot light of the water heater ("I don't smell gas; I just feel fear!"), which is also the stuff of family mythologies.  They're those kinds of stories that hold us closer.