Tad's Life

Well, "Necessity is the mother of invention," old Ben wrote. Or nowadays, it's the motivation to look things up on the Internet!

When the gas bottle ran out half way through making Jony a hamburger, we knew we had a problem. There is a shortage of propane this week in Dakar. I tried, but the local shop had none at all. Jony was headed off to meet a group of guys and girls for ice cream. We just sent extra money with him and told him to buy himself some supper. But what would Jane and I do? "Oh, let's just make popcorn and keep it simple..." Eventually we remembered that we use our gas stove to make popcorn, too. What could we do? Well, we took an inventory of electric cooking devices: toaster, waffle iron and microwave. I finished cooking Jony's burger in the microwave and ate that. Jane went on-line and came up with a new technique for our repertoire: do-it-yourself microwave popcorn. The instructions called for a paper bag, but not having any she wrapped the kernels in newspaper. See the results for yourself:

That's my wife, the resourceful modern woman!