'Good Kid Cereal' by Lucienne Cummings

30% sweeter than other children. Yes, we’re biased, we’re your parents.

Added goodness – we tried…

No artificial colours, except eyeliner and that lippy hidden in your school bag. One day you’ll wish you weren’t reliant on those – trust us.

INGREDIENTS:
Six months to grow Rice and you, but aeons of sleeplessness. You curl your doll fingers around ours. We sing Sleep Little Baby.

You’re sweeter than Glucose Syrup at two, but scream NO! frequently. We point at picture books until you snore, then snooze over that glass of wine between your bedtime and ours.

Sit still! Don’t swing your legs at the table! Abundant Cocoa Mass energy and outgrowing clothes every other minute. All the added calcium means you’re already blowing out six candles. Kiss Grandma! Say thank you! We worry that your life is mostly orders and sides of ignored organic vegetables.

You name your first dog Barley, then he eats your Dad’s !?!**?!ing shoes. Sorry, Daddy shouldn’t have said that word.

Mum throws Salt over her shoulder after she trips. Don’t leave that there! Sunscreen and sand in everything as puberty makes you slouch unappreciatively through family holidays. OW! F**k! What did we say? Put that b****y thing away! Do as we say, not as we swear.

Flavourings? Nice to meet you Harley. Is this your girlfriend/boyfriend or friend? Should we care? Honestly, we don’t know.

Added Vitamins/Minerals:
Iron in my soul when you shout I HATE YOU! Vitamin D floods in when you say Sorry, I love you, later. We are your taxi service. Vitamin E helps all of us with revision headaches.

We bawl, bear hug, Vitamin B6, B2, B1, B12 – all the b’s. You stand on the edge of the nest and call Bye! as you take flight. Serve with the future of your choice.

Recipe for a New Me by Kay Medway

Add the newly established me, now an all-rounder.

Marvel at often, possibly with the smaller circles

at the theatre & with all the appeal of a wildflower,

the favour of a summer weather forecast, the

bronze of an artisan or an award

and search for a streak of

Silver heirlooms, like charm bracelets, & prepare all with

jewel-like nature, elements &

threads of home

& affinities.

Stripe with positivity

that leaves all in awe

soften your lists, spirals, find

your certainty, your surety by way of a

blazer, crisp as a buttoned suit blazer.

'LIST FOR INVOLVED GRANDPARENTING' by Luanne Castle

1. Don’t fight with your children even if old battles arise.
2. Offer advice like Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs, hoping the path is clear before the crumbs are consumed.
3. Buy all your own supplies: diapers, formula (unless breastfed), bottles, wipes, binkies, bibs, and onesies.
4. When the reusable items in #3 don’t come back, write a funny letter from the baby.
5. Don’t fight with your children.
6. Let all the old songs and poems and nursery rhymes come back and perform them with gusto.
7. Create new songs and stories from your grandchild’s current life. “A big tummy is happiness. A big tummy is happiness. A big tummy is happiness. A little tummy is a big tragedy.”
8. Dance for the baby. Make up new steps. Apply Qigong slapping techniques on yourself.
9. Hold the baby until the arthritis in your arms spreads.
10. Don’t fight with your children about putting her in confinement devices.
11. Notice what nobody else sees and find solutions to teething, eczema, flat head syndrome.
12. Love your children. They used to be babies like your grandchild. 

'Ingredients for breakfast on a campsite in the South of France' by Jane Claire Jackson

Fresh air - no wind

1 bright yellow/orange tablecloth with a leafy olives design 

Orange juice 

Sunshine filtering through the trees

The shade of a stripy awning 

1 crusty baguette

Bird song

A selection of jams (fig, strawberry, cherry...)

