Saturday, January 7, 2017

Mrs. Hillbilly Mom Is A Woman Of Excess

My best ol' ex-teaching buddy Mabel gave me some treats for Christmas. Homemade chocolate-covered cherries! They are my favorite treat, out of all the treats she has ever given me in the past. Since I was (perhaps the past tense is a bit of foreshadowing for tomorrow...) making wise choices, I was pleased to have a single treat upon which my sweet tooth could concentrate.

The Mansion is not a house overflowing with Christmas cookies and candies. It specializes in holiday Chex Mix, and the Hillbilly family rarely gets to partake of this export. Oh, for the days when my mom made divinity and chocolate fudge with walnuts and peanut butter fudge (my dad's favorite)...along with those peanut butter cookies with a fork print on top, and sugared peanut butter cookies with the Hershey's Kiss on top, and chocolate chip cookies. AND even before those days, when my grandma made shredded-coconut-cherry balls dipped in chocolate, and peanut brittle, and the crescent cookies coated with powdered sugar, and oatmeal raisin cookies, and a million (well, CLOSE to a million) other sweets that I did not like as much and didn't eat. Plus the dish of ribbon candy on her coffee table beside the tall sitting ceramic cat that we six grandkids broke the head off of every year.

Yes, Mrs. HM was happy to only need minimum constraint with the sweets around the Mansion. She rationed herself ONE of Mabel's chocolate-covered cherries each evening, as dessert with her supper.

In the beginning.

Of course, once you're in the habit of having ONE chocolate-covered cherry with supper, you think, "What would be the harm if I just had an extra one tonight?"

Then the horse is out of the barn.

"I don't think it would hurt if I had one of these cherries for dessert with lunch. They're fruit, right?"

And the water is over the bridge.

"Since I have two chocolate cherries with supper, I don't know why I couldn't have two chocolate cherries with lunch!"

Before you know it, it's last Friday, December 30th, and you eat your very last two of your best ol' ex-teaching buddy Mabel's homemade chocolate-covered cherries! Oh, you may not think that's so terrible, except for the mitigating circumstances. Mabel gave me a plethora of homemade chocolate-covered cherries! Remember my Sink Jenga picture?


I had TWO OF THOSE GREEN CONTAINERS FULL OF CHOCOLATE CHERRIES!

Let the record show that these containers were not stuffed full. They each had a single layer of those long-stemmed beauties, each in its own mini fluted paper muffin-like cup. Still, some were sitting on the shoulders of others. I did not count how many were in each container, but I'm sure Mabel knows. I trust her to keep that OUR little secret.

Because, you see, Farmer H cannot eat them, being one who should abstain from sugar. I didn't notice any disappearing at an alarming rate, so I don't think he was sneaking them. The Pony is picky about what goes in his feedbag. He may have tried one or two, not that I noticed. It's the #1 Son I depend on to help me with such treats. In years past, he has devoured Mabel's peppermint bark kind of candy. And he's always got his hand in a cookie jar, even if it's a virtual jar, to help himself to anything he thinks belongs to somebody else. But #1 was only here for an overnight plus a few hours, and then we went to the casino, and then he went back to his college house, and then he went to California. So all of those homemade chocolate-covered cherries (save perhaps one or two if we're honest, which we are, because we fear prosecution if we violate the Truth in Blogging Law) ended up in Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's belly.

I HAD to eat them, you know. The sweat of my best ol' ex-teaching buddy Mabel's brow was stirred right into the recipe. Starving children in many underdeveloped countries would like nothing better than to lapse into a coma after consuming one of these sweet treats. So I was saving the children, really. And honoring Mabel's brow sweat.

AND I though that perhaps the treats were going bad. Not BAD, as in putting on a motorcycle jacket and flashing a switchblade and terrorizing innocents who accidentally find themselves along the back alleys of Hillmomba. Not BAD, as in sprouting green furry mold and lacy white fungi due to neglect and non-eating. Uh uh. BAD. As in perhaps fermenting right there in my own kitchen on my watch! The syrupy goodness started seeping from some of them! Don't worry. They were sitting on paper inside their green prison.

I HAD TO EAT THEM! Don't you see? They could have fermented into ALCOHOL! And Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is a teetotaller.

Of course, I could have just bottled them for the #1 Son.

4 comments:

Sioux Roslawski said...

Val--I have learned that it is wise to give away--immediately--goodies to other people. My husband brought home a container of baklava? Give it away to the neighbors. A student gave me a box of candy? Give it to my daughter. Of course, some goodies get cracked open before my self-control kicks in, and... well, the rest is history. History of the candy/package of cookies/container of Nutella, because it becomes WAS and goes into past tense in short order. Like you, I'm selfless. I'm thinking of how full the landfill is. If the cookies get too dry and crumbly, if the chocolates start to look old, they might have to get tossed in the trash... Better to eat them.

Kathy's Klothesline said...

Yes, you had to eat them! They were a gift. To you. Miss Manners would dictate that is was a necessity to eat them all.

Anonymous said...

You should get a CMH (Congressional Medal of Honor) or at least a CHM (Cherries for a Hillbilly Mom) for throwing yourself on a grenade (I mean container of cherries) to save the troops!!

Hillbilly Mom said...

Sioux,
Can't give it to the neighbors--their dogs eat too many of our chickens. Can't give it to my boys, they're too busy to carry something back to college with them. Can't give it to Farmer H, he's supposed to be sugar free.

So...I took one for the team. The Rubenesque Team.

***
Kathy,
Uh huh. I'm pretty sure there's a Consumption of Gifts Law. I don't want to go to the Crossbars Hilton for violating it! I'm just keeping my permanent record clean.

***
fishducky,
YES! I need a medal! I have the ample chest to pin it on.