In my September 16 entry, I gave you a cooking tip regarding grits and cornmeal. Got any stories you'd like to share?

-- Becky (becky-says@diaryland.com), September 17, 2000

Answers

As boys about 12 years of age, of course we knew everything. I don't know which of us dimwits decided we could make fudge, probably the one who had the ingredients and his Mom downtown. You have to give us "A" for effort, we didn't give up after the first try. All summer we would get together and try to make fudge. Sometimes we would eat it with a spoon like soup and sometimes break it apart with a hammer. We never achieved a fudgy fudge. I think when we went back to school the pursuit of girls overrode making fudge. Once in a while we could talk one of our Mom's into making a big batch.

-- Denver doug (ionoi@webtv.net), September 17, 2000.

I used to have a catering business. One time we were serving dinner for a dinner theatre at our church. (150 people) One of the items on the menu was a Fiddlehead Casserole. This was the third night of the dinner theatre, so I assumed my staff knew what they were doing at this point. I had to run out to the grocery store and when I came back, one of the girls wanted me to check the sauce she was making for the casserole. Instead of a creamy pale yellow sauce, it was almost bright yellow and it tasted TERRIBLE. Just then I looked up. "Where is the flour you used," I asked. Right there M. said pointing to a container of icing sugar on the counter. Off I went to the store again to replace the 2 dozen eggs that had gone into the sauce. Needless to say M. did not live that one down for a long time. (And I surely was happy she hadn't already mixed it in with the fiddleheads.)

-- Wilma Scott (coffeenews@ingleside.on.ca), September 17, 2000.

Oh yes Miss Home Ec major in High School set out to make a chocolate cake from scratch as always in those days. The Sunbeam mixmaster was doing its job and just as I broke an egg the teacher coming to check my upholstery homework knocked on the door. Yep, I dropped an egg shell but shut off the mixer.

After Mrs. Baird left I picked the shell out, finished the cake baked it iced it. I came home from Civil Air Patrol that evening to find a piece of cake on the table with my name on it. You guessed it, I had not succeeded in getting all the shell out... :-) Hope the birds enjoyed the cake frosting and all. Well really I don't remember what mom did with the cake, other than no one ate it after the first crunches.

-- Bonnie (rabble@express-news.net), September 17, 2000.

Another tale: Several years ago I participated in a community healthy heart project. In the course of things I published a couple of vegetarian cookbooks. One of the ladies in the group was notorious for being a terrible cook. Anyway she decided to make on of the recipes in the book for Wisconsin Chili. There was a typo in the book and instead of 1/2 cup cumin, it said 12 cups cumin. Other cooks spotted this and realized what had happened. She put the whole 12 cups in! The funny part of this is that her family ate it. Because her cooking was always so bad, they figured it was just another bad meal. :-)

-- Wilma Scott (coffeenews@ingleside.on.ca), September 17, 2000.