Can Someone Please Build Me an Ark?

What began as a simple trip to the deep freeze turned into a disaster. This morning I was part way through making Rum Raisin Oatmeal cookies when I decided that I needed a raspberry brownie. Once the thought entered my head it wouldn’t go away until the raspberry brownie urge was satisfied. In order to do that I had to go downstairs to the deep freeze where I had hidden the brownies with the hope that I wouldn’t eat them all, (fat chance!). As I descended the stairs, something didn’t feel right. I blinked a few times to allow my eyes to adjust to the darkened basement. For some reason the floor looked a little shimmery. I decided it was just my eyes playing tricks on me so I continued down the stairs. On the second last step I realized why the floor appeared shimmery, but the part of my brain that was controlling the urge for a brownie overtook the part that controls common sense. I stepped off the last stair knowing full well was about to happen and yet still didn’t prevent it. SPLOOSH! I was soaked up to my ankles. The entire basement was flooded. I practically needed a boat to row to the freezer. My first instinct was to back slowly up the stairs, shut the basement door and pretend like nothing ever happened.

Apparently the common sense area of my brain was shocked into action by my wet feet and it told me that I had to do something about this mess. Or at least phone someone else to do something about this mess. The problem solver on the other end of the line told me to turn off the water in the house because he believed the cause of the tsunami in my basement to be a burst hot water heater. After I got off the phone, shut off the water and moved the cat’s litter box to higher ground, I decided there was nothing more I could do to fix the basement until reinforcement arrived. It was around this time that the brownie urge returned so I pulled on some big rubber boots, trudged through the murky swamp waters, delved into the deepfreeze and emerged victorious, brownie in hand. Moments later that brownie was safely tucked away in my tummy and I was ready to finish making cookies.

Unlike everything, there were no problems with the cookies. I especially liked the part were I got to leave the dishes in the sink because there was no hot water to wash them. Most importantly though, the cookies didn’t suffer any harm and they showed no signs of the drama that swirled around them. The rum turned out to be more like a secret ingredient than having a flat out alcoholic taste. It was a unique addition to the cookies that most people liked but couldn’t quite put their finger on unless they were told that it was rum. My supervisor ate more than half of them while trying to figure it out. I think it was just an excuse for him to eat more cookies. That was fine by me, he can have all the cookies he wants, I'd like a raise in return…

You may be wondering what the pictures have to do with this story. Nothing really, but the post would have been naked without them. I don’t have photos of the raspberry brownies, (Donna Hay, I highly recommend them) or the Rum Raisin Oatmeal cookies so instead I’m giving you a couple of other treats that I hadn’t gotten around to posting about yet. The first pic is of Dorie’s Chocolate Chunk muffins, to which I added blueberries because I had fresh ones sitting on the counter, daring me to put them in. The second photo is a strawberry rhubarb pie that I made for a friend after his repeated pie requests went unanswered. It had gotten to the point that I was starting to worry that if I didn’t bake him a pie soon he would buy some sort of frozen abomination that they try to pass off for pie at a convenience store. No one’s tastebuds deserve to be assaulted like that so I made him a real pie, complete with lattice top, just to be fancy. And doesn’t it look pretty under my cake dome?!?