Let’s do this together

The Dark Lord handed me a list of ingredients and grunted: “Gnrurrr um gnrr food tech grunt grunt mumble mumble on Wednesday,” and slouched off back to her lair.

Which roughly translated as: “I forgot to tell you we’re making fougasse bread in food tech tomorrow, please could you rustle up my ingredients at 8pm – the night before my class.”

I called her back into the kitchen, and pointed to the cupboards and said: “Ahem, you can stop skulking off. You have to hunt and gather the ingredients too.”

She mumbled something about having to do homework, which would be a first this year, and begged me to measure out her ingredients.

It could have been worse as I had flour, yeast, chopped garlic, olive oil, and a few dried herbs in the house – but anything more complicated and it could have been lemon tart, without the lemon.

Next morning I gave her a biscuit tin and Tupperware boxes of the measured-out ingredients, and told her I was looking forward to her nice garlicky bread to eat with our spaghetti bolognese dinner that evening.

When The Dark Lord returned, proudly holding her tin aloft, I looked inside to see the half-chewed remains of an anaemic-looking fougasse.

“What happened to the rest of it?” I asked. “Have you been feeding the 5,000 on the way home from school.”

She laughed and said: “Don’t worry I’ve saved some for you!”

“How wonderful,” I said, tentatively nibbling it as I took the tin back into the kitchen.

“Did you like it?” she asked later, keen to get my reaction.

“Could have done with a bit more cooking time,” I told her. “But the dough texture was perfect, and the long black hair really added something extra to the recipe.”

■ Email me at siobhan.mcnally@mirror.co.uk or write to Community Corner, PO Box 791, Winchester SO23 3RP.