Thursday, September 30, 2010

A Conundrum

Once upon a time, Ronald darling was a cook in the Air National Guard. That was his designation, but he was assigned to bake. He baked all night, so that the mess hall would smell of freshly baked bread in the morning. Hmm... salivating at this very moment at the thought of fresh baked bread.
Oh, look! A squirrel!
Sorry, lost my place. He loved the job, loved the baking and loved leaving when everyone else was coming in for the day. The Guard job did not carry over to home life. I've done most of the baking in our marriage, when there was any baking going on. But now?
There's a whole lot of baking going on. About a year ago, Ronald darling started taking brownies to the temple every Thursday. He'd buy a box of brownie mix, whatever was on sale, and bake 'em up. Then he got cute, and started throwing chocolate chips, or nuts, or marshmallows, or toffee chips, or peanut butter chips, or butterscotch chips or potato chips (fooled you!) into the mix. He tasted a friend's home made brownies one day, and thought maybe he should try to make his own.
So, he's been experimenting, sometimes good, sometimes not so good, but everyone at the temple eats them up. One day someone asked him if he ever made lemon bars. He didn't, but he does now. He's been through at least three recipes to get them just right.
Then one day he tried a new recipe for brownies. He likes them nice and thick, and these were just perfect. He'd been baking all day when I got home. "Taste these," he said. "These are too good for the temple." He was right! I ate six of them that evening, took three to work and ate the last one when I got home the next evening! They are even better when he puts Ande's Chocolate Mint chips in them.
A couple of weeks ago, we went to a farewell openhouse for friends. He made cookies that were delicious. They went over really well. One gal described them as "Christmas cookie plate good". I have requests for the recipe and one teeny weeny problem. Ronald darling doesn't remember what he made that day! I described them as best I could to prompt his memory (you know how old people are) so now he's pretty sure he might sort of remember which ones he made. So now I have to supply my friends with the recipe with that caveat.
Sometimes puzzles are fun. Sometimes not.

2 comments:

Mommo said...

Sounds like he better get to work trying to re-create those most excellent cookies. If at first you don't succeed then try again and again and again. If you need a taste tester just give me a call!

Jeannetta said...

Oh that's funny! I did that with gumbo once; still haven't figured out what I did!
If he get's it right, please share it :D