Tuesday, July 1, 2014

And now, sugar

I like to cook.

No, really. Even though oftentimes at 6pm I am yanking out random frozen vegetables from the freezer and noodles from the pantry muttering, "Of COURSE pasta doesn't expire, it can't expire, I refuse to believe it, this pasta is still good, man I HATE making dinner." In the end, it's fun to create something and then get to eat it afterwards. You can't do that with art projects, unless it's one of those bizzare performance art things.

I decided my kids need to know how to cook. This decision came easier once a sixteen month old Strawberry began bouncing at our feet whenever Husband and I were in the kitchen, yelling, "UP UP UP UP UP UP UP UP UP UP UP" and refusing to let us put her down because she wanted to see everything we were doing on the counter.

For an anniversary present, I bought one of those learning tower things, which is basically a platform that lets a kid stand at counter height so they can reach everything on the counter (keep those knives out of the way!). It was also an anniversary present in that I bought it around our 4th anniversary and then went "OH...right...hey honey, it's a present! We don't have to hold Strawberry while we cook any more!" You know all those stereotypes about the man forgetting anniversaries and having to rush to the store after work to grab flowers while the woman is tapping her foot on the floor at home waiting for Her Man to surprise her with something super romantic? Yeah, that's not a thing in our home, since I constantly have to ask Husband how many years we have been married.



Anyway, the other day I decided to make cookies, because everyone likes cookies, and it's a good project to do with Strawberry. She eagerly climbed up on her learning tower when I said the word "Cookies," and helped me dump the butter into the KitchenAid. I gave her a little 1/4 cup scoop and told her we were counting out 4 scoops. One...she dumped in the sugar. Two...three...four...good job!

And then, I did something stupid. I turned around and opened the refrigerator to pull out the eggs. As I bent down I heard..."And now, FIVE!"

Strawberry was dumping another scoop of sugar into the bowl. As I shot to my feet and said, "NO JUST FOUR," she happily dumped in yet another one..."And now, SIX!"

This girl can move slower than molasses when it comes to cleaning up or going potty, but dumping sugar into a bowl? Pretty sure she broke some sugar-dumping records. She had another scoop in his hand and was in the process of dumping it into the bowl before I could cross the five steps to her. "And now, SEV--"

"That's enough! Thank you! You counted great. Wow...lots of sugar..." I stared into the bowl, where the butter had vanished under the snowy white grains of sugar. We had no other butter, so I sighed and turned on the mixer.

They were really sweet and burned around the edges. But later, Strawberry happily sat in her little chair, staring out the window and munching away, and that's really all that counts, right? Maybe?