#3 Brownies

Today, I’m making brownies. My husband and I are on a little quest to find the best brownie. You see, we truly believe that you have to have a quest in life in order to make it spiritual and important. A life is not worth living if you aren’t searching for that thing that will give you wisdom, happiness, spiritual awakening, and life ever after. A while back, we were trying to find the best bottle of wine for under $6.00. It was a long and arduous journey, but we found what we were looking for in a bottle of Chilean Malbec. Unfortunately, since that find, the price has gone above $6.00. The secret about our bottle of magic was out. We might have to start on that journey again next month.

But this month, we are on brownies. We tried the brownies from the King Soopers deli and they were fine. I say “fine” because I’ve never actually eaten a brownie that I would put down or even throw away, God forbid, because I didn’t like it or because it was just too awful. So, I will just eat every brownie and critique each one. The ones from King Soopers had a kind of graham cracker crust that was weird. Also, it was like eating sugar. I could feel the granules as I bit into it. So today, I’m making my own brownies…sort of. It’s from a box. Does that count? According to Consumer Reports, Ghirardelli makes the best boxed variety so that’s what I’m going with. In my house, we pretty much do everything Consumer Reports tells us to do.

I’m telling you about my day of baking because it is going to be my first assignment of giving. This one is doubly difficult for me. There are two parts that make me uncomfortable. The first issue is the actual brownie. I told you about my inability to share my belongings. Well, I’m even worse with food. Remember that commercial where the two people are on a date and the Neanderthal-like guy asks, “You gonna eat that?” And then he reaches over with his fork and takes her food? I wanted to jump into the TV and choke that guy. Not because of the reasons all of the feminists in the world got a rise from that commercial, but because he took her food. Every time it came on I screamed at the TV. “Stay on your side of the table, Buster. If you wanted that for dinner, then you should have ordered that for yourself! That’s her food!!!!!” I mean really. I can share food, but I have to know up front that it is going to happen. You can’t just take it off my plate. There has to be a communicated, shared plan. There has to be separate plates and forks and equal portions. There has to be boundaries. Ugh. I’m back to those boundary issues. That brings up the second issue: geographical boundaries. I’ve never been keen on just popping over to someone’s house. I pretty much need a borderline formal invitation. I just don’t want to bug people, or catch them in their pajamas. Also, I don’t want to get out of my pajamas in order to leave the house, and you just can’t go over to someone’s house in your pajamas.

So for my first mission, I’m going to do both. I will stop by my neighbor’s house and share food.

I want to bring my neighbors a chocolaty treat because they are nice people, and I want to do something nice for them. When a massive wind and hail storm blew through our neighborhood on the second night we were in this new house, they came over and checked on us. When we were at the hospital delivering the baby, they picked up our yard and mowed our lawn. They helped us build our fence. They are neighborly. They deserve the highest token of gratitude that I can think of: BROWNIES!

My plan is to make the brownies, have a couple of them (in order to judge them for our quest, of course), give my husband a couple of them, and then take four big ones over there. I will call first so I don’t cross the line of intrusion, and then I’ll get dressed and take them over there. It will be as simple as that. I have a couple of questions. Now, do I have to stay and chat? Do I have to eat the brownies with them? Do I have to disclose all of the ingredients in case there are food allergies? I’m just kidding. But really, I wish there was a way that I could just e-mail them the brownies.

I’ll let you know what happens.