Week 9: Molten Lava Cookies

This week I chose to bake molten lava cookies.  This is a new recipe for me and I found it in one of my  Better Homes and Gardens magazines.  It is chocolate cookie dough with a chewy chocolate center...need I say more?  This is a DELICIOUS recipe and a chocolate lovers dream.  The texture of the cookie is similar to that of a brownie. The smell in the kitchen was a cross between freshly baked brownies and fudge.  In short, I wish I could bottle the smell and spritz myself liberally with it.☺  

Here is the link to the recipe:  http://www.eatwisconsincheese.com/recipes/article.aspx?rid=2660

As I was mixing the dough for this week's recipe, Ryan was sitting at the kitchen table doing his homework.  Prior to finishing his homework, we were watching some bonus features on season three of  "How I Met Your Mother",  one of our favorite tv shows.  With careful editing, Victoria and Ryan are allowed to watch this show too.  One of our favorite episodes is called "Slapsgiving."  In the episode, two characters from the show engage in a "slap bet" (they make a bet and the winner gets to slap the loser in the face).  I know it sounds brutal but it is super funny.  At the end of the episode the winner composes a song about the "slap bet."  The bonus feature disc we were watching  included a spoof on a music video of that song (complete with a butler and a fancy piano) called "You Just Got Slapped."  If you are interested, check out the song... it's pretty funny http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z64xsbJSdK8&feature=fvw
Well while Ryan was supposed to be finishing his homework he kept singing the song...it was actually stuck in my head too and still is. ☺ 

Ryan then reported that he would really love to slap someone in the face (like on the show) and I of course did the "responsible parent thing" and explained the tv show isn't real, and it's funny on tv but not in real life, hitting is mean etc... etc... You get the picture.  I didn't tell Ryan, but my very first inclination was very "un-responsible parent like", because I thought to myself  "I know...I'd like to slap someone in the face too." ☺ I don't think this means that we are bad people...just normal people with good manners and some self control.    I say this because neither of us have ever slapped someone in the face.  Well... at least I haven't...Ryan made a few hundred bad choices between the ages of two and three but I digress ☺ 

So while we were having this conversation about slapping I remembered that my Mom slapped someone once.  It's actually a really funny story.  It was the early nineties and my Mom was taking karate classes with my sister Amy and our "brothers from another mother" Chris and Jim.  I still think it's funny that my mild mannered  Mom took karate classes, but she did.  She loved it too.  Well I guess the training worked, because one evening as she was leaving her beauty salon, she saw someone out of the corner of her eye, approaching her. She immediately went into self defense mode and did a karate kick to the side complete with a very intimidating "YAH".  In reality it wasn't a person, it was a very scary parking meter.☺  Well my Mom showed him, and broke her toes in the process.  Other than the pain, my Mom said the worst part of kicking the parking meter, was that across the street from where she was parked was a bus stop.  Of course there were several people watching this attack on the innocent parking meter, so my Mom did the only thing she could to save face.  She pretended that she meant to kick the meter, and did a few more karate moves as she hobbled back to her salon. I love love love this story and so wish I had been there to see it unfold.

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of my Mom's death, and despite the passage of time, I still feel the same as I did on that awful day.  When she died,  it was a huge slap, not only in the face, but in the heart, and in the soul.  I hope that with more time the sting from that slap dissipates and that we can all find a way to heal that wound.  I still miss my Mom like crazy and I hope that somewhere in Heaven she is practicing her karate moves..."YAH!" ♥



Me and Mom on Mackinac Island...her favorite place ♥