What's in the Cookies?

My mom bakes a lot.  Some people bite their nails when they are restless or nervous.  Bubs bakes.  She can whip up some chocolate chip cookies like others blink.  She puts everything in the cookies: raisin, nuts (or as my niece instructed once, "no gnats, please"), raisins...you-name-it.  We joke that if you're too quiet or still in the kitchen, you'll end up in the cookies.

She used to bake cheescakes for local restaurants.  She had a list of 49 different flavors that the restaurants could choose from, to rival Baskin-Robbins' 49 flavors of ice cream, at the time.  We used to help her bake them sometimes, after school, up at the fraternity on Lafayette College, where she used to cook after my parents were divorced.  It was all fun, however, I rarely eat cheesecake anymore.  Like maybe once or twice in the last 30 years.

There's always a cookie jar at my mom's house.  Always a stash of something sweet somewhere.  Always some new baking idea that must be discussed and obsessed over.  My wife also loves to bake and bakes well, too.  I think of it as a gauntlet for my health and waist.  Kind of like Cookie Frogger.  We find ourselves baking with the kids on Saturday or Sunday afternoons, when there is nothing to do.  Some brownies.  A batch of Alfajores.  Some Dulce de Leche Cheesecake Bars, which may have been one of the times I ate cheesecake in the last 30 years.

The children are easy to corrupt in this way.  And, the cycle continues.