The Buckets by Greg Cravens for October 08, 2013

Flip pancakes, fold omelets.

gotta be careful with that spatula . you’ll poke an eye out

AAaaaaand I now must apologize for using colloquialisms I was unaware were so rare. Yes, a ‘burner’ (why would you want to BURN something on the stove?) got called an ‘eye’ when and where I was young. Language. Go figure.

Buy new eye

So taday … ya’ll put da buckets down there in dem southarn states huh?;)

Wait, the real Greg Cravens is right here on this thread. Awesome! I love your strip! I just recently read a book where they referred to the stove burner as an eye. Pretty sure it was Neil Gaiman. Are you a Brit, Greg?

Had a gas stove all my life and never heard it called an eye. I learn so much by reading the comics. I flip omelets. As Greg said, otherwise the inside is all ‘goopy’.

Googling shows there is just enough use of “eye” for a stove to raise questions, with suggestions it may be a regionalism. A search of several major dictionaries shows many definitions of “eye” that imply an opening (eye of a needle) or the center of some activity (eye of a storm).

So I am willing to accept this entry from the Amer. Herit. Dict. of the Eng. Lang. 4th Ed., which incorporated much info from the Dict. of Amer. Regional English (DARE):

6e. Chiefly Southern U.S. The round flat cover over the hole on the top of a wood-burning stove.

It is easy to see how that would extend to a gas stove. But as Greg now realizes, it is too rare a usage to include in a cartoon.

Oh boy.

Whoops!

xxx

Well, I’m now gonna change the way I do my morning omelette. Still, I’m not putting the pan on anything called a ‘burner’. We need to decide what the heck to call the round hot spot on the stove, meant for heating pots and pans, and thereby our food. Anybody got a better name than ‘burner’?

Also, everyone say “Hey” to Gr8lakesgrrl! No Gr8, I’m not a Brit, though I’ve read a bunch of Neil Gaimen stories. Not the first time a Southeastern US colloquialism has turned out to be primarily a UK word.

Anybody remember the flap we had over me calling a thing a ‘Hot Water Heater’ and putting it into the attic of The Buckets home? Same problem. That’s the Southeastern US term, and we don’t have a heck of a lot of basements around here to stick our hot water heaters into.

As a “Brit”, I can honestly say that I have never heard of the expression.

As a person who used to make omelettes by the dozen for hungry people, I will give you my way of making them. Before you put the eggs on, first put what you want inside the omelette on to cook. Unless you have a huge grill, do this in a separate pan. Once you got them all nice a warm, add a little cooking spray to your pan for the omelette, then add your egg mixture, next add your inside ingredients, next your cheese. Now starting at the top of your omelette fold down some of the already cooked egg mix, now do the same with the bottom, when you ‘flip’ your omelette, the stuffing won’t come out. Now starting at one of the sides (depending if your left or right handed) Start folding the omelette towards the other side. How wide your omelette is will depend upon how tight or lose your folding is. Once you have your omelette folded all the way over, gentle move it back to the middle of the pan, then put some cheese on top. General rule, once the cheese on top is melted, it’s all cooked and not goopy inside. Yum, and enjoy!

So do they have a gas stove? Then Larry snuffed out the flame. And not only does he have to clean – he gotta restart the burner!. Ha.I miss the older gas stoves. No ignition system. So if the power went out you could still cook.

Good heavens! We called it a pilot light! Wonderful because you could use the stove even if the power went off in a storm!

I grew up with a wood burning cook and that is what the lid was called. Usually four to a stove and each lid had a slot and was lifted with a special tool called an “eye lifter”.

Thanks for the warm welcome, Greg! I think you should continue to call it an “eye.” Just like JK Rowling could have left her first Harry Potter title “The Philosopher’s Stone” for US audiences. (Why should we pander to ignorance?) But then I like learning new things, that’s not true for everyone.

Interesting that the previous flap was over putting the water heater in the basement vs attic, I would expect it to be over the redundancy of “hot water heater.” I still call it that although I’m aware of the redundancy, old habit I guess.