Flora was having a bad day. She lived in a house set on a sharp corner of a busy road. She hadn’t slept a wink. All night, well at least until 3 o’clock, teenage hoons were hooning* with speeding, burnouts, doughnuts, and screeching tyres around the corner next to her house. After that she was so angry she couldn’t sleep.
When she did rise she discovered she was out of toothpaste and cleaned her teeth using salt. She burnt the toast at breakfast, tripped over the cat, and couldn’t find her reading glasses for a good ten minutes.
There was only one thing for it; she would do what she always did when in a foul mood: she would get out her book of recipes from The Australian Women’s Weekly and cook something wonderful that she had never tried before. Flora settled on making an Apricot Sour Cream Pie. She had all the ingredients in the house already, and it looked delicious.
First she made the base with crumbled cookie crumbs and melted butter. While that was cooling in the fridge she prepared the filling – with apricots, sugar, flour, eggs, sour cream and so on. She sprinkled the uncooked masterpiece lightly with nutmeg, and placed it in a moderate oven.
Thirty minutes later she removed the pie and sat it on top of the bench. The smell was glorious! Flora’s foul mood had disappeared.
That was when a hoon’s car left the road, flew through the air, and plunged onto Flora’s front lawn. Taking the pie, Flora scurried out to investigate. It was the most satisfying pie she had ever baked.
* Hoons and hooning are common Australian/New Zealand terms meaning teenage louts with cars!