Blue Cat watches a lot of television, and one of his favorite channels is the Home and Garden Network (or HGN). Of course, they never really show very many gardens, so they should call it the Home and More Home Network, but Blue Cat guesses that HGN is easier to write than HMHN.
Anyway, Blue Cat likes the shows where people are looking for new homes and shows where people are competing to be the best remodeler/cook/swordsmith (wait – that’s the History Channel, or HC). So he decided to sponsor a competion on who could design the best home that would be both his size and tasty to eat. No sword/knife making this time since Blue Cat’s scribe had an accident with a knife the other day and isn’t too keen on things that cut.
Since it was the holidays, Blue Cat decided that the contest would be to determine who could build the best gingerbread house. He had a couple of gingerbread house decorating kits from last year – you’d be surprised how much shelf life gingerbread and icing have – and gave them to two teams from his scribe’s family. And they went to work.
The teams both had exactly the same kit, supplemented by some marshmallows because marshmallows look like snow and they’re good to eat. But the results were very different, as you can see by the pictures below:
This house is more traditional. Blue Cat especially liked the snow man, and the whole setup reminded him of some houses he saw in Germany. Except for the laser cannons depicted by the toothpicks coming out of the house and the snowman. Blue Cat guesses that it was all part of the home security system. (A big seller with owners of gingerbread houses ever since those two thugs, Hansen and Gretel, broke into that poor witch’s house and stuffed her in an oven. But we digress…)
The other team went a totally different way. In honor of the new Star Wars movie, they built a gingerbread spaceship house, including bucket seats for the pilot and copilot and marshmallow clouds and exhaust. Blue Cat thinks there are lasers on this one, too, but he was afraid to ask.
Both of the entries were so creative that Blue Cat couldn’t decide the winner. So he gave two awards – one for the best house with home security and one for the best creative use of marshmallows. And then he tried eating one of the houses and discovered that gingerbread does not have as much shelf life as he expected…
What do you think? Which is the best use of gingerbread house materials? And should there be a television show for this kind of competion on HGN?
(C) William P Doyle, Jr. 2017 All Rights Reserved
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