A Traumatic Couple of Days

The one incident-free item on the menu.

Do you ever have days when things just go wrong and go wrong and go wrong?  You think, “Well, I can’t imagine what else could happen!” and then you immediately find out.  I’ve had terrible battery karma lately.  First my glow in the dark alarm clock batteries went.  The clock required AAA’s and fortunately, I had two (antiques, I later realized.)  I put them in, and was pleased with myself for being so efficient.  The batteries lasted a grand total of two days.  Fortunately, this was not an emergency, as I have a little phalanx of (non-glow in the dark) clocks in my bedroom, all poised to make sure I get out of bed on time on Sunday mornings. However, later that evening, the batteries on my furnace thermostat went out.  I opened it up, confident that with my supply of various sizes of batteries, this would be no problem.  However, guess what!  AAA’s again!  It seems like not that many things take this size, so that made it also seem like the battery gods were aligned against me.  And this time it was more of an emergency, as with no thermostat, there would be no heat, and it was getting pretty cold. I joggled the batteries around a bit, giving a small boost to their lease on life, and then the next day, Margaret and I forged out through the winds and rains, battling the elements to get the necessary electrical gear.  I hoped that that would be that, battery-wise!  But such was not to be.

I was baking bread and a cake for my dinner with The Twins, and as I was using my wonderful electric scale to measure out the 500 gm flour for the bread, I was thinking that it seemed like an awfully lot of flour.  Then, I measured out the various dried fruits for the cake.  No way these fruits are going to fit into this little cake pan, even if there were no flour, sugar, or eggs, I told myself.  So I weighed a cup of water.  It weighed 162 gm instead of the usual 227.  Aaaaaaaargh!  Converting to cups, I remeasured the bead flour, and it was close enough to the right amount.  But not quite right.  I could add some more water to fix the bread problem, but the fruits were waaaaaay off.  Converting again, I calculated how many cups total of fruit I needed, and found that I had about 30% too much.   Well, I can save the extra fruit for some future cake.  Fortunately, I had not put in any the eggs, oil or sugar.  The scale’s battery must have been in it’s death throes as I was measuring flour for the bread, and just doing agonal breathing as I measured the fruit.  I have lots of non-AAA batteries, so I opened the scale up to find that it had one of those funny rectangular biggish ones. I had a few of those, but then I couldn’t figure out how to get the old one out!   I called my aunt, who reassured me.  “The Twins are clever.  They will be able to fix it.”  (This turned out to be true.)  “But I’m cooking now!  That will be too late,” I wailed.  I had expected to be cooking until about seven p.m., but, given all my unexpected culinary problems,  I finally dropped into bed closer to midnight.  

No more measuring problems with my dinner, but when I dropped my chopped onions from their storage container into the sizzling oil, instead of the expected “fwoosh” sound, there was a “clunk.”  There in the pan was the lid of the container, being sautéed along with the onions.  I managed to get it out without ruining either  it or the onions.  The rest of the dinner preparation was happily uneventful.