Appliances Conspire Against the Cook

My friend Dorothy Depew, an old college chum, called me last Saturday to give me a progress report on her Easter weekend dinner.

She and her late husband, Joe, had eight children. All of the kids and their husbands and wives come down the night before Easter.

Dor prepares a holy Saturday dinner and a giant Easter Day dinner.

Her progress report would have made a Spartan sob.

In the last rain, the water had overflowed a dam on Dor’s avocado ranch near Escondido and swept the lid off the Jacuzzi.

The water rose merrily through the grove, and the dirt and leaves piled up in the Jacuzzi.

Dor had called the repairman, and on Saturday he was on his way out with a new lid that cost just a little bit more than the original Jacuzzi.

Dor explained that the drain was not at the very bottom of the Jacuzzi, forcing the lady of the house to get in and scoop out the rest of the water, finally resorting to cups and sponges.

With the water-use limitations in the Escondido Valley, she will not be able to refill the Jacuzzi lest the authorities penalize her.

While Dor described this, she was cooking Saturday’s dinner.She was having lamb and new potatoes rolled in butter and carrots, on which she had placed a feathery stem to make the dish pretty. She decided to glaze the carrots. The only brown sugar she had was rock hard, so she put it in the microwave to soften.

It was then she had gone out to clean the Jacuzzi. When she came back in the house, there was an aroma of caramels. The entire bottom of the microwave oven was covered with caramelized sugar. The box had exploded.

She called the microwave man who pointed out that it was Saturday and that his fee would be doubled. She had already been given like news by the Jacuzzi man. So now she was waiting for two repairmen. One more and they could play bridge.

Then, she said, a noise boomed through the kitchen. The oven door flew open and broke.

She closed our conversation saying she was waiting for two grandchildren to come over to brace the oven door closed with two brooms until the lamb was done. My raggedy lavender rabbit with a sagging ear made it through one more Easter. He has gone back into the box of holiday treasures for the 30th year.

His lavender has faded almost to gray, and the wire that holds his ear erect is gone on one side. Every Easter, I almost throw him away but each time I think, “Well, one more time. But this is absolutely the last time.”

But then I think, “No one will see him until I get the Easter boxes down next year so what can one more time hurt.”

Now that the lavender bunny with the sagging ear has made it through one more time, he has made it forever.

I will never send him to the trash barrel. He has seen too many Easter mornings full of small boys and large college boys and who’s to say that a rabbit with a floppy ear is not as grand as one with two straight ones.

And you. Don’t throw away what is comparable to your lavender rabbit. Put it carefully back in the box, cuddled in the green cellophane grass.

Zan Thompson’s bimonthly column moves from Sunday to Thursday.