A Bad Day in the Kitchen

Last week our local tourist farm had an auction selling baked goods. Since our 4-H Club was helping serve the BBQ dinner with the all-you-can-eat corn, we were allowed to bring some type of baked goods that could be auctioned off, with the proceeds going to our club.

I was reminded of this fact the day before the auction. So, I thumbed through some cookbooks and found a recipe that I thought I would try. Creamy Pralines. Does that sound delicious or what?

About noon I thought I had better get crackin’ on making my dessert. Just in case something went wrong, of course. I mean I know there’s really no cause for concern because it only has a few ingredients and the directions are spelled out so that a child could make it, right? Wellll unfortunately, it hardened on me rather quickly and only a few looked presentable. But that wasn’t the only thing. It was a -how should I say this- a strange brownish color that just wasn’t appealing.

I knew time was short for we needed to leave the house by 3:30. What to do? I placed the pralines on a beautiful red plastic plate hoping it would set off the strange brown things I positioned on it. Nothing doing. Next I thought a Ziploc bag might work and I could scrunch the bag up at the top and tie a ribbon around it. Nope. To be able to have a ribbon nicely done at the top I would only have been able to have about 6 of those beauties in the bag. And besides, people would look at the bag and think, “Excuse me, but what are those things?”

Then I had my best brainstorm yet. I would put them in a decorative candy box I had bought at a cooking store a few years back. I carefully forcefully placed as many as I could get in while still being able to close the lid. Would this work? I called my son over to show him what new idea I had come up with.

I showed him the box, angled just right so he could see how beautiful the packaging was, slooowly opened the lid to reveal what was inside. “It reminds me of the Scripture ‘whited sepulchers full of dead men‘s bones’ They look like week-old meatballs.” Talk about telling it like it is.  Thanks, son. I surely couldn’t take these to the auction and have the lucky bidder eagerly open his little box only to find week-old meatballs. That would be too cruel.

Back to the kitchen I went. Aha! This time I found a cake recipe that I had all the ingredients for and it would be a quick and easy one. Never mind that I’d never made it before and had no idea how it tasted. I baked it and by then it was time to go.

They had the auction during the dinner. My cake sold. Yea! For a mere $5. What? I couldn’t believe it. All the ingredients, my pan, my time and it only sold for $5?

It would seem that I might have overlooked something crucial when choosing my dessert. Something that just might possibly have a bearing on how much someone would be willing to spend. That little something is the name. Somehow I don’t think the thought of Blueberry Yogurt Cake was enough to set their taste buds dancing and cause them to loosen their purse strings. Rather it may have made their stomach’s quiver at the thought. Ah well, they just don’t know how lucky they were. It could have been week-old meatballs.