House Food

or Where Are My Cookies?

In my childhood home food wasn't designated as any particular family member's food.  If it was in the refrigerator and I wanted to drink it, I could (excepting dad's beer.)   If it was in the cabinet, I could eat it.   If someone came over and was hungry, they were welcome to anything we had to eat.   As an adult, I have that same mentality in our home.   I call it, "house food."

My children aren't old enough to be eligible for full, "house food" passes, because they're children and they would invariably eat all the wrong things while all the right things went bad in the fruit basket.   But overall, it's a good system and it works well for our family.

Several nights ago I got everything done for the day.   I got dressed for bed, got something to drink (yes, it was coffee) and opened up the freezer to find...my cookies gone.   I asked my husband, "where are my chocolate chip cookies?"   He said, "oh, I made them for Movie Night."   I complained, "you made MY cookies for our movie night friends?"   He didn't understand.

Those chocolate chip cookies come in the freezer department.  You take one, two, twelve or how ever many you want to eat and put them on a tray, stick them in a hot oven and some number of minutes later—you could ask my husband, he knows exactly how long to cook them—they're hot and delicious.   And he cooked my cookies and they were all gone! <insert hint of despair>

We'd had trouble finding them over the past months but we'd also been doing other things for movie night dessert so they'd been just sitting there in the freezer, waiting for me to pick a single one and eat it slowly, in it's frozen state, with my coffee at the end of the night while I watched a television show.

And they were all gone.   The thing is, I didn't know how much I really liked that little end of night routine until the moment I found we had no more cookies in the freezer.  House Food rules dictated that I couldn't complain, and after a few more minutes of bemoaning the lack of cookies and worrying about finding them again, I let it go.

But my husband had better not cook up the last of the frozen chocolate chip cookies again or he'll have me to contend with.

The Big Boy Update:  We ate at Sweet Tomatoes today.   My son loves their blueberry muffins.   After eating one he looked at Mimi and me and told us, "I am still blueberry muffin hungry."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was on the bed in her underpants this afternoon wriggling around.  My mom came over to her and patted her bottom.   My daughter said to her, with perfect intonation in her voice, "don't you EVER do that again."