Hermanni

Hermanni is a living cake. I killed 2/5 of him today. He was quite tasty.

He's a friendship cake. I got him from my mother. He's a cake starter, like sourdough. You're supposed to stir him every day and feed him with milk, flour and sugar every now and then. Then you divide him into parts and give them to your friends (although, if you'd like to keep your friends make sure that they're either good enough friends or that they are immensely fond of baking). The last part you keep yourself and bake a cake.

The instructions are quite macabre. Every time you're supposed to feed him, it says: "Hermanni is hungry! Give him food". And then in the end it says: "Hermanni is hungry again. Today he'll get food for the last time." I mean, isn't that a bit cruel?

But the funniest thing in the instructions is that the word "stir" is in Finnish "hämmentää" which also means "to confuse". So the intructions say: "Confuse him 2-3 times a day." – So he'll be so confused by the end of the week, that he won't notice when you finally kill him?

Buy the way "confused" is my favourite word in English. The word "hämmentynyt" is a bit different, it's much softer, more like puzzled or bewildered. And you don't use it so much. Or maybe it's just me who uses "confused" so much?

Maybe my enthusiasm for the word has something to do with confusing a cat?