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It didn't work.

One faulty castle aside, I had no reason to think that I would encounter problems teaching my own child to cook. We had our successful outing with the Christmas cookies last month. Dried cherry muffins, here we come! Why should this be any different than our great cookie experience?

Well, because this involved the #1 most terrifying thing in my child's world: the Kitchenaid stand mixer. The noisy motor has always made her nervous, but on Sunday night while playing with the paddle attachment, she got her finger caught in it. Calm down! It wasn't in the mixer and going at the time. Anyway, she saw the mixer and the paddle and promptly lost her shit. Ran in terror, and this was before I even turned it on.

We had a little talk about how she's not going to get sucked into the Kitchenaid Vortex of Doom. She didn't seem to buy it, but she relented enough for me to park her in the high chair. Being the former culinary professional that I am, I plopped the a mixing bowl and a flour sifter on the high chair tray, gave her a cup and three-quarters of flour, and told her to have at it.

In retrospect, I probably should have just given her a small bowl with a little bit of flour and a spoon instead of entrusting a 23.5-month-old with the task of making the actual muffins.

Repeat after me: It's okay. It's just flour. It will vaccum up. Except she's afraid of the vaccum so maybe it's not all okay after all.

After half of the dry ingredients landed on the floor, I finally clued in to the obvious solution and gave Clara Jane her own ingredients while I dealt with the real deal. And it worked.

It's hard to wait for the muffins while they're baking, and toddlers certainly aren't known for their patience. But I thought it was a bit much when she started scooping up her flour-sugar mixture with crackers and shoving it in her mouth. She's not going to have carb issues when she grows up, not at all!

The muffins were delish and Clara Jane eventually came down from her carb rush long enough to climb down from the ceiling fan, where she spent the afternoon perched like a howler monkey on meth.

For dinner I made pasta puttanesca. Did you know that "puttanesca" is Italian for whore's sauce? I thought about trying to sculpt it into a brothel. I'm sure Kara, Mindy and that Greenlight fella are just loving that.

And since today's all about stuff going down gullets, I spent the evening writing at Starbucks. You know what I really enjoyed about the visit? I enjoyed the car in the parking lot, hogging two spaces and sporting a "Stop road rage!" bumper sticker. Wanna stop road rage, Buddy? Don't fucking take up two damn parking spaces!!! Now, if you want to make it up to me, bring me a cinnamon dolce latte and we'll talk, Big Boy.