Nostalgia (No Bake Cookies)

 

Now that we're expecting Henne-baby number 2 (who, we found out, is actually Henne-Girl!) I've been thinking a lot about the things that I used to do with my mom when I was growing up.  Every mother tries to be the best she can be, and I've been thinking a lot about what that means to me.  I haven't come up with anything that would make a coherent post yet, just a lot of disjointed ideas and manic lists running through my brain, and I'll sort all that out at a later date.  The only thing my pregnant mind could think of today was No Bake Cookies.

I haven't made these cookies for at least 15 years, but I think about them a lot.  To me, they symbolize childhood.  My mom would make up the mixture and we would spoon them onto wax paper and wait patiently (hahaha) for them to set up in the fridge before devouring as many as we could.  The leftovers would go in the flat red Tupperware container with the opaque lid, where they would sit, quietly tempting us, until after dinner when my father got to them and they were no more.

Planning, Planning, Planning...

Now that I'm up and back on my feet after this pregnancy sickness, I've started cooking again.  The nice thing about not cooking, I've learned over the past 6 months, is that when you don't cook, you don't have to think about what you're not cooking.  No grocery lists (beyond bread, peanut butter and jelly), no menus, no recipes, no nothing.  I'd be lying if I said that wasn't nice.

Now that we're in the swing of things, turns out my family still needs to eat every day.  Who know that families were so high maintenance?  I've experimented with some menu planning systems, from dry erase calendars to a recipe holder with the days of the week on the front, but I just can't seem to find one that I like.  I think part of the problem was that I was over thinking it.  We eat about 15-20 different things in rotation.  If I had a way to keep track of what we'd eaten recently, an easy to read format, and a place to put all this nifty information, my Type A organizer brain would be happy.