That's What You Get For Buying Cheap Machinery

One Wednesday evening (fairly recently) whilst Mr B was away for the day, I made plans to go to the cinema with our lovely friend CA. We had been shopping a couple of days before and wrote "Mrs B's exciting tea" on the shopping list for that evening, but somehow managed to forget the ingredients to make the exciting tea. "Never fear", said I, "I shall make a concoction". And so the Orange Wednesday did arrive (cheap cinema tickets you see), and I spent the day pondering what treat I could concoct myself for tea (it was rather dull at work). I came up with the quick and easy solution of making toasties. But these would not just be any old toasties. These were going to be super exciting toasties made with lovely creamy cheese, a nice piece of gammon ham and some pineapple chunks. They were going to be yummy!! My illusion of the perfect toastie was somewhat destroyed when I arrived home to discover that we had the smallest piece of cheese ever (it was about the size of a table-spoon) and that it was quite hard around the edges. Once cut, I managed to grate little more than a tea-spoon of cheese for my toastie. Things were not looking good. 'Never mind,' I thought to myself, 'there's still the ham and pineapple'. The ham was not looking great either. A little past its best, but still edible. And so I proceeded to stack my toastie into the wondrous toastie maker (a bargain at only £3.50, I thought). I piled in extra pineapple to make up for the lack of cheese and the disappointment of the ham. I placed the second piece of bread on top (butter side up for a super-crispy toastie) and pushed down the lid. That was when things got worse. Much worse. I heard a rather loud crack from the toastie maker. Upon further inspection, it transpired that the handle had snapped off, as had the handle casing. The toastie maker was, to put it mildly, buggered. Picture the scene: I am stood in the kitchen, half dressed (having been ironing a pair of jeans whilst the toastie-maker warmed up), staring at the most abysmal toastie ever made, holding the handle of the aforementioned toastie-maker in one hand. The situation was not good. Then the phone began to ring : Mr B calling to check all was okay. So I hopped to the phone, pulling on my jeans as I went, then returned to the kitchen with the phone propped against my ear as I tried to figure out how to cook a toastie in a broken toastie-maker, all the while assuring Mr B that I was perfectly fine alone. I briefly contemplated sitting on the toastie maker, but realised that broken-toastie maker, melting cheese and clean jeans was probably not a great combination, and so I spent the next five minutes pressing down on the toastie-maker, praying for some kind of food related miracle. After five minutes of hard pressing, I decided to wrestle the toastie from the machine. This did not go particularly well either, as the bread had not joined together around the edges. So I had to scoop my toastie out of the machine in pieces. Many pieces. Finally, I sat down to eat it, thinking that it would taste good, even if it didn't look it. I was wrong. I was effectively eating warm bread with a crispy exterior filled with cold pineapple, barely melted cheese and a seriously suspicious looking piece of ham. Thankfully the cinema sells Ben and Jerrys ice-cream ...