A child watches her mother prepare a pot roast for dinner…dice the carrots, slice the celery, cut off the tip of the roast before baking. She says to her mother, 'why do you cut off the end of the pot roast?' and her mother tells her, 'that's what Mom always did. It makes the roast better.' So the child goes to her grandmother and asks, 'why are we supposed to cut off the end of a pot roast?' Her grandmother answers, 'because my mother did it that way. It cooks better.' Then the child asks her great-grandmother, 'why do you cut off the end of the pot roast?' The great-grandmother laughs and says, 'the only reason I cut off the end was because it wouldn't fit in my eight-inch baking pan.'