Three dear friends are coming to stay next weekend. They’re bringing along their writerly muses for an extended brainstorming session. It’s going to be so much fun. Naturally, good food is also on the agenda. I have a recipe for a fancy fruit pie that I wanted to refine and bake up my for gal pals.
Test-kitchen day arrives and I go looking for the recipe. There is only one hardcopy version, much revised and speckled with rejected ingredients. Now, my usual place for recipes under construction is tucked inside the front cover of my well-loved Baking with Julia.
My recipe wasn’t there.
Unflustered, I checked my desk where I might have laid it to be typed up, backed up, and stored forever. No such luck. I checked my briefcase where I might have tucked it to give to a friend. Still no luck. Panic nudged the corners of my mind. Unusual places were searched; my nightstand, my piano books, my sewing box. Nothing.
Desperate and panicky, I asked my dear husband (DH). He saw nothing, knew nothing. Of course.
Now, I began looking in absurd places; the recycling bin, the ashes in the woodstove, the bottom of the birdcage. Okay, I don’t have a pet canary, but you get the idea.
After three days of futile attempts, I find the Lost Recipe. Where?
Jammed into the manual for the motorboat, marking the page for the setting of sparkplug gaps. The manual which the DH had referenced the day the recipe disappeared. It’s a good thing he was in the room at the time of discovery or accusations would have been tossed about like confetti. Apparently he’d been doing his version of “tidying up.”
Sometimes the D in DH does not stand for dear.
© Joan Leacott 2011, x-posted at Voices from the Heart
Ah, it’s universal. We always think we have the champion of D(not)Hs. I have to give mine plenty of note paper or he’ll write a phone number right on the top of a fresh page of brainstorming and then tear it out to take with him. (Hi, Tori.) Hope the retreat was excellent.
Joan, this made me chuckle. My own DH has done plenty of such dumb things over the years. Though I’ve done my own share, so I guess I shouldn’t complain. LOL My DH has been looking for his Carhartt hat for months, and I assured him he must have lost it because I’d remember if I saw it. Found it yesterday while putting the summer pool towels away. *sheepish grin*
Yeah, hats are notorious for hiding in bizarre places. I once tore the place apart looking for a toque and found the dang thing in the sleeve of my down coat. Remember winter?
Both your stories made me laugh. I’ve been on both sides of this situation, too. When we first married, my dh was putting away dishes and stored my measuring cup with the drinking cups. Because it’s a “cup.” He still has the habit of “putting things away” in odd places, like on top of the fridge or above the kitchen cabinets, where only someone over six feet tall would think to look. Of course, I don’t want to talk about all the times I’ve thought someone “stole” something from me, only to find I’d put it away in a safe place so I wouldn’t lose it. Lol.
Tori
And then there was the time I put the sugar in the fridge and the milk in the cupboard after making a cup of coffee. My MIL was delighted to know she wasn’t the only person who got muddled.
Joan, this is so typical of men. I love it!
But to be fair, I have to admit I kinda had the opposite story happen to me last week. I had a milk-jug full of Summer Hummer left over from our son’s grad party in the fridge and went up to the sink to get a glass of water. There was an empty milk-jug upside down in the sink and when I looked in the fridge, the Summer Hummer was gone. I instantly started accusing people (DH, kids) of dumping it down the sink and was very upset at the waste. I even dialed my DH at work to yell at him. Good thing he didn’t answer–I found it two mintues later in the freezer where I had put it the day before. Funny thing is, I rarely ever drink, but this mixture was *really* good. LOL
Hey, Stacey. A Summer Hummer? Sounds like a little bitty drink named after a hummingbird or a big honkin’ drink named after the vehicle. Either way, what’s the recipe?