First story:
My cousin Cristin and I used to pretend that we were great bakers and would mix together concoctions with flour, water, sugar and whatever else we could find in the kitchen. We would put them in the pans from my easy bake oven and then put them in the sun to bake. One time we decided that we would put them on the back of the toilet to bake. We chose the downstairs bathroom (we lived in split level and the downstairs consisted of a bathroom, washer and dryer and the garage). The pans were later discovered by my dad who who of course brought the pans back upstairs wanting to know who was responsible for the mess. I think this was our last outing into the baking world.
Second Story:
One time while I was sleeping over at Cristin's house we decided that because the dirt behind her house was red, it was probably the same kind of dirt that they made pottery out of and that we should try and make pottery. There was a lot of disappointment when we realized that all we could make was red mud pies. Our disappointment was short lived because Cristin had just received a transistor radio (I think for her birthday) and we felt so hip staying up late listening to the radio (I had to do a lot of explaining to my kids about the days before ipods-in fact I even said this was before the walkman, but I drew blank stares with that reference as well). Transistor radios were not great, especially if you had a bedroom in the basement (another split level, it was the 70's). We held the radio up to the window to get better reception and I am sure we fell asleep with tired arms.
Third story-a request for a story about donuts:
My mom (grandma Chris) would go shopping in Idaho Falls (my kids were excited to confirm that they know Grandma Chris loves to shop) and one of her usual haunts was the Hostess bakery outlet. She would stock the freezer in the garage with bread and buns and donuts. When friends would come over to play we would sneak into the garage and have a frozen donut. We would eat them frozen because 1-we didn't want to get caught and 2-there was not microwaves to quickly defrost a donut (there were, just not at our house).
This led to the fourth story-the hot dogger
One of our favorite appliances as kids was the Presto Hot Dogger. It consisted of metal spikes that you would place hot dogs on (up to six) and then you would plug it in and the dogs would get electrocuted until they were warmed up. I remember eating a lot of hot dogs because we could do it ourselves. We would sit on the kitchen floor, plug it in and wait for the lid to get steamy-that was the sign that they were hot.
Fifth story-advent of the microwave in our home:
We moved into a new house and it had a microwave. My kids didn't know this, but there is a learning curve to using a microwave that we all had to go through. One day I decided that I wanted to make toast in the microwave. I watched the microwave and it did not get toasty. I put it in for longer. I must have walked away and when I came back there was smoke pouring out of the microwave. I had cooked that piece of bread for 5 minutes and it was black and smoking and it set of the fire alarm. I took it to the back yard where it made the back yard stinky. I don't remember throwing it away. Our backyard was dirt at the time, I probably just left it outside for the critters or my mom to clean up.
My other microwave mishap happened when I tried to boil an egg in the microwave. I didn't know this was a bad idea. I think I put the egg in a cup of water and then put it in the microwave. After a time I pulled it out and went to run the egg under cold water so it would be easier to peel (I did know some things). I am standing at the sink and all of the sudden my egg explodes and showers the ceiling above (vaulted ceiling with exposed tongue and groove wood) me with egg shrapnel. Egg shrapnel that stained the ceiling of a new house. That was an ever present reminder that eggs were not to be cooked in the microwave.
Last story-request for a story about flowers:
Every year we had to plant annuals around our yard. We had a big yard. I don't remember it being a huge production (perhaps the college girls my mom hired did the job), but one year my mom bought petunias, a lot of petunias. I don't know how she got them all home, they covered the entire floor of the third garage bay in our garage. We were all dreading planting all those petunias. At the time we had a dog and at some point between purchase and planting the dog got into the garage and peed on those petunias. The ones that had been peed on died-probably about 1/3. As we were planting the remainder we would remove the dead ones. For some reason we decided to call them "warm". Don't plant this one, it is "warm". The presence of "warm" petunias made planting the ones that had survived that much more entertaining.
