Our Secret Recipe

Many years ago -- it doesn't seem like many years ago to me, but it was -- I bought a nice set of three nested ceramic bowls from The Brickyard, outside of Shell Lake, Wisconsin.  I loved that place!  The Brickyard is an old two-room brick schoolhouse which a couple bought, remodeled, and converted into a home on one side and art studio on the other.  The owners were potters and they opened the studio to local artists to display their talents. It was a few miles from the beautiful countryside where I spent my last days as a single woman, and I bought the bowls for a lasting souvenir of the wonderful days  when I lived in northwestern Wisconsin.  In time, I dropped the largest of the bowls, the one that would have been perfect for mixing bread in, and sometime later I broke the middle bowl, too. The big bowl was a total loss, but the middle sized bowl still sits on top of my kitchen cupboard, next to its little sibling, barely hanging on to its broken piece with Elmer's Glue. I never use it, because washing it will dissolve the glue. But I still enjoy the memories it brings.

And now?  Now I have a new memory to associate with that special, mama-bear sized bowl.  Booklover used it to mix her dry ingredients for chocolate chip cookies the other day.  And if you know what kind of a housekeeper I am, you can guess what happened.  When I grabbed hold of the edge of the bowl to give the flour, baking soda, and salt once last stir, an inch of dust fell into my hand. I stopped mid-stir and gaped at the gross collection of fuzz, desert dust, and dead human skin cells.  "Um, Amy," I said, "You didn't happen to wipe out this bowl before you dumped the flour in it, did you?" "No, Mom, why?" I showed her why.  "Oh... do you think anyone will be able to taste it?" she asks.  "We'll just tell them it's a secret ingredient," I answered.    So we did.  The cookies are almost gone, except for some unbaked dough in the fridge. No one has mentioned a funny taste, and no one has died, so I guess they're okay....?  I now have another cleaning item to add to the chore schedule I have been working on for weeks, the one that never seems to materialize...

Really.  The cookies aren't bad!  (Chocolate can cure anything.)  But Mary, let this be a lesson to you.  Be careful what you ask for, LOL!