Cooking 101

For those who know me well, you know that my life is completely ridiculous. Things that don't happen to anybody else happen to me. I'm that person to everybody I know. Today, I reached a new level of insanity. I had offered to prepare brunch for a guest. I already had pancake mix, eggs, milk and bananas. I headed to Trader Joe's (a 1.2 mile walk in the blazing Philly heat, making that 2.4 miles round trip, which meant this was my workout for the day) for chocolate chips, juice and bacon. Mission accomplished. Items purchased. Brunch was on its way. Or at least it should have been. About two blocks away from Trader Joe's, I remembered that when I moved, I didn't bring all of my kitchen supplies. This meant no spatula, which meant flipping pancakes, scrambling eggs and making my bacon banana dish was going to be next to impossible. So, I headed back to Trader Joe's. No spatula. Next up, I trekked to Whole Foods. They had a Good Grips spatula for $16.99. That's like not having a spatula at all to me (it is criminal to charge $17 for a spatula, whether or not it proclaims to have any type of grip, let alone one that is best described as good). Defeated, I went through the short list of options in my hood. Ace Hardware? Maybe. The super expensive specialty grocer? Not open on Sundays. I decided to go with my standby. CVS. I can find pretty much everything at CVS, but apparently, I can now add spatulas to the list of goods they do not sell (they do, however, sell ice cream scoopers and pizza slicers). I wandered around the store wondering what I was going to do. My guest was arriving in under an hour, I had to shower and make brunch and I didn't have the proper tools to make the latter part of that short list happen. Then, I saw it. A two-pack of fly swatters for $1.69! Could it work? Why wouldn't it? I snatched them up, paid and walked home as quickly as possible. After a slight melting fiasco with the yellow swatter, I succeeded in making chocolate chip pancakes, scrambled eggs and an awesome bacon and banana scramble with the red swatter. Now, I am thrifty and resourceful, but this was totally ludicrous, even for me. Fortunately, all worked out for the best, but first up on my shopping list is most definitely a new spatula! In a pinch, though, please know that a clean and new fly swatter (when exposed to minimal heat) will work as a spatula! You're welcome.