A Doughy Disaster

Submitted by: Janice R. ~ Enid, OK

I remember it like it was yesterday, even though now it's been 28 years. Mom and I decided it was time to get a serious cleaning done in the kitchen. We scrubbed the kitchen floors on our hands and knees, and then followed up with a hand applied wax. Then we tackled the oven. Not a self-cleaning oven, rather an old-fashioned gas oven which needed to be sprayed and scraped and scrubbed. This took the better part of a whole day. We then decided that, as a reward for all of our efforts and toil, we would bake a batch of Toll House cookies. So we measured, sifted, and stirred, then put our rounded tablespoon measures of perfect cookie dough onto our greased cookie sheets, and went to put them into our pristinely scrubbed and preheated oven, which sat on our shiny, freshly waxed floor. Then it happened. The fates looked upon our activities and smiled a sinister smile. In this June Cleaver moment, they instead envisioned Lucy Ball...and the planets realigned to alter the scene. My stockinged feet slipped ever so slightly, just at the precise moment I was leaning into the oven with the cookie sheet full of dough. The sheet upended, landing dough side down all over the hot interior of the opened oven door. Frustrated and panicked that the cookies would begin baking on the hot surface, my mother filled a bucket of hot, soapy water. We set the bucket down on the clean floor. We began scooping hot, melted cookie dough out of the oven, and into the bucket of soapy water. Just as we were cleaning the last of the mess out of the oven, my knee hit the bucket. Two gallons of sludgey, cookie-dough, melted-chocolate-infused water spilled all over our newly waxed floor, leaving a pool of mush and mayhem all over the kitchen. We sat in the mess and laughed until we cried. Even though it was, by all counts, a complete kitchen disaster, it remains one of my mother's and my favorite memories of being together in the kitchen.

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