Snowed In Chocolate Pudding

We donated our little red play kitchen during the week of the snowstorm. These days, when Hadley and Harper want to “play” kitchen, they page through cookbooks, then rummage through the cupboards and the refrigerator to see if we have what it takes to make a Texas sheet cake, chocolate-chip sour cream coffee cake, or black and white cookies. It’s not that they don’t love the little red kitchen anymore, it’s more that this toy prompted a desire to see whether the dreams they have can come to life. Now that they can read, and understand a little about the difference between 1/4 teaspoon and 1/4 cup of salt (goodness gracious, was THAT a salty coffeecake!), they want to see what happens when they cream butter and sugar, pour in vanilla; mix in the flour and roll it all out.

These sorts of movements and growth are always bittersweet, aren’t they? Of course the little red kitchen doesn’t have feelings, but we do and we feel sad that something that allowed us to play, gave us a little counter to lean on when we were learning how to stand and walk. gave us an idea of all the deliciousness there is to make in the world is now not a part of our home. There is no easy way to say goodbye.

“I am sad about the little red kitchen,” Hadley said as we pulled away from Goodwill and she watched the guys load her old toy into a big bucket and roll it into the store.

“Me, too,” I said. “It was a good toy.”

“We should bake something today,” Harper suggested. Perhaps she said it to honor the little red kitchen. Perhaps she wanted something chocolatey on a snowy afternoon. I am not sure, but the three of us decided on whipping up some chocolate pudding from the William Sonoma Sweet Treats cookbook.

Listen, I am not a chocolate person, and if I do eat chocolate, the stuff I like is the equivalent of Boones. I’m not trying to eat that 85% cocoa ridiculousness. Give me a Mr. Goodbar, a Twix, or a Kit-Kat and I’m good to go. However, this chocolate pudding recipe is so delicious I have decided that unsweetened chocolate will forever be a staple in my home.

I suppose that’s the magic of baking. Smelling the chocolate melting into the whole milk, sugar, and vanilla, watching for stiff peaks in the cream as you whip it up, pouring a few (or in my case a ton) of rainbow sprinkles on top for good measure allows you to think, “Well, maybe it’ll be a delicious treat.” A little playing around with something new never hurt anyone.

As we worked through the recipe, we learned we were supposed to melt the chocolate in the microwave, but we don’t have a microwave. Harper quickly grew as upset as a hornet, as she does, but I showed her how easy (and in my humble opinion, much more satisfying) it is to melt chocolate in a saucepan on the stove. It is one of my life’s great pleasures to be able to calm Harper down and get her back to humming and twirling mode again, and watching this happen as the chocolate melted into a thick sauce (as I told her it would) was as satisfying as the pudding we would soon be spooning into our mouths. “You gotta use what you got,” I said to Harper as she hummed and stirred the chocolate with a wooden spoon.

Pudding takes a bit to settle itself in the refrigerator, so the three of us went our separate ways for about an hour and agreed to meet back in the kitchen for our snack. If this were a few years ago, maybe it’d be the girls’ nap times, or maybe we’d head to the park. This week was similar; weaving in and out of each other’s paths as we spent our days playing and reading and doing some writing or playing in the snow. It’s a nice rhythm. Of course, there are challenges, too. There are fights to break up, Hadley and Harper are currently obsessed with all things related to what goes on in the bathroom and I have tolerance for about one of those jokes per week, and the lack of a schedule has always been a downfall for me and my list-making, goal setting self. But we manage and I am reminded that I can do just fine in unscheduled situations; I can figure out how to be a mother all by myself using what it is I have. The snow week was a nice chance to recollect who I used to be, how I used to manage, and how far I’ve come.

We at our chocolate pudding around the kitchen table and talked until we scraped every last bit of chocolate from our bowls.

“Mama, can you be more than one thing?” Harper asked licking pudding from her fingers. How it got on her fingers, around her mouth, and on her nose, I do not know.

“What do you mean?”

“Can you be a dancer and also something else? Like, a park designer? I want to dance and I want to design parks.”

“Yes, I think you can be more than one thing.” I scooped one more bite from the bowl and said, “I think you can do it if you use your time wisely.”

“Use my tongue wisely?” Harper asked.

“No! I said, ‘If you use your time wisely.'”

“OH! I thought you said tongue. I thought you meant I’d need to be able to use my tongue wisely so that I could tell people I want another career.”

Harper stood up, pushed in her chair and did a leap to the garbage can to throw away her napkin. Then she skipped away, singing.

There will be a day when figuring out how to manage her time and what it is she will do with her days will bring a bit of heartache. She’ll have to put away some old dreams in order for new dreams to flourish. I hope she is thankful for all the wishes she has for herself; all the seeds that she gets to choose to hold onto and decide how it is they’ll grow. There will be a time when she’ll be sad to see something she loved for a long while go away, but she can be thankful for the time she had with it; what it helped her do and how it helped he learn a little big about what it is she can do in this wonderful world.