Stephan Doyle

Solveig Shearer

Walking home from our first dinner in town, Miz Brenda, a Creole woman, approached Steve to offer a sample bag of macaroons and to tout her cooking expertise. While others in the group shyly walked a little faster, Steve engaged Miz Brenda in a long conversation and a deal was struck. Miz Brenda would deliver fresh, hot cinnamon buns to the house at 8:00 the next morning. She required a down payment for ingredients and Steve gave her cash.

When we got home, Bill read aloud this passage from Moon Handbooks Belize (Chicki Mallan and Joshua Berman, 2005)

"Note: Keep your good sense about you if you run into Brenda, a former restaurant owner that reportedly used to make the best spicy conch stew around. She is know to hustle travelers for money for meals that never get cooked. Her rustic kitchen is still on the beach between J-Byrd’s and The Moorings and hasn’t been licensed to serve food for years."

Steve was chagrined and hastened back to the village. He found James, Miz Brenda’s companion. James is a large man who sells various appliances out of the back end of a delivery truck from Burlingame, California. It’s the kind of business that opens when you tell James you heard he had a particular appliance, and then he rolls open the back end of the truck and you work out a deal. Steve explained to James that he really needed Brenda to show up with buns in the morning, or his friends would never let him forget it. James promised Steve that the buns would be delivered.

Early the next morning, Steve and Solveig paddled the canoe out to the lagoon to search for manatees. There were no manatee, would there be buns?

Amazingly, Brenda arrived with her buns, albeit a half hour late. She had 17 cinnamon buns burned securely to the bottom of a broiler pan. Brenda assured them that Steve could return the pan to her later, but Solveig was anxious to end the relationship with Brenda, cordially, but finally. Using three utensils, Steve and Solveig tried to remove buns from pan with brute force. Solveig broke a wooden spoon without budging a bun, but Steve was more successful.

“My you are strong,” Brenda cooed to Steve, “are you a construction worker?” The struggle between man and buns lasted about five minutes, with Brenda protesting all the while, “I made them too rich. These buns are so, so good.”

Good? The buns were hard and charred, but Steve used his charm to serve them dockside with coffee. You couldn’t dunk them into being edible. Solveig tried one anyway, after all Brenda said they were so, so good. There were hard small bits in those buns, like walnut shells. But there were no walnuts in the buns. What could it be? “Those are Brenda’s teeth” Steve suggested. What Solveig spat out in horror turned out to be chopped up cinnamon sticks.

Whenever anyone saw Brenda again during the month, she kept up the charade that her buns acceptable, asking cheerfully if there’d be another bun order. There wasn’t. The buns were kept in the cupboard and offered to all guests, followed by the story and a suggestion that Miz Brenda not be hired to come to the house to prepare dinner.

Despite tropical humidity that can break down shoe leather, Miz Brenda’s cinnamon buns stood up for 30 days without softening. One bun was brought back to Sunol and Steve promised to epoxy it for eternity, should there be a time to attach it to a pedestal and laud some good deed with a Miz Brenda Award.