When the oven's on, and the mixing bowls are out...

[mapsedge]

This is really just a continuation of a post I left with rowangolightly ...

If you want a steak, seasoned and grilled the way you want it, I'm your man.  But, if you want baked goods: bread; quickbreads; cookies; popovers; muffins; then you have to talk to my wife.  When M bakes the world rejoices.

Except when there's an event coming up, and she's baking a certain number of cookies for that event.  Then, the world may look at the gorgeous spread of cooling racks with their warm crumbly cargo, but should the world (read: me) have the temerity, NAY!  The effrontery to approach those racks, the spatula swings round like the rotor of an Apache attack helicopter, and the Mommy Voice proclaims, in a voice the neighbors can hear, "You can have THAT one," pointing to a collection of crumbs from a confection that couldn't take the strain of Baking Perfectionism and gave up, "but if you touch any of the others, I'll shall forcibly prove to you that this cookie sheet can be can be worn as a bathing suit, using you as the model."

I tried once, only once, to take a cookie from the middle, rearranging the other cookies the cover the gap.  She counts them, to the last chocolate chip, and Knows when one is missing.  No question of miscounting, either.  As successes and rejects pile up, she keeps a running total in the Cookie Ledger in her head.  Neither can one get away with swapping a Reject for a Success.  Cookies are, apparently, unique in the same way that DNA signatures are unique, and the Mental Cookie Ledger also compiles a Codis database of each cookie.

I love my wife.  I love when she bakes, or cooks anything else, for that matter.  Just had the urge to tell a story, of which some elements are exaggeration.

Comments

[fantomas71.livejournal.com]

All of this talk of cookies is evoking a sadly predictable and wholly Pavlovian response.

[rowangolightly.livejournal.com]

Aw, poor dear! Well, there's a huge stash (although rapidly diminishing) right here and you're more then welcome!

Will it help if I promise to bring some up this fall?

I didn't think so.

[fantomas71.livejournal.com]

Arg! I hadn't picked you out for Sadism!

[rowangolightly.livejournal.com]

Are you forgetting my initials?.... S & M

[fantomas71.livejournal.com]

I stand corrected. Uh-oh!

[bountifulpots.livejournal.com]

All true bakers are this way, I believe... theslice really hates it when I don't bake enough for him, because he has to sit and salivate or I beat him with the spoon...

*LOL*

[rowangolightly.livejournal.com]

I love it when you tell a story because I know in advance that I'm going to giggle, chortle and perhaps even guffaw.

The idea of you wearing a cookie sheet as a bathing suit caused the guffaw.

P.S. I'm about the same way. Except that thebruce and I are new enough that tickling his fancy still tickles mine immensely. We'll see how it is in about 5 or 10 years.

Re: *LOL*

[billthetailor.livejournal.com]

According to my brother, the story's making the rounds up at Entercom Radio (99.7KY, KMBZ, KUDL, among others). M, The Warrior Guardian of the Cookies, is how my wife is to be known now.

Imagine, around Christmas time when we're getting ready for the big family party, which includes a lot of extended family, cousins, in-laws and so on. There will be 6 or 7 dozen of a minimum of 6 different types of cookies/confections - by mid-December the freezer is packed to not-quite-overflowing with storage containers. It's crazy.

The benefit is, kidding aside, I do get to eat the cookies that break :)

Oh a happy note, I arrived home last night to find that M had started a batch of oatmeal lace cookies and by dinnertime I had a couple dozen. *contented sigh*

Re: *LOL*

[rowangolightly.livejournal.com]

Wow! Pavlovian in reverse...how cool is that! I think you need to do a study on causing cookies to be baked and document the findings and publish them.