How to Avoid Extra Calories

Every day, as my boys come home from school, I am greeted by the hearty love-phrase, "What's for after-school snack?"  I am a food dispenser.  My first husband was a mechanical engineer, and as we had more and more boys, he vowed to invent a large refrigerator.  It would have a sensor where you put you hand, and it would recognize who you were and spit out the correct amount of food for that individual.  And that was when they and their appetites were little.  They grow, and eat.  They always want more and more food.  That's what I get for having healthy growing children!  That's also what I get for having nearly four teenaged boys.  Whew.  I love 'em.

This is a painting!  I think I need to have it in my house.

Today, as they began their descent on the kitchen, I could see that they really wanted chocolate chip cookies.  Or maybe I did.  I also knew that I didn't want to eat lots of cookies.  I'm trying to be a little bit nicer to my body, and a pile of chocolate chip cookies is not going to help me be healthy.

The first dozen cookies were snatched off the pan before they were cool enough to handle.  There were a whole bunch of slightly-burned fingers with that batch.  The second batch evaporated nearly as quickly.  I snatched up the third panful as soon as they came out of the oven and hid them on top of the fridge so I had something fun to put in their lunches tomorrow.  The fourth batch only got half-eaten, until I turned my back and they disappeared.  And the fifth dozen were eaten when Georgie stole the bowl from the counter and snuck away to his bedroom where he and Freddie ate the dough raw.  It's best that way, you know.

And now there are two cookies hidden for Trent when he gets home from work, and four baggies filled with cookies for tomorrow's lunches.  The pans have been washed, and all the other evidence destroyed.  Even the crumbs have been licked up.

That is how you have cookies around without feeling obliged to eat them.  Have the children eat them.  No encouraging required.  Saved from the extra calories!

I won't tell you how much dough I snitched, though.