Dum Amarican

Last night, I was buying veggies at an Asian market. There was a barrel of fresh bean sprouts by the meat counter (right in front of the organ display), but I didn't see any scoop, so I just plunged in barehanded and grabbed a fistful. The butchers' chatter became subdued and I realised what I was supposed to put a plastic bag on my hand first. (You turn it inside out over your hand, seize the veggies, and turn it around so that the veggies are now inside the bag and your hand isn't. I've seen it done before, I simply forgot.)

D'OH!

Today, I'm practicing the Welsh analytic passive with cael "get, obtain". For instance: Caed ei ddihatru a ei anfon i 'mhabell i! "Have him stripped and sent to my tent!" (Lit.: "Get his undressing and his sending to my tent!")

How to bake Everything Wrong™

For my example, I've chosen oatmeal-raisin cookies, but keep in mind that this is a technique, not a recipe, and can be applied to nearly anything.

1. Take stock of your ingredients, if you must, but only in a superficial manner--enough to convince you you have everything you need to begin the project, but no more than that. By no means check aged products for freshness or usuability.
2. Start late so that you won't be tempted to run out and replace anything you are short of.
3. Soften the year-old butter from the freezer as briefly as possible. Hey, we want to eat these before bedtime, people!
4. Hack up the rock-hard brick of dessicated brown sugar with an old kitchen knife. When this fails to reduce it to granules, moisten it with a bit of water and alternately scrape off half-dissolved goo and pare it into tinier rock-hard lumps. Be sure to spray bzw. smear sugar liberally around your work area in the process.
5. Cream the butter and sugar. And when I say "cream", I really mean "whip the butter and sprinkle with sugar rocks". (For best results, choose a bowl at least a size too small and fling whipped butter over every conceivable surface.)
6. Let sit the mixture in the vain hope that the moisture in the butter will begin to dissolve the sugar. Stick the bowl in the fridge for a while after you begin to worry that the butter is getting too runny.
7. Combine the dry ingredients--flour, cinnamon, baking soda, salt. Forget what you've down with your half-cup measuring cup and waste at least ten minutes searching for it before making do with a quarter-cup one, then convince yourself that baking powder is really the same thing as baking soda.
8. Mix in an egg into the butter-sugar mixture. Let sit again in the ever-vainer hope of dissolving huge hunks of brown sugar.
9. Remove the largest lumps and discard before beating in the dry ingredients. Mixture should have a noticeably gummy quality.
10. Separate brick of dessicated raisins, again using a kitchen cleaver if necessary, and add to batter.
11. Remember to preheat the damn oven.
12. Drop batter onto cookie sheet using two spoons. Be sure to vary the size and spacing of the lumps as much as possible. (It helps to have only one cookie sheet and fill it with more cookies than it could possibly hold.)
13. Bake for twice the recommended time. Three-quarters of the way through, ramp up the temperature at least 50 degrees because the balls of dough are still squooshy.
14. Burn the bottoms while leaving the interiors underdone.
15. Remove and cool. Eat at least a half dozen because, goddamnit, you worked hard to make the stupid things.

Tips: In carrying out these instructions, note that it helps to have a kitchen with a shortage of counter space. Keep in mind that you can simulate or exacerbate this effect by piling up crap on what counter space you do have. Waiting at least a year between baking attempts will help insure that your ingredients are as old and dried-out as they can be without actually being spoiled or inedible.