My grandmother was of a religious turn, presumably she had little choice, since her father was a preacher. Nonetheless, she attended church regularly and was considered a pillar of that institution.
This was in the days before telephones or cars so the preacher did his home visiting on horseback, and regularly hit my grandmothers house around tea time. He may have been a minister, but he was nobody's fool when it came to home baking.
One weekday, as she was preparing to do laundry, she was surprised by the arrival of a buggy at the front gate. She was even more surprised when the preacher alit, followed by no less than the bishop himself, coming to call on his prize parishioner. She sat them in the front room (reserved for visitors of this caliber) and immediately excused herself so she could change into clothing more suitable for the occasion, quietly stirring up the woodstove and sliding the kettle on as she passed.
In a few minutes she was properly attired, slicing bread and cakes and laying out cookies on a tray covered with the best linen, another crisis met and overcome. The kettle was steaming so she filled the good teapot and left the tea to draw. Into the front room with the tea service for uplifting conversation and, no doubt, more requests for good works in the community.
Cups were poured and passed, sips were taken, a shocked silence ensued. It was only when she tasted her own cup that she realized she had made the bishops tea with the washing soda she was boiling up for the laundry.
Things smoothed down, no one was injured, and all went on to live good Christian lives. My grandmother lived to be ninety-four but she never forgot the time she tried to poison the bishop.

My sister was a young housewife with a couple of kids, living in a mine shanty, dealing with a cranky woodstove and hand laundering clothes, generally keeping busy. It was no real surprise that the breakfast dishes were not washed and put away one early afternoon when some neighbours came to call unexpectedly. Knowing, however, that tongues could wag, she quickly slipped the dishes into the oven out of sight of prying eyes, and prepared to make tea.
Now one of the characteristics of a woodstove is that, when you light a fire, you don't heat part of it, you heat all of it, including the oven.
The kettle was boiling happily and the teapot was prepared when a new and different aroma came upon the scene, the smell of roast Melmac, which has its own distinctive characteristics I have heard.
Being prepared neither to smoke everyone out of the house nor serve them "Melmac roti" she opened the oven, tossed some water in and hauled the whole mess outside to smoulder if it would in the great out of doors.
And yes, some tongues did wag.

From the old mine to the store on highway sixteen was about two miles if you took the road or about a mile and a half if you took the pit trails. We boys, young hellions that we were, always took the trails on foot or by bike, sliding down the hills, skirting the sump holes, ducking the dump trucks loaded with coal, having a hell of a good time generally. For the teenage girls though, sedateness and cool were the watchwords, so they always took the road.
One fine Fall day my two sisters walked to the store, mostly for something to do. While they were there the storekeeper told them to be careful while walking home because a bear had been seen in the area,(meanwhile tipping a wink to his teenage son). He held them in conversation for a while, then said they'd bettter be getting along before evening, reminding them about the bear. As they walked along the highway and turned down the mine road they were talking about how their leg had been pulled, bears indeed. Then they heard a rustling in the bush on the other side of the ditch, then they looked and saw a hairy black shape climbing a tree, then they were gone. They ran every inch of the mile and a half home and came screaming in the door about bears, bears, bears.
The storekeeper's son said later that he thought it was a good joke, and he was trying to catch them to explain, but he was laughing so hard that he couldn't run, and they were running so hard that they couldn't listen.