Little Drunk Chef

After the wedding I was exhausted, as was my Kenyan sister, Georgina, but our mum wasn’t in so we had to cook dinner. We could have bought it in town but knew that we’d be in trouble if there weren’t leftovers at home for mum. So I went home to cook. Importantly, I’d drank almost a quarter of a litre of brandy at this point, but I didn’t feel very drunk and so I’d forgotten that I wasn’t sober. I approached dinner by chopping up all the types of vegetable that I found in the fridge and making a stew. This was all going rather well but then I couldn’t find any carbohydrates to go with it. No pasta, rice or potatoes and so I decided to make dumplings. There was a hitch with this – no milk. Ever resourceful, I decided to use tea instead (because there was always a thermos of tea in the house, whatever time of day). I thought this might taste a bit odd and wanted to mask the taste of the tea with ground black pepper. Unfortunately, my hand slipped while pouring this in and rather a lot was added. This couldn't be helped though, the show must go on! Having come this far I didn’t let the next discovery that I didn’t have baking powder stop me either, so I used bicarbonate of soda instead (despite the fact that I didn't have an acidic ingredient to activate the rising agent in it). I then found that I had rather a lot of mixture. Not to worry, I poured it all into the pan to top the stew (what’s the point in leftovers right?) The problem then was that I had an enormous quantity of mixture, and it took forever to cook. The second problem was that it tasted disgusting (possibly because it wasn’t cooked). This was more of a problem. Especially when my quite nice stew was underneath. Georgina (my Kenyan counterpart) was very kind about it. She said that she liked it and then didn’t eat it. When I came home the next day from my day trip I found that it had all disappeared which was rather a relief. Jane says it makes her feel good to know that even I mess up in the kitchen sometimes and so I’m happy to think that this disgusting disaster has brought comfort to someone.