Sunglasses

Honey (both runny and solid)

1 dog (on a lead) stretched out under the table

Yoghurts

Children cycling past in the alley

Slices of watermelon 

Oleander flowers in various shades of pink and white 

Croissant/pain au chocolat/pain au raisin

Yesterday's towels and bikinis/swimming costumes drying on a line 

The smell of fresh coffee or an apple and cinnamon infusion 

The murmur of neighbouring families preparing for the day 

All the time in the world 

'A Recipe For A Good Night’s Sleep' by Elisa Dominique Rivera

Two cups (500 mL) of distilled water collected from the deepest depths of the Mariana Trench, or if not available, filtered tears from your days having to deal with people at work

One ResMed AirSense Sleep Machine which can connect to your wifi to send data to your somnologist during the night, so the somnologist can creepily watch you sleep from afar

One mask to put over your nose and mouth connected to the sleep machine to will you into sleep with the hospital-air-exhalation-sound or as your partner would call it “the Darth Vader” effect

One 25mg quetiapine taken no later than six-thirty in the evening. This is an important ingredient which you must beg your doctor to prescribe for you. Without this the recipe falls in a heap at two in the morning. 

(Optional: One standard glass of Pinot Noir from the South Island of New Zealand, in particular the ones from the Nelson region)

One pillow to rest the indignity of your situation

One third sense of humour at the contraptions getting entangled with your limbs as you try to sleep 

A sprinkle of frustration at your brain for refusing to rest

One mighty howl before the drugs take over and you fall into a heap with the sleep mask askew, whistling like a kettle in your dreams. 

This recipe may be served with Functional Procrastination Stew, Side of Disassociation, and the quick and easy Anxiety-Ridden Cupcakes. 

'Recipe for Summer' by Liz Gwinnell

Ingredients: 

Hedonism, hamper (straw), hat (broad brimmed, sun)

Indigo sky, ice-cream, imagination (rich, dark variety)

Jade green grass; Jacobs cream crackers, Jarlsberg

Kingfisher, kimono, kite (stringed variety, optional)

Lime juice, Lemonade, Lazy daisy blanket (handmade if possible) 

Mid-afternoon sun, multigrain bread, Mojito (watermelon flavour, chilled)

Nuthatch song, nettles, novel (self-raising, not plain)

Open-toe sandals, Oak tree, optimism (generous sprinkling)

Method:

Combine all ingredients and enjoy on the banks of a chalk stream river. Best accompanied by birdsong.

From Hedonism to Optimism: H to O: bread upon the water.

Decide on Surfboard Design and Size by Emily Madonald

1. Dunger, mini mal, fish, gun, long or short.

One day, you tell me, you’ll have a quiver of surf boards for all conditions, all size

and speed of wave. You’re pleased with the word ‘quiver’ and you’ve imagined the

rack, built into the wide-decked house in the dunes from where you’ll watch sets

forming and listen to the weather reports.

Pin, or swallow tail. Squash, round or square. Your decision, you say is the spice, the

nuanced, enhancing touch.

2. Buy a block foam surfboard blank.

Take it home and ponder the shape. Practice some moves while I’m trying to read.

Jump to squat from lying down, sail your arms and dip your head like you’re being

tubed.

3. Make a stringer for strength and flex. Glue it between the two halves of blank.

Work on building your upper body strength. Don’t think I don’t notice you planking

over me.

4. Remove excess foam from the blank and cut out the rough shape.

Eat protein and slow-release carbs. Practice holding your breath while counting real,

real slow. Sometimes while holding in smoke from a toke. Sometimes while waiting

for your turn to speak.

5. Shape the blank with sandpaper and other tools.

Go barefoot. Don’t wash your hair. Let it grow curly and long. Let it bleach in the salt

and sun. Flick.

See, it doesn’t smell, you say when you stick your hair in my face.

6. Add your artwork design.

Ying and Yang, stripes, cheques and hibiscus flowers. Palm trees, tikis and suns.

It’s not really personalised, I say. You’re just signalling the tribe you belong to.

7. Fiberglass lamination. Hot-coat, sand, hot-coat, gloss. Sand. Gloss. Polish.

Head to the beach at the merest hint of a wave. Never look back.

