A Recipe For Disaster - 935 words

Leaving home on bad terms with your mother is a Recipe For Disaster

Let This Be a Lesson To You, Boy!

(Leaving home on bad terms with your mother is a recipe for disaster)


Go on then! Git! And don't come back! That's right! Don't you darken my doorstep again! Don't you dare take my electric wok, my microwave, my automatic rice cooker, my toaster or my utensils!

Yes, leaving home on bad terms with your mother is a recipe for disaster. Never mind about that rich aunt who owns an apartment in a nice inner suburb. She's away with the fairies, and you won't find anything useful in her apartment.

Exotic furniture, possibly a mortar and pestle (witches use them, and she qualifies) - but pots, pans or food? Forget it!

So, apologize and I will see what I can do for you. Let me see…No! I'm not going to give you my kitchenware, but I will buy you these items, providing you honor your promise to pay the $1,600 insurance excess on the car I bought you. that you have written off.

I know that's more than a wok costs, but it's the principle of the thing. All right, you can pay it off over twenty years at .50c a week, but you make sure that it goes in my bank every week! Do you hear me?

Now, let's get down to the facts of life. You will leave home that's not negotiable. I will not abandon you to a street life, of newspapers for blankets and stealing food from supermarkets.

Yes, I know I said you could go to hell, but I didn't mean it. You are my beloved son.

Apart from most of my furniture, linen, life savings, the thing you will want most when the dust settles in your new apartment, is a hearty meal. Furthermore, you won't want to cook it, since it usually cooks itself, as far as you know. That's despite being made to take cooking classes at school.

Well, I have some good news: there are pots that cook for you. The mighty microwave is pretty good, too. What's more, I know you know this, that's why you tried to sneak off with them in the middle of the night.

I was right; Auntie hasn't got anything useful in her apartment. You defensively add that you have found some genuine Indian curry, goats cheese and a bottle of red wine hand made in Tunisia? You don't say!

OOPS! You weren't supposed to tell me where you were living, were you? Auntie made that a condition of 'lending' you, her apartment.

I know that she thinks I am the Devil Incarnate, and she might be right, but that is no excuse for that Holy-Roller- From -The -Bush to get you to lie to your mother.

Staying with friends indeed! Where was I supposed to leave the groceries that you ordered? In the middle of Melbourne, at Uni? Anyway, I feel a recipe coming on...

Kebabs on a Bed of Rice

Ingredients & Method

Lamb, chicken or beef strips; don't get the butcher to do it - the price of half a kilo of any of the ingredient will go up by $10.00. Cut it yourself with one of those expensive knives you stole off me.

Marinade with a quarter of a cup of cream sherry, two tablespoons of Oyster Sauce, cover and refrigerate for the duration it takes to cook the rice.

Rice
Either white or brown rice: for every well-washed cup of rice, add a cup of water to the automatic rice steamer - which keeps it hot for five hours after it's cooked itself.

'Turn it on!'

'You use a sieve to rinse the rice, you dill!

'For God's sake, even a quarter wit knows not to put the rice in the sink to wash it,
then pull the plug - and let the rice go down the sink!'

'Now use some Big Tooth Pics aka Bamboo Skewers.'

(Back to reading the recipe)

After dicing the meat and marinading it you put the pieces on the skewers. If you can be bothered, you can alternate these pieces of meat with pineapple chunks, button mushrooms, capsicum (chop it up first!) all very easy.

Now, place these kebabs in a greased baking tray. Put them in the oven on about 200 degrees c for about 20- 25 minutes. Put the rice on the plate, add kebabs, get out the Tunisian red wine, and eat up.

'Who needs a mother? Or an Auntie?'

'All you need is a job. To pay for it all. My account comes to $2,500,000. That's nine months of confinement, three hours of labour, six months of sleepless nights, quite a few hundred thousand on food, clothing, housing, education, medical and dental bills, toys, birthday presents, Christmas presents, holidays and cars.'

'Auntie’s bill mightn't be that much. Sleep tight, Love from Mother.'

'Now don't be like that, you don't hate cooking... '


'And finally, now you have something else to live on besides a packet of Weet-biscuits and a bottle of cologne…Yes, I know that you think that $90 bottles of expensive cologne are a good buy, what with the alcohol content and all…

Just because alcohol is a disinfectant, you can't use it to deodorize all your orifices and underarms, clean the toilet and use it to spray the weeties bowl with!'

'You're sick of the sound of my voice, you say? I'm off then, me and my money…to faraway places, to the land of no bills or children.'

'Where the sun always shines. Where what is mine is my own, not yours!'

'Where is this place you ask? Can you come too?'

'Well, it's a clinic for the disturbed. DO NOT DISTURB!'

'Be seeing you, then, Spare Heir, Goodbye and Good Luck.'

935 words

© Copyright 2004