An occult hand
July 16, 2000:
It was as if an occult hand had unfurled its delicate fingers and patted me lightly on the head. Placed lovingly in my e-mail box - OK, and about 100,000 others - sat a recipe for Chocolate Hazelnut Truffles.
Heavens, it looked easy: five basic ingredients and about 90 words of instruction, and no candy thermometer. And I had every ingredient called for - a sign to be sure!
The recipe also gave me a chance to score points against the spouse, for it would let me try out the chopping function of my new hand blender. “Look, doll, I don't just buy the gadgets," I could say. “I actually use them, once in a while."
Surely, the hand of fate had smiled upon me. But was the hidden force hiding things? One minute I saw an essential piece of the blender/chopper, the next it had vanished.
But I wasn't about to be sidetracked in the middle of a divine mission. I wheeled around the kitchen like a madwoman, peering under heaps of newspapers and behind motley gatherings of spice jars and nutritional supplements, in the drainer, on open shelves, in high-heaped drawers, on the stovetop, behind the sugar and the cookies and the flour. AARRGGHH. I tore that miserable room apart. After half an hour of anguish, I was frazzled, dispirited and wrathful, prepared at last to defy fate and turn to my conventional blender or my food processor to chop the hazelnuts.
But then, that occult hand seemed to step in and save me: The beaker lid suddenly turned up in the crockery cabinet, atop a pile of dinner plates. I was still seething, but my new gadget buzzed the nuts so quickly and nicely, my gloom lifted, and I strode on toward destiny.
After melting butter and chocolate, then adding sugar, I blithely dumped in half of the finely chopped hazelnuts. Once this die was cast, a strange force guided my eyes to the remaining nuts. Odd. Lurking amid the nut pieces, a whole passel of white flakes glinted forth. As the chocolate cooked on unattended, I investigated: The plastic cover on my new appliance's chopping blades had disappeared. Something had diverted me from reading the instruction “Remove blade cover before chopping."
I did taste the truffle mixture. Do you like scorched chocolate with a bitter plastic taste?
I'd clearly misread the occult hand. All along, it was giving me a rude gesture.
It was as if an occult hand had unfurled its delicate fingers and patted me lightly on the head. Placed lovingly in my e-mail box - OK, and about 100,000 others - sat a recipe for Chocolate Hazelnut Truffles.
Heavens, it looked easy: five basic ingredients and about 90 words of instruction, and no candy thermometer. And I had every ingredient called for - a sign to be sure!
The recipe also gave me a chance to score points against the spouse, for it would let me try out the chopping function of my new hand blender. “Look, doll, I don't just buy the gadgets," I could say. “I actually use them, once in a while."
Surely, the hand of fate had smiled upon me. But was the hidden force hiding things? One minute I saw an essential piece of the blender/chopper, the next it had vanished.
But I wasn't about to be sidetracked in the middle of a divine mission. I wheeled around the kitchen like a madwoman, peering under heaps of newspapers and behind motley gatherings of spice jars and nutritional supplements, in the drainer, on open shelves, in high-heaped drawers, on the stovetop, behind the sugar and the cookies and the flour. AARRGGHH. I tore that miserable room apart. After half an hour of anguish, I was frazzled, dispirited and wrathful, prepared at last to defy fate and turn to my conventional blender or my food processor to chop the hazelnuts.
But then, that occult hand seemed to step in and save me: The beaker lid suddenly turned up in the crockery cabinet, atop a pile of dinner plates. I was still seething, but my new gadget buzzed the nuts so quickly and nicely, my gloom lifted, and I strode on toward destiny.
After melting butter and chocolate, then adding sugar, I blithely dumped in half of the finely chopped hazelnuts. Once this die was cast, a strange force guided my eyes to the remaining nuts. Odd. Lurking amid the nut pieces, a whole passel of white flakes glinted forth. As the chocolate cooked on unattended, I investigated: The plastic cover on my new appliance's chopping blades had disappeared. Something had diverted me from reading the instruction “Remove blade cover before chopping."
I did taste the truffle mixture. Do you like scorched chocolate with a bitter plastic taste?
I'd clearly misread the occult hand. All along, it was giving me a rude gesture.
posted by aparker54 at 8:58 AM
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