Hundreds-uh-Thousands

Mom loved to bake. She did not like making pie crusts and while pies were on the menu from time to time, Mom's specialities were cakes, cookies and loaves. She made delicious sweets and most days, there was some type of sweet to finish off the evening meal. The smell of gingerbread, tea loaf, banana bread, and date squares often filled the house when we came home from school. 

Homemade bread was always the fall back position if there were no sweets that evening. Even then, the bread was coated with butter, jam or molasses, something to provide the sweet tooth with a bit of satisfaction towards the end of the day. When we were young, we did not know what store bought bread was, let alone how it tasted.

As with most events, Mom had a story about baking. We always heard this particular story when a decoration appeared on an iced cake for a birthday. Fancy at our house meant sprinkles on the icing, or as mom called any multi-coloured confection sprinkled over icing, hundreds-uh-thousands. I did not know the actual name was hundreds and thousands until much later in life.

        Decorating cookies

In this story, a Newfoundland father went to the store to buy several items including hundreds and thousands to decorate a cake for a youngster's birthday. When he arrived at the store he remembered everything but the name of the decoration. He stood at the counter for several minutes trying to remember the name but finally said to the clerk, "I don't know wat dey are called, but whatever it is, dere's any god's amount of 'em."

The clerk knew exactly what he needed.