Long and Sordid History of Arsenic & Old Lace

Today I've invited my sister and brother-in-law over for supper. A long overdue invitation to a couple that have been nothing but kind and generous with support and food. However ... if I were my sister I would look at this invitation carefully based on past performance on my part.

As a child, investigating the medicine cupboard one day, I came across a small vial of purple crystals. The crystals were potassium permanganate and when mixed with water turned a lovely purple. At the time I imagined myself quite a little scientist and in the interest of research I offered my sister a glass of this ... "grape juice". You have to know, we did not have a lot of treats growing up, so any kind of fruit juice was special. Poor sister had no idea how special. Just as she was about to swallow I stopped her and fessed up, bringing the whole experiment, that had clearly gone awry, to an end. It should be noted that my sister and I were, and are, very close and I truly loved and love this person. I was describing this little incident to someone recently and their only comment was "Gee, what do you serve people you DON'T like??? An interesting thing is, I use that couple frequently to "try" new recipes on ... hehehe....and tonight? Yep, a new recipe but nothing that employs anything close to "grape" - except for the dinner wine.

If Precious and Spook (AKA the alleged cat) read this, they are sure to scrutinize even more carefully the preparation of their breakie and dinner! I'm not sure either one them, being cats, would forgive me as my sister has.