THE BAKING INCIDENT
A trip to the local fire department was just the icing on the cupcake for this intrepid baker!
My wife, Jeannie, loves to bake. She is an exceptional baker who owns a kitchen drawer full of baking accoutrements. She always seems to be making something. It is not unusual to find her in the kitchen baking away at all hours of the evening. For some reason, her preferred times are from about 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. Luckily for me, that is also the time when most sporting events are on the tube. Ever since we cut off our cable about two years ago, I’ve been spending a fair whack of time at my local pub watching my favourite teams. While Jeannie is baking, I go out and get, not baked—but rather, relaxed.
So, there I was, settled into my usual spot at the end of the bar watching the Toronto Blue Jays, when I felt the vibration of my cellphone against my hip. I deftly pulled my phone out of its holster and glanced at the number. Jeannie’s image appeared on the screen. She usually doesn’t call me unless there is a plague of locusts—or she needs more sugar. I picked up the phone and within seconds I could hear the beginnings of panic in her voice. “You have to get home now. I’ve had a baking incident.”
I had a fresh pint in front of me. The Jays were down by a run with a man on first and third. I really didn’t want to budge. I decided to test her patience by attempting to probe the seriousness of the “baking incident.” The angry, worried command of “Get home, now!” is seared into my memory. I leapt from my stool and hurriedly blurted out to the bartender, “Keep my tab open, Pammy. I’ll be back; there’s been a baking incident.”
I bolted the 300 yards home like a wobbly Olympic racewalker. Yes, we live 300 yards from a pub. In that short but addled
amble the craziest thoughts were running through my mind. Did the mixer explode? Did the oven catch fire? Extreme yeast bloom? Is Jeannie okay? I rushed into our home, scurried to the kitchen and saw her by the sink. Her face was flushed, her hair matted to her forehead, her brow furrowed and her eyes focused on her right index finger. It took me about ten seconds to assess the situation and understand its gravity. She’d been icing cupcakes. Vanilla with pink icing. She had been washing the pink icing out of the piping bag and managed to jam her index finger into the piping tip nozzle. Not just any piping tip nozzle but the nastiest one—conical with a jagged, shark-tooth edge. This was no Chinese-finger-trap conundrum. This was a hardened, plastic piping tip. If you tried to slide the tip off, the teeth would sink deeper into the flesh. At the same time, the circulation to the tip of her finger was being cut off. She tried running it under cool tap water. She had tried ice. I was now pouring olive oil on the situation. The kitchen was now a mess of water, ice and olive oil, not to mention sweat and tears…no blood yet. Jeannie’s sense of panic was starting to overwhelm her calm equilibrium. I probably didn’t help matters much by standing there with my hand on my chin silently thinking of worstcase scenarios.
SNIP AND FROST
Then a potential solution came to me. I would get my wire snips from my toolbox and gently cut this thing off. I quickly located them and thought, I hope she doesn’t notice how rusty they are. Turns out they were dull, too. With every attempted snip, Jeannie shrieked in pain. I had made little progress; this was going to require some professional, third-party intervention. My first thought was the emergency department. Surely, they would know what to do. Then it hit me like a firehose to the face. The fire station is located right next door to our home. It had now been about 30 minutes since the baking incident had occurred. The situation had turned dire. Despite her protestations, I marched Jeannie over to the fire station.
We anxiously knocked on the door. It opened to about ten guys sitting around the kitchen table watching the Jays game. Perfect I thought. “Who’s winning?” I asked. The firefighter at the door had a friendly, but puzzled look. Jeannie held up her finger to reveal our dilemma in the form of her pulsing, purple fingertip. A chorus of “What the heck,” “Well, I’ll be,” and “What is that?” came from the crowd of onlookers.
Jeannie attempted to compose herself. “It’s a nozzle tip to a piping bag. I was making cupcakes.” This was a room full of firefighters, not bakers. It wasn’t long before my wife was surrounded by ten firefighters all staring at her finger. This was obviously a first for them and hopefully a last for her.
One firefighter in the group took charge and did what a trained professional would do. He asked Jeannie to raise her arm in the air above her head. I assumed this was to reduce the swelling—or he was going to high-five the thing off. Turns out it was to reduce swelling. Then he did something I suspected he would do. He got out the station toolbox and took out a pair of wire snips. Sharp and rust-free. It took about ten minutes for him to snip through the hard plastic and extricate my wife’s now alien-resembling finger from this menacing doodad. Jeannie was a trooper through all of this. She was surrounded by a team of concerned firefighters, while her husband watched the rest of the Jays game with the remainder of the not-so-concerned firefighters. We left the fire station ever so grateful for their help.
I knocked on the fire station door 20 minutes later with a tray full of vanilla cupcakes loaded with cheerful pink icing. It was about 11 p.m. by this time. Most of the crew had retired for the night, but in the morning they would have a tasty treat and a greater appreciation for how that swirly, pink icing was created.