The Changing Nature of Reference: A Personal Vignette

Old School

While cleaning up after yesterday’s supper – Three Cheese and Spinach Stuffed Shells, a new family favorite from Retiring Guy’s Kitchen – I noticed how discolored a portion of one of the stove’s drip pans had become. In the past, I had tried a variety of methods to remove the yellowing, with limited success.

More than ten years ago, this dilemma would have provided the perfect set-up for a library reference question. In fact, the Middleton Public Library’s reference collection contained a number of related, and regularly consulted, titles.

Such as….

How to Clean Everything: An Encyclopedia of What to Use and How to Use It, by Alma Chestnut Moore.

And, slightly hedging its bets, How to Clean Practically Anything from Consumer Reports Books.

Today’s information seeker is much more likely to sit down at a computer and Google. Just as I did.

clean drip pan

Which brought this result at the top of the list.

Cleaning Burner Drip Pans. Here is an excellent way to clean electric burner pans. Mix water and cream of tartar to a paste. Spread on burner pans and let ...
www.thriftyfun.com/tf631009.tip.html - 45k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

Seems an expensive route to take, I considered.

I knew we had some of this “additive” on hand, as cream of tartar is an ingredient in our favorite banana bread recipe (Marian Daniel's Blender Banana-Nut Bread, Samples from S.A.M.P.L., Staff Association of the Middleton Public Library, 1983), but wasn’t in the mood to make my own cleaning product.

I clicked on the link to see if any alternative methods were offered.

There were, but not by Denise, from Connellsville, Pennsylvania, the cream of tartar enthusiast. In a “guest post”, Nikko described in some detail the four methods that she had tested: baking soda & vinegar, Soft Scrub with Bleach, Oxi Clean, and Easy-Off Glass Cooktop Cleaner. For her, the winner, “by effectiveness and efficiency”, was Oxi Clean.

We have some of that, I realized, remembering a cottage-cheese-sized container of orange paste in longterm storage under the kitchen sink.

Since we’d last opened the container, the contents had hardened and shrunk, but a wet scrubbing sponge, and substantial amounts of elbow grease, brought its miracle properties back to life. As a result, the drip pan looks practically new. Thanks, Nikko.

I don’t know how many more of these retirement rewards I can handle.

New School