Free goughnuts

One night after spending hours in our local club and consuming large amounts of alcohol me and a few of my friends were on the way to a well know fast food chain outlet to get some food. At the doors we were stopped by a homeless guy asking us to donate him some money in order for him to get some food. Being nicely happy we decided to get him some ourselves. After spending, what seemed like hours in the queue we slowly walked back to the door only to discover that one of my burger buns was not there. Obviously I have decided to go back and complain. Surprisingly a nice lady at the counter did not even ask any questions. She was very apologetic and on top of that I got given 6 chocolate doughnuts as compensation. On the way out I have discovered a bun lying on the floor next to the door. It turned out that when I was carrying my food I have managed to lose the top bit of my burger. So it was not kitchen staff’s fault at the end. Nevertheless we walked out to get some fresh air and eat our food. Outside there was the same homeless guy asking more people to sponsor his meal. He was probably even less sober than us because he came up to me for the second time with the same food request. Since I now had extra doughnuts I decided to give him the whole lot of 6 as well as the chips we got him. It does feel good helping someone less fortunate than you. The homeless guy took the food, had a little sniff and binned the whole lot straight away. While me and my friends were standing there stunned by his audacious behaviour he turned around and went off to ask more people for money. I guess he was not hungry after all…

A Page From Betty Crocker’s Cookbook

Recently, while sitting in my chair drinking the last of my breakfast coffee, a thought staggered into my mind. I must confess most thoughts are quite lonely once they enter my mind, but this one had a nagging element to it. Experience has taught me I should never give in to these strange trespassers. Every time I entertain any of them, I’m the one getting burnt. This time was different. Don’t ask me how it was different, or how I knew it was different, it just was. Of course, looking back I could have been wrong. The thought: why not surprise my wife by baking her a cake? I know what you’re thinking. I thought the same thing when this suggested itself to me. But, the more I thought about it, the more delightfully delicious it sounded. How can anything go wrong if I am doing it for my wife? The only question I needed to answer was what kind of cake should I bake. After a long period of ruminating, I settled on a lemon sponge cake with peanut butter icing. This was going to be the best surprise my wife has ever received from me. Sitting in a prominent place in the kitchen is my wife’s Betty Crocker Cookbook. I don’t know how long she has had that book, it’s been in our kitchen for as long as I can remember — which really may not be that long when I come to think of it. I took the book, sat in my favorite chair and opened it. How do you read a cookbook? As I leafed through it, it did not have any rhyme or reason to me. In musing on the book I said to myself, how important is it to follow directions? Placing the book back in its revered spot, I concluded that since this was my cake, I didn’t need help from anybody else, particularly Betty Crocker. This is the difference between men and women. Women need a lot of directions, while men enjoy the liberty of doing their own thing. I knew exactly what I wanted. A lemon sponge cake, with peanut butter icing. What could be simpler? Retrieving a large mixing bowl, I assembled all the ingredients I needed; flour, sugar, eggs, milk and baking powder. Everyone knows you cannot bake without baking powder. I have no idea what baking powder is, except when you bake you use baking powder. I put everything in the mixing bowl. The only thing I wasn’t quite sure of was the measure, but how hard could that be anyway? Betty Crocker mentioned a cup of this and a cup of that, but never defined what she meant by a cup. I went to the cupboard and looked at all the cups. There were all kinds and sizes of cups and I did not know which one to use. I eyed a large coffee cup and said to myself, this will do just fine. I dumped 6 or 8 cups of flour into the mixing bowl, I can’t remember how many. Then I cracked a dozen eggs and put that into the mixing bowl as well. Pouring a quart of milk into the mixing bowl, I whipped everything into a nice batter. This was to be a lemon sponge cake but I could find nothing marked lemon in the cupboard. I opened the refrigerator, and as luck would have it, I found a quart of lemonade. I poured this concoction into the largest cake pan I could find. As I was about to put it into the oven, I remembered the baking powder. How is this cake going to bake if it doesn’t have the baking powder? Setting the cake pan down, I grabbed the baking powder and liberally sprinkled it on top of my batter. I have no idea what baking powder does but I put enough on my cake so it would do a good job. Into the oven the cake went, and with a flick of the wrist I turned the temperature to 450 degrees. Remembering this was a big cake, I readjusted the temperature to 650. The bigger the cake the hotter the oven, is what I always say. Now all I needed to do was wait for my cake to bake. As I was waiting, I heard rumblings coming from the oven but just chalked that up to a good cake baking. I guess I fell asleep, because the next thing I knew there was a strange odor permeating the air. It smelled a little smoky and then it dawned on me. My cake, it’s done. What I pulled out of the oven did not resemble any cake I had ever seen. It looked like a burnt pancake, twice the size of the cake pan, with some kind of disease on the surface. No amount of peanut butter icing in the world could camouflage this disaster. It was about this time I began reassessing the idea of reading directions. Maybe instructions have a purpose after all. I remember something the Apostle Paul said. “Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” (2 Timothy 2:15 KJV.) To live right without getting burnt you need the right directions.