Counting and Cooking by Two's

Numbers are popular around our house these days. Elliott is experimenting with counting by groups -- usually 10's, but he's tried 5's and 2's, too. They make it faster to get to 100, he says. Dietrich is the precision counter. He needs to touch each object he is counting and starts over if he misses one he thinks should have been counted first. He likes to ask, "What pluses make 7?" (or 11 or whatever). I get to think about the many combinations that can make up a given number.

And so we cook. Actually, we bake because most things that are actually cooked (vegetables, meat, sauces) are disdained once they have been mixed into a pot -- unless they are in a burrito shell and purchased at Chipotle. Is there something in Chipotle left over from its ownership by McD's that makes it addictive to kids? So we bake. Cookies, bread, pizza crust, pie crust, pancakes, and more cookies.

Today's recipe was "power bars", an adaptation from the oatmeal cookie recipe on the top of a round box of Quaker oats. We add peanut butter and oat bran, double the chocolate chips and cut the sugar. I would add craisins, but someone, who would count them if they were found in his cookie, does not like them when they are in things. So they are fruitless, but I still call them breakfast bars. Something didn't work as well today -- too much time in the oven? The mixture of end-of-the-jar peanut butter? I know we had enough eggs; Dietrich was counting. Should I have skipped the oatbran? Elliott swooped in about half way through the 3 cups of flour to update me on his design for the cookie packaging so that he can make up nutrition facts for them. Did I add an extra cup? I suggested he make up silly nutrients. Trans Fun? Carbochocolates? Calorsmiles? But he wanted the facts. I told him we don't know what is in them because the best foods don't have a chart showing us what is in them and their supposed nutrition content. He made them up. Our cookies have 27 g's of sodium and 13 g's of protein. Better than most breakfast cereals! But who's counting?