Five in the Kitchen

Our kitchen is very small.

I am not being critical, I am making a statement of fact.

The surest way to make a kitchen feel smaller is to pack a whole family of cooks into it.

Last night, that is exactly what we did.

T came home from work with milk and a pound of pasta for me,
rice cereal for baby bear,
and brownie-cookie bar mix for E-Bear and G-Bear.

We all swooned over him in our own way.

As I finished dinner, Baby Bear on my hip, T and the Bears made brownie-cookie bars.

There were two kids at the counter in the tower.  This takes up half of our floor space.
Two adults maneuvered around the tower between the stove, microwave and sink.  Envision lots of passing of utensils, ingredients, dishes.
One Baby was happily squeezed onto a hip in the midst of the action.  The dude doesn't like to miss out on the fun.
Keep in mind with this set-up: there is no opening the refrigerator, no loading the washer, no accessing the pantry cabinet, and no opening the counter cupboard, lest you boink someone's head.

Too many cooks in the kitchen?  No way.  I loved it.  I loved it even when one of the cooks, vigorously mixing, dropped cocoa & flour onto the floor and we had to break for a 'sweep-the-kitchen' break.  Both dinner and dessert tasted great.

By the way, God bless the inventors of the brownie-cookie mix.  It was a perfect treat for the Bears to make with their dad.  Two separate pouches, one for each kid to make, combined into one delicious dessert: what could be better?  E-Bear made the brownie base and G-Bear made the cookie dough top.  It was hard, finger-licking work.  At one point, T tried to advise E-Bear against finger-licking because of the raw egg in his brownie batter.  E-Bear replied in ernest,

"But Dad, there was chocolate on my fingers." 

Ah, so true, what else could he do? 

After dinner on the porch, we walked up to play at the park with our dessert in tow.  As we munched our brownie-cookie bars at the picnic table, G-Bear announced:

"I would like thank everyone who helped me make these cookie bars.  These are delicious!"

Someday, if I am enjoying a kitchen that allows me to open both the refrigerator and washer at the same time, I'll remember the fun we had in this one.  And I hope on that someday, when we have all that extra space, that my whole family is still cooking with me in the kitchen.