When she gleefully shouted "I feel a blackberry and apple pie coming on", my heart sank.
The walk to the lake near our old home farm was supposed to be a chance for us both to forget about cooking, something that had consumed us for the past fortnight or so.
We were carrying some of the Cookery Queen's prize-winning fruit cake (a class in which she pipped the Earthquake Baby) and her second-prize-winning shortbread, but it was two days after the A and P show and we were trying to recuperate.
While she was dreaming about the delights of blackberry and apple pie, I tried to focus on serious issues such as the price of milk.
It will be interesting to see how the price freeze promises work out.
At the same time as people are getting in a froth about this, we are also being reminded that selling tickets to the Rugby World Cup for anything more than their face value is a crime punishable by a maximum fine of $5000.
Protecting fools who want to part with their money to buy rugby tickets must be more important than worrying about whether people are paying sensible amounts for basic commodities.
As I trudged along in the sunshine, gulping in the delicious river smells when they wafted my way, I hoped somehow I might have a revelation and understand how that made sense.
I was sidetracked for a while as we clambered inelegantly across a rather large rocky slip, brought down during recent flooding.
The Cookery Queen scared herself by wantonly not following the orange track markers.
She then valiantly attempted to throw rocks into a natural wishing well, and when they fell short of the mark, declared the wish she was going for was that "we get out of here alive". I tried to tell myself it is her creativity that provokes such melodrama.
She is, after all, the woman who has made the novelty cake section at the A and P show her own in recent years.
Despite my best intentions, that set me off thinking about our show entries. Again.
I could already attribute two cold sores and persistent toothache to my worries over my pathetic show entries, while the Cookery Queen had had sleepless nights worrying about her novelty cake's icing.
On the morning of my departure with my entries, I felt overwhelmed at the thought of making scones, after two semi-failed attempts that morning at my never-fail cheese muffins.
But there was no going back. Scones were the only category where the rivalry of the three siblings would be let loose. (The Earthquake Baby, a previous winner and second place-getter, had tried to get out of it by saying she had a horse's mane to plait, but she was ruled out of order by her elders and betters.)
It was time to call on the wisdom of the patron saint of home baking, Dame Alison, whose recipe I use. Frighteningly, she referred to the perils of careless measuring, a skill in which I could win a world cup.
It took three batches to get three scones that looked vaguely alike. They were stuffed, without ceremony or any enthusiasm, into a container for their air and car travel.
In the midst of this, the Cookery Queen was sending me texts about her failed carrot cake exhibit attempt and bleating "this is all your fault". I tersely pointed out how wrong it was to blame the coach. She was lucky my hands were too flour-encrusted later for me to stab out a coach-like text telling her to "toughen up". Scones, as it turned out, was among the most keenly contested sections in the baking, with eight entries.
My scruffy little threesome took out first prize, while the Cookery Queen's monsters and Earthquake Baby's fresher offerings were unplaced.
"Well, the judge must have liked the rustic look," was as close as they got to fulsome or even floury praise.
The Cookery Queen was indignant a fellow competitor suggested hers were unplaced because they looked as if they had been made with scone mix. The very thought!
By the time we got to the lake, eating food rather than making it was our concern. We greedily picked watercress for our ham sandwiches, and washed them down with lashings of fresh water.
Bathing in the beauty and tranquillity of our surroundings, I wondered aloud why anyone would want to alter such a stunning spot by plonking a hydro-electric scheme there.
There was no sensible answer, of course, just as there had been no logic to my scone success.
What did make sense was collecting sun-warmed blackberries for that pie as we wended our way down the valley.
• Elspeth McLean is a Dunedin writer.
• Simon Cunliffe's Smoko column will appear tomorrow in place of Joe Bennett's Sleeping Dogs, which will not be filed due to the Christchurch earthquake.
