Editor's Query
Tell us about a time the lesson taught was not the one learned

Sunday, November 2, 2008

One Saturday morning in the holiday season of 1975, my mother and sister came to my apartment so we could partake in a family tradition: making Christmas cookies and candy together. As a newly-wed, I was hosting for the first time. Soon, there wasn't a place in my kitchen that wasn't covered by a baking sheet, measuring cup or mixing bowl.

My mother was sharing her terrific peanut brittle recipe -- and a novel preparation method. In the past, she'd cooled the mixture on an old baking sheet, then twisted the sheet's corners to shatter the brittle into pieces. Well, she'd seen a new way on a TV cooking show: Pour the brittle onto a hard granite surface, let it cool, then hit it swiftly with a wooden spoon to break it.

The lesson we learned that day was that cheap countertop laminate does not work the same as granite. The peanut brittle slumped out onto the counter like a gooey epoxy and would not break into nice serving pieces. We tried prying it off with spatulas and then the heavy-duty pancake turner. Neither worked. We tried soaking it off with hot, steaming towels; that made it worse. By the end of the day, we'd raided my husband's tool chest for putty knives, hammers and chisels. Nothing worked, although bits of candy had chipped off and flown all over the kitchen.

In fact, when my husband and I moved out two years later, we noticed there were still some tiny pieces of the peanut brittle stuck to the ceiling.

Sherrie Riggs, Germantown

New query: Tell us about the most unorthodox way you ever tried to save money. If you have a 100 percent true story taken from your own experience concerning the above query, send it to queries@washpost.com or The Washington Post Magazine, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071. Include your daytime phone number. Recount your story in 250 words or fewer. We'll pay you $50 if we use your tale.