Look out bake-off entrants...

A report just in from Grizzled:

TeamChicago has landed! Shannon is a very pleasant young woman. Said the shortbread cookies are hers from an ancient recipe handed down to her father from a Scottish woman/friend of the family. Von made the rest.

Should be interesting. I wonder if after sampling the shortbread, I'll have an uncontrollable desire to wear plaid...

Comments

[Mandos]

...or play the bagpipes. Never thought of that, did you?

[Jennifer]

Mandos- I had to stop thinking once I realized that eating this ancient recipe could bring Nessie to my home!

[Kathleen]

I think you & grizzled just might launch into a Brigadoon duet, however.

[The IKEA Gingerbread House]

This is the IKEA Gingergread House again.

Thank you, AG, for inviting me to your house. I'm sure I would have enjoyed myself immensely (as opposed to the lousy time I would have had at Jennifer's since she didn't want me unless I dressed up as Santa's ho-ho house).

So it is with tremendous disappointment that I must write and inform you that I'll be unable to make it to the copyright protected Bake Off.

I would be writing this note over at your co-operative but its comment section won't let me through.

The reason I will not be able to make the trip is because Idyllopus is a worthless b****. Here's my chance to shine. My invitation to the ball. I would have been grateful just for the affectionate dressmaking skills of Cinderella's companion mice and feathered friends but Idyllopus is no Disney cartoonist and her shriveled, puny, lump of coal heart hasn't the potential to warm a cup of tepid tea in hell, much less attend to the realization of my hopes and dreams and my poor life's singular calling, to be a REAL gingerbread house delighting children with fine sugar windows, chocolate shingles for my roof and cotton candy for my chimney's smoke.

I hate her.

She me took out of my box and made the most feeble sham of attempting to repair my broken bits. "You are certainly an IKEA ginerbread house, aren't you," she mocked me, though she's only had the best of experience with IKEA bookcases so I had no idea why she should pay any mind to what other people have to say about IKEA furnishings being impossible to put together, except there was that bed last year that she had to put together and take apart and return twice before getting a box that had all the right stuff in it. But there it is. Though she loves her IKEA bookcases and couldn't possibly live without them, she mocked me.

She insulted me by bringing out the tape. The tape!

I literally disintegrated under the weight of her brutal lack of vision.

And the tape didn't help. Not that it even began to hold. It didn't. But I was so shocked when confronted with its tackiness that chunks of me dropped to the table.

So, Idyllopus, she says, "You must be kin to that IKEA glass that almost sliced off Marty's finger last spring."

I'd nothing to do with it, I swear.

"No cookie party for you," she said.

She made a move for the trash can, then stopped. A change of heart? She flipped my parts this way in that, examining them for any hint of burn that would redeem me for auction on Ebay as proof of miraculous action of the divine on the mundane. Finding none, and not trusting my lovely gingery smell as any indication of edibility, she dumped me.

So, AG, please accept my apology but I will be unable to go to your lovely party as the rats will soon be gnawing on me in a waste bin behind the apartment building.

I pray to my lord Santa that he may receive me into his sleigh and carry me off to the Island of Unwanted Toys at the North Pole where I may dance forever and ever as the house of Mother Ginger under the loving gaze of the Glass Jaw Nutcracker.

So re mi do.

[Jennifer]

Dearest Ikea Gingerbread House- Now you know you would have been welcome here as well, no matter what your condition. I just thought you might want to branch out and explore your more colorful side. Few gingerbread houses have dared to decorate with boas and tassels.

Bummer about Idyllopus. I'm sure she could have found metrically scaled candies to suit your European flair... and a little royal icing works wonders when tape fails.

Still, we all have our limits and our breaking points.

Enjoy the Island of Unwanted Toys. I'm sure you'll find company. Word has it there's a MaryAnnbread House up there. She came first you know, but Ginger, with all of her sequins and flash, was more popular and the MaryAnnbread House was forgotten...

Best wishes.

Jennifer

[billy pilgrim]

Obviously IKEA used an inferior and incompetent Designer.

Get a licensed Cookie Architect next time, and the structure will be fine. None of this euro-trash without footings and made of bitter icing.

[OfficerGleason]

I believe there are three types of shortbread. One will bring kilt bearing scotsmen, one will bring modern scotsmen and the final bring scottish-americans from wisconsin's finest cranberry bogs.

Combine that with VON's work, and you bring the MuthaFuckin' THUNDER.