Open Writing

It’s no joke. I have invented a whole new kind of cuisine, and as is the case with many of the world’s greatest strides forward, it came about entirely by accident.

Despite cooking the same ingredients regularly, try as I might I am not yet able to reproduce the same dish in exactly the same way more than once. However, there is more than a consistent inconsistency going on here, because the underlying formula is applied to every dish.

Whether boiling eggs, which is a relatively simple task, or the more demanding responsibility of frying bacon, eggs, and tomatoes, or even, as I discovered this morning, making fried bread like my mother used to make, the approach is the same: only the duration of the final technique is variable.

Although I am not a trained scientist, I believe that I have discovered the proverbial fly in the proverbial ointment, and that discovery and my response to it could to set my feet firmly on the road to kitchenial success. Whether it will or not depends entirely on my ability to recognise and comprehend the rate at which time passes in different situations. The time thing being the crux magna of the whole matter, but it is in that respect that science fails me.

Einstein hinted that the curvature of space means that time is not constant. I do not know whether he is correct in that view, but I have discovered for myself, without reference to curvatures or space, that time passes at different velocities in different situations, and it is that very changeability that affects the outcome of ‘E-mail Cuisine.’

I have a better understanding of the presumption that insists that whether a minute is a long or a short time depends on whether a fellow is sat on a red hot stove or kissing a pretty girl. Yet, as helpful as that differentiation is, it only half applies to ‘E-mail Cuisine.’

This morning’s breakfast was planned as fried bacon, eggs, and tomatoes. The project went well up until the time I put the perfectly fried repast on my plate and looked longingly at the bacon fat swilling about in the pan. Never one to waste an opportunity, I took a slice of bread and dropped it in the pan to fry it to a sweet golden brown, just as mother used to do.

To prevent the bread from burning, I lowered the heat and flipped the bread twice. It was saturated with about three heart attacks worth of something nasty, but it wasn’t getting the golden glow that I remembered in the good old days when mother fried the bread and horses as big and strong as elephants pulled iron-rimmed wagons that carried goods out of the Fitzwilliam Street railway yard.

As is common in ‘E-mail Cuisine,’ I told myself that at such low heat I had time to check my incoming e-mail before the bread was cooked. I swear on a pile of cookery books that I was at the computer for no more than a minute, if that, but when I re-entered the kitchen, it was smoke-logged.

Principles of ‘Contrary Science’ had seized control of the "World Time Authority" and spun the hands of all our clocks and watches around at a ratio of twenty-to-one, which meant that my one-minute absence had translated into twenty minutes of frying. Peering at my scrap of bread through the curling and swirling carboniferous smoke, the bread looked nicely golden, although with a hint of rich bronze at its periphery.

Delight turned into dismay when I flipped the bread and saw to my horror that ‘E-mail Cuisine' had claimed another victim and my heart in its anguish cried with the Prophet Job:

"The thing which I greatly feared is come upon me!"

The underside was as black as soot. Whether it also tasted like soot, I do not know. I set the pan with its Plutonian contents on the side of the draining board so that I can report another victory for ‘E-mail Cuisine,’ and another resounding and all-too-common defeat for me, when my longsuffering wife, Gay, returns home from her errands.

Copyright © 2005 Ronnie Bray
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Read more of Ronnie's stories at:
http://www.2theheart.com/author_ronnie_bray
http://www.meridianmagazine.com/voices/011024summer.html