Stefan's Bacon and Molasses Cookies
1. Don’t plan anything for me, for us, ever. Say, “It’s uncool to celebrate Valentine’s Day with all the losers.” Forget that we’re 42 and have two kids, so coolness doesn’t matter anymore.
2. Decide to make cookies, as snow falls and the afternoon light fades. After I kick Matthias’ garbage truck out of the kitchen’s traffic lane, say, “You’ll see. These aren’t just any cookies.”
3. As I nurse Melanie at the kitchen table—a curbside freebie with legs so rusty that they needed to be wrapped in duct tape—borrow one of my cookbooks and explain that all cooks “riff” off each other.
4. Inhale the spices—molasses, cinnamon, ginger, clove—and tell me you're imagining summer.
5. Believe that liquid and solid measurements are the same.
6. Withdraw a half pack of bacon from the fridge as if it’s a scarf you’re pulling from your sleeve. Forget that Baconnaise, bacon-flavored ice cream, and bacon air fresheners have already been invented—that we’re so far into the Age of Bacon, bacon has lost its magic.
7. When Matthias scrunches your apron strings together and says, “There you go,” thank him and tuck the balled-up strings into your pants before they unravel. Say, “You and me, kid, we’re going far. No matter what your mother thinks.”
8. Wonder if it’s normal for eggs to have a glommy white sack and what looks to be an umbilical cord. Show it to me, the little cloud of thought, of chicken breath.
9. When the yellow butter melts, think of white milk—how that milk began as a collection of tiny droplets, was churned into a solid, and with the push of a microwave button becomes liquid again. How something colorful is lost in the process.
10. Be surprised at how much the dry resists the wet, how much stirring is required until everything swirls together—except the chunks of bacon.
11. Put the soft dough in the oven. Watch it expand, bubble, and harden. Think about the loss of liquid, the victory of solid. Of oneness.
12. Put the cookies on a paper towel and watch them sigh. As you peel one off, a circle of sweat remains.
13. Give the first cookie to Matthias.
14. Boast about how few dirty dishes you created—the spirit of efficiency and economy that brought us the rusty kitchen table—then open the card with googly eyes, gold glitter, and crayoned hearts of different sizes, and wonder, maybe, why this year it’s all design, no writing.
15. After Matthias retrieves your guitar, invent the “Cookie Dance,” and show how easy it is to write and sing, for us all to be moving together in the same direction.
16. When the song’s over, the kids in bed, stare at the snow balancing on the fire escape railing and promise to give me the recipe.