From the oven, with love

So this co-worker and I have this running joke. Toward the end of the day, he’ll say, “Ya know, I think I’m gonna go home... kick the dog and smack the wife.”

To which I’ll reply, “Ya know, I think I’m gonna go home... kick the cat, smack the husband and say, ‘Bitch, fix me dinner.’”

Oh, don’t look at me like that. It’s a JOKE. We say this crap all the time. And our other co-workers giggle every time we do.

But, seriously, I would never kick the cat or smack to husband in order to get dinner. He loves being in the kitchen without me having to resort to violence. Seriously.

I tell, ya, there’s nothing sexier than a man in the kitchen fixing something tasty. Did I mention his sexy kitchen attire? His apron, chef and baker’s hats?

His chili is amazing. He makes a hearty chicken stew. His omelets are to die for. And he loves baking. (*eyes sparkles, eyelashes flutter*)

A few years ago I mentioned how much I loved gingerbread. This lit a fire in the Spouse’s heart that had us zipping over to a local cake and candy supply house looking for rolling pins, cookie cutters and a multitude of sprinkles.

In perusing the cookie cutters we found the traditional snowman and Christmas tree, star and reindeer. And then we found... the crawdad.

Now it could be a lobster. They both have the same shape, ya know. But considering it’s about 4 inches long, it leads one to think more of a crawdad.

We thought, why the hell not. It’s cute and different. We brought it home with the rest of our purchases and the Spouse got started baking what would soon be a much-desired traditional treat.

He found a damn skippy recipe for gingerbread cookies and the fever set in. Baking fever. And when the fever is on him, you can’t stop him. I don’t remember how many dozen he cranked out that first night. We had so many there was no way we were gonna eat them all. So we filled up a couple of food tubs each and took them to our respective places of employment.

And of course no one quite knew how to take the crawdad shaped cookies. That wasn’t a usual Christmas cookie design. We got some weird looks and a few questions. But that didn’t matter. Those cookies disappeared fast. Even the crawdads.

In years after, we stopped using the other cookie shapes. So now all gingerbread cookies that come out of our kitchen are crawdads. Christmas crawdads. And let me tell ya, these little gingerbread mudbugs are in high demand.

The week of Thanksgiving I already had a couple of co-workers ask, “Is your husband gonna make those Christmas crawdad cookies this year?”

And the good news is... yes! He’s already started. Last Wednesday night was “Ghost Hunters” night at our house and best friend Nicograph is always there. She happily got recruited into cookie decorating. The Spouse does the baking, I mix the icing and we all pitch in with sugar sprinkles, dragees and other colorful doo-dads to decorate those tasty bits of crawdad goodness.

I brought my usual food tub full of crawdads into work Monday. It was like watching a school of piranha skeletonize a cow.

But fret not, friends and neighbors, especially you local ones. The Spouse stocked up on all his ingredients before the Christmas baking droves swooped in at the grocery. There'll be plenty more crawdads coming soon.