Aprons, Playdates, and Parted Hair

So I have this friend Meg who wears ironed aprons, has perfectly parted hair, and served us grilled angel food cake with strawberries on china for a play date snack.  I even had a saucer for my coffee.  This, after I offered up a frozen pizza and whatever the kids could find on the kitchen floor when she came to our house.  Pottery Barn looks to this woman’s house for ideas.  She has two little boys and still her home is vacuumed, dusted (it looks like she uses that Pledge stuff I’ve heard so much about), and there isn’t toothpaste smeared all over the bathroom sink.  She has curtains.  Toys are put away in cloth bins labeled with things like “puzzles,” and “legos,” and “action figures,” and there actually are puzzles and legos and action figures in those bins instead of sippy cups of old milk, m.i.a. kitchen utensils, and cat hair.  Did I mention that she also finds time to be a preschool teacher?  I watch her kid sometimes on teacher workdays and not only does she pay me, she sends her kid over with donuts.  Yeah, I know.

Anyway, Meg’s youngest son went to preschool with Ella and both kids are going to be going to kindergarten at the same school this year.  Meg has been awesome about leading me through the ins and outs of the new school (her oldest is already there) and was good enough to find Ella some hand-me-down uniforms for the upcoming year.  I wanted to bake something for Meg for helping me out, but what?  Quiche is usually my go-to, but she was a teacher at El’s school when I volunteered to make quiche for Teacher Appreciation Day and ended up drinking too much gin and singeing it.  My partner in gin crime sawed the blackened crust off with a bread knife and I turned it in anyway.  The story’s here if you want to read it.  Needless to say, based on my past performance quiche was out.  In the end I fancied up a banana bread recipe because banana bread is hard to jack up.  Yet I did.  Here’s what happened:

I concocted something that was Meg-worthy, poured the batter into my best bread pan–the one without the rust on the bottom–popped it in my oven, and waited for its glorious completion.  I wasn’t sure how long it would take since this was a new creation and I like my bread moist (that sounds like it should be dirty, but I can’t think of how), so after 30 minutes I pulled it out to check on it.  After stabbing the bread with a kabob stick I decided it still had a while to go and opened the oven door to put it back in.  Only instead of opening like a normal oven would do for a normal cook, my oven door fell apart in my hands.  With an underdone bread in one hand and an oven mitt in the other, I first caught the door handle as it pulled off the door, then the door frame and, finally, the glass panel from the front of the oven.  Yet somehow, through all of this, the door itself did not open.  “Steve, I need you!” I shouted to my husband upstairs.  “Come quick, it’s an emergency!”  “Oh, *%$!,” he proclaimed as he ran into the kitchen and grabbed a screw driver.  “No time for fixes!” I shrieked, “Get the crow bar and pry open the oven!  I’ll hold the glass and the front of the stove for the next 15 minutes!  We need to get Meg’s banana bread back in there, STAT!”  Steve, who knows nothing about aprons, or play dates, or parted hair, did not share my sense of urgency to save the bread and instead saved the oven door.  By the time he was done, it was too late.  I tried to make him eat the underdone bread as a punishment, but the batter stuck in his throat.  Anyway, mine ended up in the garbage can, but if you’re not in possession of demon appliances I’m sure yours will be divine. The recipe’s at Half-Assed Vegetarian if you want to make it and then send it to my friend Meg from me.

p.s. We ended up solving the oven situation by duct taping the door closed, thereby trapping the demons and, at the same time, rendering the oven completely useless.  As a result of this brilliant solution, I’ll be posting recipes for grilled and no-bake items on Half-Assed Vegetarian for a while.  If you’re too hot and bothered to use your oven, or if you’re just bored and wondering what the hippies are eating these days, check it out!  www.halfassedvegetarian.blogspot.com.

Subscribe to Just Barely by clicking here and get an email notification when new jackassery is posted.

Follow Just Barely on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook!