Dancing With Salmonella

I love to bake. I hate to clean, but I love to bake. I especially love to bake chocolate chip cookie bars because chocolate chip cookie dough is my crack. Hello. My name is Allison and I am a chocolate chip cookie dough addict. Yes, I am well aware that there are raw eggs in chocolate chip cookie dough and I don't care. Of course, I would never let my children have cookie dough because of the risk of salmonella, but they haven't had the opportunity to build up a tolerance to raw eggs like I have and frankly, I don't want them to get sick on my watch. Yeah, part of that is because I am a good mom who hates to see her children sick (and I know I could use pasteurized eggs but I don't), but the other part of that...well, I'll just be honest, I don't want them throwing up all over the floor because invariably there will always be at least one kid who doesn't make it to the toilet, and (okay, don't hate me because I am sure you can relate to this on some level) I really don't want to share my cookie dough. By the time I get the dough spread into my bar pan, there is just a little bit left in the mixing bowl, just a smidgen on the beater, and a teeny tiny minuscule amount left on the spoon. It would never amount to much if I had to share it with four kiddos. Besides, I don't want to enable them to the point of becoming a dough addict like their mother. After all, addiction can be hereditary.

So there I was yesterday, channeling my best June Cleaver, baking yummy chocolate chip cookie bars and remembering to add love and goo which is what I always tell the boys makes my cooking tastes so good. The boys were upstairs playing, my baby girl was scaling the living room walls, and my husband was working quietly on his laptop at the kitchen table. It was such a serene moment that I lost myself in my mixing and measuring. I do a lot of my baking while the baby naps and the boys lose themselves in a video game. It's my alone time. Just me and my cookie dough or me and my buttermilk pie or me and my beer bread, but yesterday was different. George was home. I put the bar pan in the oven and started the task of cleaning the mixer. I found myself licking the beater over the kitchen sink while taking in the view of the backyard. I was alone with my dough, or so I thought. Suddenly, I felt eyes upon me. I slowly turned to look over my shoulder and saw my George, the love of my life, the man of my dreams, looking right at me with an expression of horror mixed with disgust all over his face. I think it was the first time he'd ever caught me with my dough. "What?" I asked too caught up in my own dough euphoria to be embarrassed. He simply replied with laughter.

So George would never eat anything with raw eggs in it but I figure they were good enough for Rocky Balboa, and they are good enough for me so long as they are wrapped in butter and brown sugar.