Gaps

In the past 10 months, Rosalind and I baked together just a handful of times. The lull started around Saint Patrick's Day last year when my morning sickness kicked in. The mere thought of chocolate, coffee, beer, or garlic made me ill. How much I dreaded the smell of the restaurant! It didn't help that I would always be the first one to arrive at work. As I opened the kitchen door, I would get a nice big whiff of the compounded stench of garlic, onions, fried food and liquor (that had all been cooped up in an unventilated building for hours). Then the janitors would do their thing and cleaning fumes would eventually smother the smell of stale food and alcohol. What can one do but to put on a brave face and do one's job? I kept it up too, even when my days involved mass producing those Guinness chocolate cakes which involved pounds after pounds of chocolate and pints after pints of beer.

But when I got home, it was a different story. I was on the couch a lot, snoozing or cursing the injustice of the world. I didn't cook or bake. We lived on quesadillas, salads and Subway sandwiches. Rosalind was very understanding. According to her, she had been waiting for a sibling for almost a decade. She would always remind me to take my vitamins and drinks lots of water. She would even bring me Skittles and Mentos from who knows where to combat the nausea.

In a way, the pregnancy distracted her from a looming event that she dreaded: our move to Seattle. Steve was to start a PhD program at the University of Washington. Rosalind was born and bred in Sacramento. She was very attached to her home, her school, her friends and not to mention her cousins, grandparents, aunts, and uncles in California. She also didn't like change. So even with the promise of beaches, museums, plays, and fish and chips or the prospect of two doting aunts and a pretty awesome uncle who live in the Seattle area, she still approached our relocation with foreboding. To top it off, the girl also delighted in melodrama. Her eyes welled up every time "the move" was mentioned. And once or twice, when her "sorrows" overwhelmed her, she would run to her room and lock the door to seek solitude.

One day, after a serious meltdown, she asked me if we could bake something, anything. So I got my butt off the couch and we made these cookies.

They probably were peanut butter sandwich cookies filled with ganache. I don't exactly remember. But I do remember Rosalind letting out a big sigh as I pulled the pan of cookies out of the oven and exclaiming: "Well, that felt good!"

Sometimes we forget the therapeutic effect of routine. With all the uproar, the poor child was craving something normal and familiar and probably some peanut butter chocolate cookies as well. Not too long after that, we made Puffles cupcakes with her friends from school

and mutated Puffles cupcakes with her cousins. (They are too creative to be restricted by directions).

Later in the summer, when we were pretty much settled in our new home in Seattle, Rosalind and I went blackberrying and made a blackberry pie.

And we made lots of peanut butter cookies. Some were cyclops with mega-size peanut butter cups.

Some were filled with ganache.

And then this little guy came along.

Now, who can think of cookies, cakes or pies when you have just fallen head over heels in love?

Well, if one of your favorite people in the world has a birthday celebration, a Snickers cheesecake becomes obligatory. We'll have the recipe for you in an upcoming post.