Helping in the Kitchen

Always ready to help in the kitchen!

                Sunday, mid-September—All the baked goods for the bazaar are delivered.  I can finally breathe!  Every year at this time, anxiety squeezes my heart because of the church fall festival.  Unlike much of my anxiousness, this has a legitimate source—baking for the public with the cats' help.

                Baking in general should not stress me out.  I grew up baking two or three desserts a week, but I never had to do it with cats.  Cats are a baker’s worst enemy.  A dog might put its paws on the counter and steal food near the edge.  Cats have no such limits.  In the blink of an eye you can go from feeling safe enough to grab the sugar from the shelf below, to wrestling a furry beast out of a half-filled mixing bowl as the flour, eggs, and $10 worth of pecans crash to the floor.   The cat will always come out of this unscathed and covered in enough batter to feed on for a few minutes’ amusement—mission accomplished.  Through tears of frustration, I fail to notice the next cat moving into position atop the refrigerator, where it waits for the optimal time to leap…and so the cycle continues until everything is tucked into the oven to bake.

                At this point the adventure is only half over.  Problem number two is storage.  Some items, like frosted cupcakes, don’t do well being knocked from table to floor.  With family treats, we all know to just deal with misshapen, furry food.  I feel, though, that the presentation should be better for bake sale items.  To complicate things, my family rises to the cats’ predator status at this stage, but they can usually be fended off with a bold “DO NOT EAT!!!!!” sign taped to the container.

                Where to keep things?  The counters and dining room table are not safe.  We use the microwave for cooking so that’s out.  It’s too warm to store things in the car—sudden inspiration (really, this just occurred to me)—I could bring a cooler out of the basement and store things in it—yes—maybe next year will be easier!

                Thankfully everything survived this year and I got a good night’s sleep knowing there was no repeat of the “Monty and the funeral cake” incident.  (Monty, our late orange tabby, jumped off the refrigerator onto a cake for a funeral cooling on the stove top—no, we didn’t give it a cosmetic frosting fix and take it anyway.)

                I don’t know if this counts as “suffering for my faith” or if I can glean any wisdom from it, but it did feel good to vent for a minute.