STUPIDITY

I have been intrigued with the 'Musings of the Old Biddy'. I don't know what the male of the species is called, but never mind, we should be allowed to have our say. There are many examples of 'Old Timers' not quite with it. I wasn’t quite with it recently, and I couldn’t believe I could be so stupid.

I like to experiment with cooking and recently made a steak and kidney pudding which I used to love as a child in England. However, having gone to town with the ingredients, I had so much steak and kidney left over I thought I would make a stew. With my stews, I always like to have dumplings, large and fluffy dumplings, so I set about making them. Out came my scales to measure the ingredients for dumplings and I weighed 3 ounces of shredded suet and put that into a dry pudding basin. Next, I added a pinch of salt and thoroughly mixed the suet and salt together. Then came the all purpose flour and I measured out 6 ounces of flour.

During this time, the simmering steak and kidney stew was making me feel very hungry. I quickly mixed the contents in the pudding basin with sufficient water to bind the dumplings. This is a bit of a messy palaver; the mixed dough had to be molded into balls the size of.....well it doesn't matter too much..... if you like dumplings you can make them large or small. After boosting the simmering stew to boiling point, I carefully forked my balls of dough into the stew.

After 25 minutes of cooking time, I eagerly served up my stew with my light-as-a-feather dumplings. Biting into one of them, I nearly broke my teeth! My, oh my, what had happened? My dumplings were just as hard as cannon balls. Had my mind temporarily lapsed? Where had I gone wrong?

Pondering the whole matter, my eyes roamed around the kitchen and came to rest on the scales and I was mortified. There was the carefully measured flour still on the scales. I had forgotten to add the flour! Will I ever live that down?

D.P. The Old Timer