Cooking With Witchcraft

What do you do when you want more variety in your cooking? Some people go to a culinary school, but some go elsewhere for help. Many thanks to sintax for the suggestion.

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She sat at her table, eating her usual fare and wondering what else is there to food. Three times a day, the same thing. All day long, the same thing with no variation. There's got to be something else. It's true, she was old, but not too old to learn at least a few new things and if those things were new menu items, life could be better.

Now understand, she was a witch, an old witch and making her life better did not always bode well for others, but the Hell with them, this was HER life.

Every day, she would have porridge. She would get up in the morning, light a fire, cook some porridge and eat a portion for breakfast, then put the remainder aside for the rest of the day. At mid-day, she would eat some more porridge, cold. The same happened in the evening. The old rhyme of "pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold, pease porridge in the pot nine days old" never had more meaning than with Hazel Hemlock, the Hag.

While it's true that she lived in a gingerbread house, you must remember that she had lived there for a lot of years and the gingerbread was old, stale and really not fit to eat anymore. Early on, when the gingerbread was fresh, it had attracted a few kids but now it didn't even attract a hungry sparrow. Tragic.

Where should she go? Who should she get as an instructor? She sure was tired of porridge. While thinking about this she happened to see a TV show on the Ghoul channel. A cooking show. A chef on the show attracted her attention. She was sure she could learn something from him. A lot of shots showed flames leaping up out of the skillets- aha, that's for me, she thought.

Good ole fire and brimstone. And the language he used. Atrocious, just the thing to turn a witch's head. With the thought of him in mind, she started blending a magic potion. When it was finally done, some of the shingles of the roof curled, it was that potent. She let it blend while she worked on the incantation part of the spell.

That really took a while and Hazel worked up a sweat. Wanting to look her best, she took a shower and changed clothes before empowering the spell. Now she would get her chef. As she proceeded, a breeze came up, her face turned red from the effort and an eddy of ugly greenish vapor formed over a spot on the floor. Faster and faster it spun, even sucking in some of the loose objects in the room, including her one-eared cat. It whirled twice around, gave off a mreeow and disappeared into the small whirlpool, along with two cups and a partial bowl of day old porridge.

Then with a froomph, it stopped and there he stood. Chef Ramsey from Hells Kitchen.

"What the bloody Hell is going on?"

"Oh, that sweet talking devil," she thought.

She hugged him, sat him down, gave him a bowl of porridge and started talking to him. Hazel explained her dilemma. Chef Ramsey took one bite of the porridge, spit it out and said, "What the Hell is this f--ing crap?"

Hazel went on to explain that it was porridge, all she knew how to cook except spells and everyone knows they aren't edible. In between swear words, chef Ramsey mentioned that she lived in a gingerbread house, an edible thing.

Unfortunately, it was created by a spell and not really edible except by ignorant wanderers. It was, in fact, a trap. He looked around and said that it certainly was a trap, so old and stale it wouldn't even attract a demented mouse. That's when she told him that she had summoned him to teach her some cooking lessons.

He enquired as to what she would pay him, as he was a high paid chef in the real world. She waved her wand, and POOF. Hazel and Chef were in the middle of the most fantastic kitchens one could imagine. filled to a gracious great plenty. Hey, she was a southern witch.

"This, and the restaurant to go with it," she cackled.

"I f-ing agree," he smiled.

Chef gave her a list of things she needed to get for the recipes he was going to teach her. Nowhere on the list was eye of toad, frog, or newt, necessary ingredients for successful spells. Wing of bat, hair of frog, teeth of worm- all absent. How did he expect to do a proper job without them?

There were all sorts of odd things on the list; milk for instance. Not the whole cow, just the milk. Odd, strange and unusual, but then after all those years on porridge, most everything edible was odd, strange and unusual to her. She needed to get out of these blasted woods more often. Since she was dealing with strange ingredients, it took a passel of spells to get them for chef Ramsey.

It took six, count 'em, six twitches of a buzzards eyelid to find and acquire them, much longer than a normal spell. Oh well, it was worth it if she could eat better finally. The lessons began.

They went over French cuisine fluently, discussed Italian cooking at length, quite a few words about Mexican food, curry from India considered for a while, even English food was thrown around. Hazel liked that part. The term 'bangers and mash' sounded like her kind of lifestyle but immediately lost interest when she found out it was just ground up scraps and smooshed potatoes. Oh well. The lessons went on.

Finally, the time came to practice her lessons. She waved her wand, pointing it at the pile of ingredients and they formed a clump in mid air. Hazel waved her wand at a pot and it moved under the clump, raised up to capture them and it stayed steady, still in mid air. One more wave and a flame lit under the pot. Chef Ramsey was amazed. This was even better than a microwave oven.

"Well, I'll be--," for once in his career he was speechless.

I'm not trying to shield you from a string of expletives; we're all grownups here, he truly was speechless. With a talent such as that, he'd be the finest chef in the world, not just in his mind.

After the days lessons were over, he bargained with Hazel. He wanted to know how to do some simple spells, in exchange for which, he would teach her how to do desserts, too.

Hazel was crafty, she was mean and she was blond. Yes, that's right, she was blond. She dyed her hair black and called it 'artificial intelligence', but if she was really bright, she would have figured out how to cook long ago.

Now that she knew about cookbooks, she figured she didn't need him anymore and sent him back. She did keep her bargain, he got his restaurant, kitchen and all, in Antarctica. South Antarctica. His swearing was heard all the way up to Valapariso, Chile. That spell raised an appetite, so she decided to cook something up other than porridge.

She started with A and went down the list to Z. Apples, baked, to Zebra, fried. It all tasted so good, she couldn't quit. She gorged herself, became full and then snacked. All the snacking made her want more so she scarfed up some more food. She gained so much weight her broom couldn't budge her off the ground anymore. She ate so many desserts that she became sweet. Horrors. What would become of her? She was too old for a career change.

She ate and pondered, then ate some more. Suddenly, she exploded. Just flat exploded- burst like a bad tire.

A while later, a wandering woodsman came through the forest and saw her house. He scraped the icky stuff off the inside, chopped up the old gingerbread for fire kindling, buried the glop he gathered from the inside and erected a monument.

It said, "Here lies the Wicked Witch of the Forest, she got her just deserts."