Cloying

Are there some flavors that you find too sickly sweet?  For a friend of mine, he couldn't manage cotton candy because he said it was sweeter than he liked.  And yet this same friend would drench his pancakes in so much syrup they were practically swimming.  Syrup is that way to me, being so overly sweet in large quantities that I resort to dipping the edge of the pancake or waffle or french toast so I don't overdo the sugar whammy.

Is it how we process flavors on our tongue or is it how our brain percieves things that makes one thing more sweet than another?

And here's a strange thing, why does cake batter taste sweeter before it's baked into a cake while brownie batter tastes less-sweet than the resulting cooked brownies?  The cake batter fluffs up and becomes more airy after cooking while brownies stay more dense, but either way, the sweetness-factor changes after baking in different directions.

My husband makes cookies for movie night fairly regularly.  The sugar cookie dough tastes so much better to me than the resulting baked cookies.  This weekend, Uncle bob made some cookies.  The cookie dough was delicious.  It was peanut butter and oats and chocolate chips and M&Ms and the cookies were good.  But I'd rather have one cookie in dough-form than two cookies in baked form.

I don't think I'm the only one that feels this way.  Have you noticed how common cookie dough is in ice cream these days?  And then there's the cake batter, birthday cake and brownie batter options you find at virtually every frozen yogurt store.  So there must be something attractive about flavors in certain formulations that are more appealing in certain situations.

The Big Boy Update:  First Choo.  He likes trains.  He says, "choo choo" and "train" and he loves to play with anything train.  There is a train book, a crumbling set of Lego trains (with him as the crumbler,) and an interactive train walker toy with lights and annoying sounds.  And they're all fun.  Yesterday, he got to have his first ride on a train.  There's a historical one-third scale train at a local park you can ride on for a dollar.  It's a good use of a dollar.  He quietly sat and enjoyed the whole ride without commenting.  After the ride, when he had processed it somewhat, he'd say, "choo!" when he saw the train going around the park with other riders.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  First Carousel.  My daughter missed the train ride due to napping in the stroller, but she was awake and ready for the carousel ride that came next.  She rode in Grandpa's lap on one of the seats and looked all around the whole ride.  The music from the calliope was exciting and the motion was thrilling.  She kept looking back at Grandpa as if to say, "hey, this is great, thanks for bringing me."

Fitness Update:  Oo, sore.  lots of miles and my legs are sore.  But sore is good.  Sore means it was a good workout.  No running for me today.

Someone Once Said:  A baby has a unique virtue. It is always the hope of our race. It’s only hope.