Cressida Limplet-Splat’s Award-Winning Cream Scones Recipe by Athena Law

 Ingredients:

Flour (2 cups)

Cream (1/2 cup)

Milk (1/2 cup)

Egg (1)

Sugar (3 spoons)

Baking Powder (1 spoon)

Method:

Have your head cook Mrs Travers make the scones while you take a hot bath with

cucumber slices over your eyes.

After bathing, paint your nails with the latest in Parisian colours, and through your

bedroom window watch the brawny under-gardeners finish clipping your topiary

peacocks.

Ensure Lord Limplet-Splat has made out his usual generous cheque to the local fete

committee.

Dress. Put on new hat. Have your chauffeur drive you to the fete along with your

award-winning cream scones.

Decide which under-gardener will get the blue ribbon tonight.

A Traditional Divorce by Lisa Williams

 

Serves Two but will stretch to Family and Friends

 

Take a Handful of Wasted Years

In a Bowl of Hollow Sorrow

Bunch of Broken Dreams

Good Dollop of Regret

Pinch of Bitterness simmered with a Dash of Disappointment

Sprinkling of Hope for the Future

 

Best Served Cold.

Suture Removal Kit Model 24-7 by Nina Miller

Sterile/Latex Free

            Like the room in your doctor's clinic, the one used for procedures, the one with "good lighting," and the one you visit every few weeks.

Contents:

Alcohol Wipe

            The doctor examines you. Dark black sutures push up and out of the light brown skin of your forearm. Are they trying to escape or being rejected? Both could be the answer, you think, as alcohol is applied to your skin. Alcohol, which is at first cold and then stings, much like the words that come out of your partner's mouth with each completed cocktail.

Povidone-Iodine Prep

            The doctor rubs the pad gently along the jagged wound on your arm from the "cooking accident" that brought you to the ER last week. The yellow-brown liquid matched the healing bruises you've cleverly concealed under your eyes. Yet, you avoid their gaze as they make small talk. Just in case.

Tweezer

Scissors

4x4 inch gauze square

            Holding each suture by the knot, the doctor slips the scissors under it, severing the tie. If only your bonds unraveled, your binds severed, if only each day didn't feel like the tightening of a noose. You finger your wedding band as they snip each one until ten small broken pieces lie on the gauze. If only all your broken bits were this small and removable.

They return to you, gently rub in bacitracin, and bandage the raw skin, the puckered, jagged laceration with pinpoints of blood where the sutures once resided. They tell you there may be a scar. They don't know there are more deep inside.

The doctor asks if you're okay and if you need any pain medications. Slips a number into your hand and asks if you're safe, if they could help get you removed from the trauma you're embedded in.

'Never to be Repeated' by Stella Turner

Ten drops of salty tears

(Salty ones are hard to find so unsalted will be fine)

Four pounds of excessive fat

(You will have it in your larder, you were told often enough)

Five hundred lies

(Easy to find if you include the little white lies right down to the corkers)

Three fluid pints of heartbreak

Mix well whilst yelling, screaming and stomping. Get it all out

Cook for a week in the sun whilst partying with your friends

As you mature like a fine cheese

And value yourself like a perfect soufflé

This recipe will never be needed again.

'How to Make Baka’s Burek in the 1980s Canadian Prairies' by T.L. Tomljanovic

One cup of canola oil. Fancy pants olive oil isn't available in Kindersley, Saskatchewan grocery stores, but golden fields of canola they have in abundance.

Two big containers of cottage cheese. It's cheap, it's low-fat, and everyone on a diet is eating it (don't mention the canola oil.)

Three heaping teaspoons of salt or twelve one can never be too salty.

Four dozen sheets of frozen phyllo defrosted. Yeah, it tastes like paper, but liberally brush oil, layer cheese, and sprinkle salt on it and who can tell? Stretching dough made from scratch takes skill you have not—and probably never will—master. Why make life harder?

