It’s October, and sure as the leaves are falling, the festivals are popping up all over north Baltimore County: Church festivals, community fairs, even a bull roast to benefit a scholarship fund in memory of two local kids who were killed in Iraq.
But my lemon squares will be stuck at home, the victim of a Baltimore County ordinance banning bake sales unless the goods are cooked in a county-certified kitchen under the watchful eye of a county-certified cook-watcher. No cert, no bake sale. Now, I’m a lawyer, and I’ve got no inherent problem with government regulation. Every time I walk out my door and see green fields instead of a gas station, I bless Baltimore County for having the strictest zoning regs going.
But the bake sale thing makes me sad.
Is there no way around this?
Could we have eating clubs, like cigar clubs, where people pay to get into a room where baked goods are sold?
Or judging booths, where you pay your buck to sample, er, vote on various cookies or pies?
Or will the whole bake-sale thing have to go underground, with bake-easies in church cellars, and desperate choirboys knocking on a heavy wooden door that opens not with a key but with a code word: “Coconut Cream.”
Actually, if Prohibition is any indication, that’s probably where the real money would be made.
Remember: when brownies are outlawed, only outlaws will have brownies.
-BARBARA GRZINCIC, Managing Editor, Law
1 comment:
Would 'Heck-of-a-job' brownies be on offer in the bake-easies you propose?
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