Fiction - short story - Bon Appetit - Part I

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I've entered a competition for a short story, up to 2,500 words, with a 'funny' theme. I've managed a 'highly commended' once before so I'm having another go. Jeff Moffitt @moffittjc was silly enough to ask if I was going to post the story. I thought I might do it in instalments but it's loses a bit when cut up so what I've done is condense it. Feel free to turn the page/move on if it doesn't appeal. BON APPETIT Some people are impulse buyers. They go out with a shopping list of ten items and come home with twenty. That's probably of little consequence but some impulsive buys have a much bigger impact. A friend of ours went to the city to finalise a house deal once and came home with a Jaguar. THAT had an impact on his life I can tell you. Not a particularly positive impact but an impact nonetheless. My spontaneous splurge was on a cookbook and this led to significant changes in my life. It was the best thing I ever did and changed the fabric of my existence really. I’d bought cookbooks before - dozens of them in fact. We’ve got a shelf full of them. Luckily they're out of reach on the top shelf. Cooking is not my forte. My forte is yet to appear but if it doesn’t hurry up and find me I may die never knowing what it is. But it isn’t cooking. One thing I have learnt – umpteen cookbooks do not a chef make. Like most young marrieds those days we didn’t have a lot of money so there was a fair bit of sausages and mince floating around. I remember once, I made Toad in the Hole. It looked pretty good to me but when I told Quentin what it was I thought he was going to die laughing. When he could speak he called it Turd in the Hole and set to with a vengeance. But I had another look at the fat, brown sausages poking out of this pancake type doughy stuff and couldn’t eat a mouthful. Later, I had a 'try out old recipes' phase. Have you ever tried to find shredded suet nowadays? I needed it for an 'old' recipe. When I told Quentin it was called 'spotted dick' I got a somewhat similar reaction to toad-in-the-hole except he had a mouthful of red wine when I told him the name. I suppose it is a bit 'off'. Sounds like some nasty disease. Spotted Dick. Good grief. © Judy Evans To be continued