She grabbed the wooden bucket off her table, which had been hidden behind the sacks of flour, and went in search of the water and salt and sugar and butter.
She found a huge industrial sized sink in the middle of the room where everyone could get to it and filled her bucket. Going back to her mixing bowl, she dumped it in and then went back for another. But she hesitated before pouring that one in too—she was certain that May’bell had said something about putting the salt and sugar in with the water before she added them. So, carrying the bucket, she went to look for the salt and sugar barrels.
They were sitting side by side in the far corner of the room, furthest from the ovens. There was also a cooler right beside them where butter was stored. At least, Penny assumed it was butter. Rather than being pale yellow, it was a vibrant green but it smelled kind of buttery when she opened the glass door and sniffed it.
Remembering that May’bell’s recipe called for a “gob” of butter, she stared helplessly at the huge cake of the stuff just sitting there in the cooler. It wasn’t portioned out at all. How much was a gob?
Penny decided to wait for someone else to come and get butter so she could see how much they took. In the meantime, she added two scoops of salt and half a scoop of sugar to her remaining bucket of water, which she was pretty sure was what May’bell had said.
Pretty soon, a woman came bustling up to the cooler and pulled open its glass door. She grabbed a paper from a stack of them located on top of the cooler and snatched up the flat cutting tool lying beside the butter. Then she attacked the huge, bright green square, cutting off a chunk as big as her own head with a few swift strokes of the cutter. Loading it onto the piece of paper, she lifted it out and took it away without sparing a glance at Penny as she left.
So that’s how much a gob is!
Penny copied the other woman’s actions—or tried to, anyway. But once again, it turned out that she didn’t really have the upper body strength to do what the job required.
The bright green butter was much harder to cut than she’d thought it would be. Rather than being soft, it had the consistency of ice cream that’d been in the deep freeze for years. Penny really had to hack at it with all her might, just to get any out at all.
In the end, she wound up cutting lots of little chunks instead of one big one which left the main slab of butter looking like cheese that had been attacked by huge, ravenous mice. But at last Penny had enough of the stuff piled on a paper. She held it carefully in one arm and took the bucket in her other hand as she went back to her workspace.
The part of the flour she’d poured the first bucket of water in had turned bright purple but the rest was still dry and blue.
Well, time to change that, Penny told herself.
She poured in the other bucket of water—the one with the salt and sugar—and then added the lumps of butter as well. Then she grabbed the huge wooden oar of a paddle and began mixing with all her might.
Dark blue flour flew out in a puff on her first attempt and she reminded herself to take it easy. The problem was, the svetty flour didn’t seem to want to combine with the water at first. But Penny kept at it until she had a dry, crumbly mixture that was pale purple at the bottom of the bowl.
This doesn’t seem right—I must not have added enough water, she thought, staring at the mess in dismay. Also, hadn’t she forgotten one of the ingredients? She thought hard and snapped her fingers.
“Tinga seeds—that’s what she said. I have to add them to the dough.”
She went back for another bucket of water and while she was at the sink, she asked another woman who was in line behind her where the seeds were kept.
The woman gave her a strange look but pointed to a small barrel located beside the sink. There were three wooden cups beside it—one the size of a thimble, one about the size of a teacup, and one as big as a huge forty-two ounce Slurpee cup from the 7-Eleven back home.
Penny chose the largest cup, since she was obviously making a giant batch of dough. The seeds were a brilliant, iridescent pink and shimmered prettily as she poured them into her mixture.
She poured the third bucket of water in as well and was glad to see that her flour was finally getting hydrated. However, it soon became apparent that it was too hydrated.
As Penny stirred with the wooden oar, she saw that, rather than a cohesive lump of dough, what she had was a purple soup, the consistency of Elmer’s glue. The purple glue-soup had fist-sized lumps of butter and the bright pink tinga seeds floating in it. It looked about as nasty and unappetizing and un-dough-like as it was possible for anything to look.
“Crap—I need more flour,” Penny muttered to herself. She was just positioning another heavy sack of the dark blue svetty flour over the bowl when someone shouted in her ear.
“Shining Star above, what have you done?”
Turning guiltily around, Penny saw May’bell and the woman she’d asked about the location of the seeds standing there.
“I told you she was making a mess, May’bell,” the woman said, frowning at Penny. “I saw her—she used enough tinga seeds for eight batches of dough! And here she’s only making one.”
“She ‘ent making anything but a mess as far as I can see,” May’bell seethed. She pointed to the gluey purple soup with the lumps of bright green butter and the many
