The Petty Socker Blues

In a well lit room furnished with four leather sitting chairs and a couple of tables surrounded by straight back chairs for study, Professor D. sat quietly pouring over his newly acquired Petty Socker cookbook.
The professor was a very smart and well-educated man; he was no body’s fool as was proved by his many accomplishments in business, but today Prof. D. is a very frustrated man. On the corner of the table is a stack of cookbooks of different varieties from different cultures written in different languages and today in the mail Prof. D. received his latest cookbook, the renowned Petty Socker Cookbook.
Cooking was such a frustrating experience to him, but he was determined to make it work some how, now, with his new cookbook he was sure it would all come together for him this time.
Let’s be real quiet and see if we can pick up on what he is saying to himself.
“I can’t believe it!” the professor mumbles under his breath. “It looks like it is organized like all of the others…what ever am I to do?” There is a long pause before we see his slumped form sit up a little straighter and a determined look replaces the look of despair on his face. The professor scoots the chair back and goes over to a desk and pulls out a note pad and a pencil and gets ready to write down a recipe, mumbling again says, “ I will learn to cook if it kills me!” then snickering to himself, “Naa…I’ll let my wife eat it.” Sitting back down at the table Prof. D. turns to the book of “Breads” and starts scanning the recipes and saw that recipe after recipe called for salt. “Hmmm…” the Professor said thoughtfully stroking his chin. “If I recall correctly…salt is in the other cookbooks too.” Reaching over to the stack of cookbooks on the corner of the table he looked in the Mexican cookbook, yep sure enough salt is in it, then he picked out the German cookbook, and there was salt there and as well as in the Asian cookbook. Pushing the others aside for the time being, the professor once again focused his Petty Socker Cookbook, pulling it slowly towards him, Prof. D. mused thoughtfully.
“So…salt is in very recipe that I could find in breads, I wonder if it is also in the book of “Pie’s and Cakes?”
The professor eagerly opened up the book and started pouring over its contents and sure enough there was not a recipe in that book that didn’t contain salt!
Moving on into the book of Cookies and Candies the professor made a startling discovery, there were actually recipes in this book that didn’t contain salt! The professor sat there stunned for a moment, he had never noticed that before. Why wasn’t there salt in some of the candy recipes? Were they produced in an anti salt culture or was salt not available in that culture from which it originated? The professor stood up and paced the floor his right hand stroking his chin as he went deep in thought. He paced back and forth for several minutes trying to make sense as to why salt was not in Chocolate Truffles, Triple Chocolate Marble Fudge, Caramels or Peanut Brittle. This puzzled the professor and he took several minutes with a dazed look on his face and a question on his lips as he began mumbling to himself again. Why, why, why was there no salt in some recipes.
Moving on to the book of “Desserts” Prof. D. continued his search and salt was repeated over and over and over and was estimated by the Professor that a full 95% of all recipes contained salt in them. Professor D. then started at the beginning of the book again and noticed another startling discovery, “Heating or Cooling! In other words there was to be an outside force applied to each recipe to make it work!
Standing up the professor began pacing excitedly around the room…“Think of it...” the professor said almost breathlessly, the application of Heat or Cold is required in EVERY recipe to make it work…” The professor stopped abruptly…“Wait a minute!”

To Be Continued…