Arf!

I’m trying to squeeze out the last couple of chapters on A Traveler to Nascenza. Taking quick breaks to do things other than writing, I tell myself, gives me some time to knit loose ends together in my head before I commit them to paper. Yesterday, during a troublesome spot, I spent a little more time in the kitchen than I did on my laptop.

First I chopped tomatoes and basil from the garden and mixed them with a touch of oil and garlic so I could chill them and serve it as a bruschetta for dinner. Then I made some yogurt brownies. And finally, because I had the ingredients and the nerve, I made dog treats, intending them for Clark and Jeffrey’s dog, Stella. Because no matter how mean Mike and Brian are about the shirts I wear, their dog is always sweet to me.

The dog biscuits involved mixing peanut butter in hot chicken stock to break it down, then adding egg and molasses and cooking oil, then stirring in cornmeal and whole wheat flour. When it was somewhat cohesive, I rolled the dough out into a log that I cut into slices, and then halved each slice before putting the bite-sized nuggets on a cookie sheet for baking. The scent of peanut butter and chicken stock baking was, oddly enough, not reminiscent of a chicken satay or anything savory. Mostly it was pretty stanky, so I was grateful when the little morsels had been reduced to little cookies and had cooled, so I could seal them away in a plastic bag to take down to Clark and Jeffrey later.

When the Mont came home from school, I was back to work. “Hi honey,” I called out from the sofa in the den, where I was writing.

“What have you been doing?” he asked, putting down his briefcase. “Mmm. Brownies,” he said, after seeing the pan sitting on the oven. “What are these chocolate things?”

“Chocolate things?” I asked, a little muzzy-headed from making fiction.

“These.” He walked toward the den with the bag in his hand.

“They’re not chocolate,” I said.

“What are they?”

“Well, smell them,” I suggested. He opened up the bag and inhaled. Not finding anything out of the ordinary, he stuck his hand inside and, before I could stop him, popped one in his mouth and began chewing. My jaw dropped open. Barely able to contain my laughter, I said, “They’re dog biscuits.”

Oh, the look on his face. There are too few moments in life as fully satisfactory as the few seconds immediately following my announcement. I haven’t laughed so much since the Mont was mistaken for my father.

Later in the evening, when I burst into a spontaneous fit of laughter remembering it, he glared at me from the sofa. “It wasn’t as if you put dog food in them,” he complained.

He didn’t have a retort when I pointed out the obvious, however. “But you didn’t know that!”