Their Eyes Were Watching God

I was eating cake.

In Zora Neale Hurston's 1937 novel (see post title), she wrote:

It happened over one of those dinners that chasten all women sometimes. They plan and they fix and they do, and then some kitchen-dwelling fiend slips a scorchy, soggy, tasteless mess into their pots and pans.

I had one of those the other night. I've read Hurston's novel several times and I thought of it right away as I was mentally cursing the ruined dinner. You wonder how something can be scorchy, yet soggy, and how on Earth it could be tasteless (because, for heaven's sake! there was enough smoke to add at least a little flavor), until it happens to you. Thankfully I didn't suffer the same consequences as the main character did for her ruined dinner. The cake I had baked earlier came out just fine. While the rest of the family probably wondered if they would be ill from the disaster of a meal that came out of the kitchen, I was eating cake. There is nothing like cake to make one feel better (and get enough energy to shove that kitchen-dwelling fiend back into the linen closet where it can mess up the towels and sheets undisturbed, and leave the kitchen alone).