You may have heard the story about the young woman whose mother was teaching her how to make a roast. The daughter observed her mother carefully and made copious notes. When all was done, her mother asked if she had any questions."Just one," her daughter said. "Why do you cut off an inch at either end of the roast first of all?"
"Well, my mother always did that. I suppose it makes it moist? Or something. Anyway, that is how she did it and that is how she taught me. So I am teaching you the same thing."
Dissatisfied with this answer, the daughter decided to call her grandmother.
"Why do you cut an inch off both ends of the roast before you cook it?" she asked.
The grandmother thought for a while and said that was just the way her mother had taught her. She supposed it made the seasonings cook into the roast better, but that was just the way it was done.
"Do you think anyone knows why?" the granddaughter asked.
"Maybe my sister Helen knows. She learned how to cook from Mama and maybe she knows."
So the granddaughter, now really curious, called her great-aunt Helen to ask.
"Oh, sure, I know'" Helen told her. "We were poor, and Mama only had one roasting pan. It was too short for the usual roast she bought. So she cut off a couple of inches to make it fit and then used the trimmed meat for something else."
And the next three generations did the same thing, despite the fact that their roasting pans were large enough.
The title of this post is (to the best of my recollection) a German saying that one used to hear among almost all the German-speaking religious orders of nuns and priests that came to Wisconsin in the nineteenth century. It means, "But we have always done it this way."
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