Day 24: Not even the birds wanted my cookies

Between You, Me and the Lamp Post

Day 24: Not even the birds wanted my cookies

Someone asked me today if one of my hobbies was cooking and baking. Euh well, I cook dinner every night, but I would hardly call it a hobby. 

Am I a good cook? Well, you would have to ask my son that. I haven’t poisoned him yet, so that’s a good sign. By no stretch of the imagination am I competition for Julia Child though, so let’s just say that I’m an average cook.

As for baking … no, where it comes to baking I have two left hands. Let me tell you a story, two stories actually. Long-time readers might be familiar with the stories as they’ve been published before, but since I have quite a few new subscribers to my blog I’ll tell the stories again.

I remember the day like it was

yesterday. My son, Dieter, had his 6^th birthday coming up and I was going to make cupcakes for his party. I got all the ingredients together, mixed the dough, scooped bits of it into the paper cups and placed the lot in the oven.

“Keep an eye on them will you, Dieter,” I said. “I’m quickly gonna go and make the beds.”

It didn’t take long before he called “Ma! The cupcakes are foaming.”

I stuck my head out of one of the bedrooms. “You mean they are rising? They’re supposed to do that.”

A short while later Dieter called again. “Ma, those cupcakes are rising really high.”

“How high?” I called back.

“I don’t know,” he said, appearing in the bedroom doorway. “The oven looks like a washing machine. All foamy.”

Foamy? That didn’t sound good.

When I went to take a look, I saw right away that something had gone horribly wrong. The whole oven was full of foaming dough and it was forcing its way out through the cracks. To cut a long story short, instead of normal flour I had used self-rising flour with a good dose of yeast. It took me ages to clean the oven and Dieter got a store-bought coke for his birthday.

Not one to give up easily, I decided to try my hand at cookies. Maybe that would work better than cupcakes. I followed the instructions of the cookbook and paid attention to use the correct flour this time.

When the time came to eat the cookies Dieter took a bite and pulled a face.

“What?” I asked him.

“They’re kinda hard,” he said.

I tried one too and OMG this wasn’t a cookie, this was a stone and so were the others.

Instead of throwing them in the bin, I decided to feed them to the birds. Imagine my surprise when a couple of pigeons showed up, briefly pecked at the cookies and took off again. Not even the birds wanted my cookies!

Oh well, I could always feed them to the ducks.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” my ex said. “The ducks might sink.”

The years passed and I met someone who gave me the recipe for focaccia bread. I tried it and it came out beautiful. I tried another kind of bread and while the result was not exactly perfect, it was edible.

Something I make really well though if I say so myself, is ‘Aalsterse vlaaien’. It’s not bread and it’s not a cake, it’s a type of flan, but solid. 

Just about every woman in Aalst, Belgium, knows how to make it and being from Aalst, I too pride myself that I can make it too.

Day 6: Ducks, Geese and Dieter

Between You, Me and the Lamp Post

Day 6: Ducks, Geese and Dieter

Dieter took a day off work today and after lunch, we took a walk to the pond behind our condo building. We took a bag of old bread along as there are always hungry ducks and geese.

Follow along on our journey:

Notice the pond in the center of the picture

Stop to smell the flowers

 They saw us approaching and looked at us with suspicion

 But they let us come closer and closer

 Noticing there was food to be had, the birds came out of the water

 First a few, then a whole lot

 Papa goose kept an eye on the proceedings

 Dieter invited them to come closer

  Which they did

 This duck was more interested in me

With the ducks and geese fed it was time to go home

 Quickly posing for a picture

 And then continue the journey

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Day 34: What do you hear when you go outside?

My Project: 365 Creative Writing Prompts

Day 34: What do you hear when you go outside?

What do I hear when I go outside? Well, that all depends on the time of day.

If I go outside at the crack of dawn, I hear a cacophony of birdsong. As you can see from the picture, there’s a large field behind the building where I live with lots of trees. Those trees are home to a variety of birds and first thing in the mornings they all have something to say. I sometimes wonder what they are twittering about. They could be discussing the dreams they had, debating what to have for breakfast, or simply making plans for the day.

A little further down in the picture you’ll see a pond. This pond is home to a number of ducks and geese. They too are quite the conversationalists. They can be heard when they’re coming in for landing as if the leader is giving instructions. Once on the ground, it often sounds like he’s giving feedback.

With them too I have no idea what they’re saying, but it sounds like every now and then these ducks and geese dissolve in peals of laughter.

Then there are the trains. Every 5 minutes during peak hours and every 10 minutes during the rest of the day, the SRT (Scarborough Rapid Transit) train passes by. 

Contrary to what you might think, the passing trains don’t bother me at all. In fact, I’m so used to them, I don’t hear them at all.

To GO-train, on the other hand, can't be missed. That train can be heard from quite a distance away and when it thunders past, anybody and everybody knows about it.

Micky loves that train. When he hears the train coming he rushes outside and sits on the ledge, or he jumps on a windowsill to watch the big green machine go by.

Other than that, there are all kinds of noises during the day. Cars coming and going, with quiet or not so quiet passengers.

In the distance, cars can be heard, along with the wail of ambulances or firetrucks. And every so often there is a loud bang. These bangs can be a car backfiring, an electric transformer blowing (as there is a power station nearby), or a gunshot. Who knows.

Late at night, when all should be quiet, a group of youngsters uses the parking lot behind the building as their personal playground. One car after another park in a dark corner and what happens next depends on that particular evening. Sometimes they play music, loud music, talk, and laugh.

Other nights they drink, and the more they drink, the louder they get. When they’re done, they smash the bottles leaving the glass and other debris behind. In the course of the evening, more cars come and go. It’s hard to see what goes on, but sometimes packages get exchanged.

Usually, after 2:00 a.m. all goes quiet.

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