1783. Soup and toast

Heidi asked her big brother, Edmund, why they hung the sticky fly paper from the kitchen ceiling. It was covered with flies. The summer had been a bad year for flies.

Edmund explained that when the sticky flypaper was taken down, it could be immersed in boiling water, and made into a delicious soup. All it took was the fly paper covered in flies, some hot water, and some pepper and salt. Then once it had been thoroughly boiled for about ten minutes the fly paper was removed and discarded. If there were too many large blowflies in the soup then the mixture could be briefly pureed. But generally speaking with the small flies it didn’t greatly matter.

That evening, Heidi said she would cook, and she had soup on the menu; soup and toast.

“I didn’t make the fly soup like Edmund suggested,” said Heidi, “because I knew it wasn’t true. Instead I made some soup out of zucchinis that I cooked and pureed. But for Edmund I made a separate dish.”

She placed the special plate of soup in front of Edmund. There was nothing wrong with it of course. It was the same as everyone else’s. But Edmund wouldn’t eat it. He just ate a bit of toast.