Baking cookies
Generally speaking, I cooked and Hillary baked.
It's probably safe to say that when we were both working, I was responsible for 60-70% of the meals. It was a different story those times in our lives when she wasn't working at an office.
It's also safe to say that I baked effectively nothing except cookies. (In the year before Hillary was diagnosed, I actually started doing cakes pretty regularly as I finally learned how to make a decent icing. After she was diagnosed and changed her eating habits to be a lot more healthy, her regret was that I had been baking a lot of cakes recently and now had to stop. Hillary loved cake.)
Cookies are easy, fun to do and are delicious. I don't even have a large repetoire, but the ones I do make, I like.
So when the kids started to get old enough to assist, they helped me bake cookies.
Through the entire 14 year span of our relationship, I cooked and made things without butter because dairy would flare her colitis.
Four weeks after she died, I was craving some cookies as I hadn't had them in the house for a while. I had some butter in the fridge. "What the hell," I thought.
The kids and I made cookies. We used butter.
Isaac asked while the butter and sugar creamed in the mixer, "Why are you crying daddy?"
"We are using butter in the cookies."
"Mommy couldn't eat butter."
"No, she couldn't."
"These will taste better, won't they?"
"Probably."
And so it goes. Moving forward one changed recipe at a time.
