Brownies

No pictures please!  I haven't reapplied my make-up.

When is something a lie, and when is it imaginative play, I ask Mary.

The question was raised because I missed a great photo opportunity.

One where Mary was trying to get Rhiannon to confess it was her who was screaming in the other room, and not her sister as Rhiannon said it was.

Can I have just one more spoonful of the batter?

Tell the truth, Mary said, trying to get eye contact with Rhiannon, but Rhiannon had fallen to the floor, and Mary, unable to sustain her own centre of gravity was now on all fours on top of her, trying to get the truth out of a girl who was not going to tell it.

Rhiannon didn't tell the truth yesterday.

She didn't tell the truth today.

And tomorrow is yet to be seen, but I am putting all of my money on her not telling the truth. Whatever the word truth may mean.

I thought Gryphon would choke himself,
...trying to lick up the scraps that fell on a chair.

A great photo op, I was in the background saying when I saw them on the floor, Mary trying to get eye contact and underlining the need for a mom to hear the truth from her three year old.

And when Rhiannon continued from her place on the floor, reasserting she was not lying and then coming up with “I can’t get up”, that is when I wondered, how a parent can tell the difference between a lie and imaginative play.

Mary says she knows the difference – and both of them can be in a child’s repertoire.

 ... cracking egg # 3 ... trying for no shells in the batter this time ...

This was all a prelude to making brownies, which was not a task I was prepared to begin at 8 pm, but it was in Mary's mind to make them.

I at least offered the quickest easiest recipe I know, the one in the Johnson Manna from Heaven cookbook, but Mary had left-over chocolate from her Christmas dipping project to use up. She had in mind real chocolate, not cocoa.

She brought out the Bakers BEST Chocolate Cookbook, over 125 irresistible keepers.

I grabbed the book and wrote in the front of it, “see p. 60 for the best Sacher Bars ever” – but Mary was still interested in producing brownies – a double batch – out of real chocolate.

 ... pouring the batter to the pan ...

"Are these for us, or for the Boy Scouts who are downstairs making their dump-trucks for racing in a scouting event?”

"Perhaps you are right on both counts," said Mary. "I made a double batch."

The smell is in the kitchen is warm and chocolatey.

...that gold crust on brownies make of real chocolate ...

Wish you were here.

Arta