Five cups of spinach. I'm kidding. Zero vegetables. Baka’s grandbabies won’t eat green stuff. Burek must be a flaky, crunchy, cheesy warm hug. It’s made for those you love most.

;A RECIPE FOR MASALA CHA(I)OS' by Sravanthi Challapalli

To one cup of water,

Add

A stick of cinnamon

Two cloves

One bay leaf

A tsp each of sugar and minced ginger

A tsp of dust tea

Half a cup of milk

Set to boil.

***

Sit in

The living room

with

Your phone

The newspaper

A pen

A book

***

On the phone, look out for

Your favourite analyst’s commentary of the day

Use the anagram solver (which doesn’t make the crossword much easier)

See a recipe video.

Switch

To the newspaper.

Skim the headlines

Look up a Dutch roll.

Resume reading your book.

***

There’s a change in the air.

Look around.

Go back to the book.

Read a few lines.

Put it aside.

On the phone

Open Facebook

Click on the name of the intellectual you will not follow

And begin reading their post on why it’s necessary to dislike a certain someone who just died.

Something’s the matter,

But continue reading.

You have to keep up.

Death is no reason

To stop rehashing old grudges.

Stop!

Leap up

Go to the kitchen

The tea is dead,

But you can salvage the saucepan.

Curse yourself, curse the stove, curse the day.

'Nanna’s Perfect Parkin' by Donna M Day

Note: All other parkin recipes are wrong inferior

Ingredients:

- Five generations of coal miners, preferably embittered from battling Thatcherites

- Oats

- A dairy maid from way back with strong hands and crooked thumbs

- Treacle

- Two generations of clothes makers, combining tailors and seamstresses

- Butter

- The heather-scented air of the Moors

- An egg

- The smoke from factories caught in the ginnels between back-to-back houses

- Milk

- The secret of Yorkshire pudding batter whispered over hot fat

- Brown sugar

- Hills. So, so many hills

- Flour

- Cricket on a Saturday afternoon, preferably rained off

- Golden syrup

- A novel written by each of the Brontës including at least one beat-up paperback with notes in the margin, in pencil

- Plenty of fresh ginger, grated

'Classic Negroni with a Twist' by Melissa Flores Anderson

1 ounce of gin
1 ounce sweet vermouth
1 ounce Campari
Twist of trying to impress the good-looking guy from the office by ordering his favorite drink
instead of your usual sweet, fruity drink.

1.) Take a sip and try not to make a face

2.) Set the glass next to your crush who is drinking a bourbon-based drink

3.) Take another sip and feel the liquor burn your throat

4.) Let your fingers linger on the arm of your crush

5.) Clink your glasses together in a toast to what’s to come

NFFD 2024 Prompt #2: Bread Upon Water

 

Prompt #2: Bread Upon Water
WATER prompt A

Welcome to The Write-In!  This year, we're celebrating the 2024 National Flash Fiction Day Anthology theme of The Classical Elements - Air, Earth, Water and Fire. Throughout National Flash Fiction Day, we'll be posting one time-related prompt on the hour every hour from 00:00 until midnight (BST), for a total of 25 prompts in all.  You have until midnight on Sunday (BST) to submit your responses for possible publication here at the Write-In.  We'll start posting responses on Sunday, 16 June 2024....

*

Write a story in the form of an ingredient list.  This could be the ingredient list for a recipe, a list of ingredients in a cupboard or fridge, the ingredient list on the back of a package, or whatever else you can imagine.

(Your story doesn't have to involve bread or water; we were just shoe-horning a water-themed title into this hermit crab prompt!)

*

If you’re submitting this to us, make sure to note that this is a response to Prompt 2: Bread Upon Water.

You can submit responses until 23:59 BST on Sunday, 16 June 2024 for a chance to be published here at The Write-In.

You can claim the badge for this prompt by visiting the badgifier here (hosted by the NFFD website).

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Thank you to Audrey Niven at The Propelling Pencil for this prompt. 

Image by azerbaijan_stockers on Freepik