Waving Not Drowning

Chickpea chocolate chip cookies, black bean brownies. Beans in sweets. Gus is terrifically confused. His mom thinks he can't tell the difference but Gus has the most discerning palate any 6 year old could hope for. Plus he saw her throw the can of beans into the food processor. This week it's beans. He can tell because he's been farting like a demon. Mom gets angry with him then the corner of her mouth curls up and he can tell she's just pretend angry. Every time Gus feels like he has to let one go he makes a bigger deal about it, trying to get his mom to laugh. Most of the time he's a winner. Lately though it's growing tired. After 8 straight days of lentil burgers and loaves and burritos and chilis no wonder. Last month it was tofu. That lasted a week. Deep fried it was fine but any other way it was a spongey, tasteless mash. Well ok, the scrambled egg like thing was good but that's cause she dumped salsa all over it. He doesn't get it, this constant b...

Ohhhhh the way you melt in the mouth, the sweet chocolately goodness wrapped up in a soft textured oatmealy crust. Big juicy raisins exploding with sweetness, surrounded by the essence of cinnamon and clove, flakes of lightly toasted coconut, just dense enough to satiate but not so decadent as to push things over the edge, to that place where bliss slides into shame and regret. Still warm, flooding the synapses with feel-good endorphins, creating a moment of climax above and beyond what a cookie should be capable of providing. This is bliss. This is complete ecstasy, wild abandon, the total unleashing of one's true, feral self. Untamed, savage, beastly. Beware the path to carnal abandon, clear the way between Sylvia and her fresh baked, still cooling cookies. Three strides from oven to table is all she needs to capture her prey, the prize she so lovingly created, moulded, caressed, built with her own two hands. And the help of an obscenely expensive high gloss red Kitchen Aid stand...

She's allowed one more cookie. One more, not two or three, god forbid four- that would be the end of the world as Sharron knows it. It's a very big deal with her mom, controlling Sharron's cookie intake. Some call her big boned but really she is heavy, overweight for a young girl, what in the old days they would call husky. Sharron is completely obsessed with cookies. Peanut butter chocolate chip oatmeal raisin cookies to be exact, fresh from the oven, when they're almost too hot to eat without scorching off the roof of your mouth. Sharron peels one off the parchment and juggles it back and forth between her fingertips hand to hand, blowing on it until it's just the right temperature then she closes her eyes, inhales the nutty sweet chocolatey smell, and busts out in a grin from ear to ear. She tries to measure her bites- four is ideal but sometimes she gets greedy and inhales an entire cookie in two, or on a rare occasion, one and a half. She can't help it: the...