Fiasco

In retrospect we should probably have fled while the fleeing was good when Emma Jean came marching in the door brandishing a large sheet of paper about in an most eloquent manner and making enthusiastic noises. After all, we had know her for the majority of our lives and had several previous episodes to hark back to. The fact is that she was , and is, rightly famous for landing herself and anyone unwise enough to be in the immediate vicinity, in hot water on a frequent basis. Her motives are always as pure as the driven snow but somehow things she spearheads have a marked tendancy to get a trifle out of hand.

Anyway, the six of us were sitting about innocently sipping our tea, discussing facinating tidbit of news we had collectivly collected, laughing over Stella Mea's inevitable witty comments and in general behaving as behoves a group of well brought up elderly ladies out for tea. And then as I said Emma Jean arrived. Actually arrived is a decidedly feeble expression for her mode of entry. She was much to enthused to merely arrive , in fact it would have been the perfect setting to have had a brass band preeceed her, dressed in full regalia. However , brass bands being in short supply these days she merely "arrived" ,ensconced herself in her accustomed seat and after being supplied with food and drink to shore up her flagging strength set herself to the task of explaining the cause of her exitment to the rest the assembly. A somewhat draw out proceeding due to the fact that it is somewhat difficult to speak coherently while drinking tea and munching edibles, and that putting a thing in cogerent form has never been one of Emma Jeans talents. Never the less after several excursions into side topics and returns there from we finally grasped the all important fact- there was to be a cookie making contest that week and the prize would go , not for the tastiest cookie , but for the largest one. And Emma Jean was bound and determined that we seven could , and would, win that prize. The rest of us were somewhat more skeptical but her enthusiasm was contagious and before long schemes were in the making. The first point to tack down being how big did the cookie need to be in order to be the biggest. That was obviously somewhat hard to figure out since we lacked the necesary data to make the calculations. ie.. how big our competitors planned to make their cookies. It was finally decided that we would just have to make it as big as we possibly could and hope for the best since we could'nt exactly go collar anyone in town capable of baking a cookie and demand to know the specs on Their prospective cookies. That conclusion led to the next question. How big a cookie could we make? After extensive consideration of cookie sheet size, oven dimentions, etc....it was decided that we could make square cookie the size of the larges cookie sheet any of us possessed , but that still wasn't exactly an outstandingly large cookie. Exitment flagged. Moral was at low ebb. And then Emma Jean had a flash of pure inspiration. Why not use her fireplace! It was a massive thing and once it was hot, it was hot, so presumably if one put out the fire , scraped it clean , and waited till the right moment one could bake a truly magnificent cookie. The idea was a hit. Especially since it was her fireplace , in her house, so that if there just happened to be a bit of stray soot drifting about it would be her curtains it settled on , not ours.

That decided we all went our seperate ways to collect all the cookie ingrediants we collectively possessed, to be invested in the project. An hour later we were ready. The fire place had a roaring blaze in it and we were assembled in the kitchen attempting to figure out how many times Emma Jean's Grandmother's cookie recepie should be multiplied in order to produce a fireplace sized amount of dough. After much figuring and speculating we settled on 10× Grandmas receipe and prepared to mix. That turned out to be easier said than done. The mixer was much too small , as were all the available bowls basins and whatnot. After several disasterous attempts we concluded that making ten individule batches was the way to go if one is attempting the art of giant cookie making.By this time the kitchen and seven perspiring ladies ( bear in mind the roaring blaze in the fireplace) were in an interesting state of disarray. At last the last bowl was mixed, the last butter creamed, the last pinch of this and that added and the time had come to bake. Or we thought so untill we realized that if one wishes to bake giant cookies in ones fire place one must have a giant pan on which to put ones giant cookie. Dismay reigned supreme. Just about at the point when we were all suffering horrid visions of losing the grand prize for lack of a pan, inspiration again hit. There was a large sheet of metal in someones garage that would be the very thing! No sooner said than done. One party set off to fetch the pan while the other set to work readying the oven. Also easier said than done. Have you ever attempted to extinguish a roaring fire in a fireplace expeditiously enough so that the fireplace remains hot enough to bake cookies? No? Well , I don't recomend it unless you really wish to have an interesting singed look about your person for quite a while to come. However we perservered and by the time the other party returned puffing but triumphant , bearing the pan in all its full splendor, the fire was out and we were waiting in a dishevaled but triumphant group in a living room that was liberally bestrewed with the black and sooty remnants of the erstwhile fire.

Rolling the cookie out was relitivly easy in comparison with the previous steps. The odd fingre got pinched and the cookie aquired some decidedly sooty looking marks but on the whole we were quite pleased with our achievement. Then came the hard part, putting the cookie in the fireplace. We felt somewhat like the soldiers casting the three men into the fiery furnace altho thankfully we escaped unscathed except for a few burnt fingers. Having achieved out aim we hovered anxiously round supervising the baking of our key to fame glory and first prize. And surprisingly it went beautifully. If you should ever have a fancy to make a grand sized cookie I recommend baking it in you fireplace, with one importante footnote . Never, never, never, do so if your chimney has not been recently swept. Emma Jean's had not and the result was catastrophic. Just as the cookie reached the perfect golden brown and as I opened my mouth to say " It's done." there was a soft drifting sound , a gently current of air, the faintest whisper as of a gentle breeze.... and an avalanch of soot fell from the chimney obliterating our masterpiece. The ruin was total. It was undoubtedly a grand and superlative cookie, but it looked like a sooty lump and sooty lumps, no matter what their pedigree as Grandmothers Favorite Cookie do not win prizes. So That was the end of That. Or more correctly it was the end of our bid for fame as the bakers of The Giant Cookie. Rose Morrison won the grand prize with a vastly inferior specimin. We did however have the consolation of knowing that But for the Soot there Would Have Gone We!