A care package went out a few days ago to a friend of ours in the DC area. Between our friends, there are a few of us that do a lot of cooking and a few of us that need a detailed map just to find the kitchen. Our friend falls into the later category and is often left drooling when those of us in the former category get talking about food. So a while back I casually mentioned that at some point I'd send him something to nibble on. Between our busy schedule, the kids, and the fact that anything fresh out of the oven usually doesn't sit around long enough to box up and ship out, it took me a while to come up with something to send.

These are oatmeal, raisin, walnut cookies. I decided against sending anything with chocolate for several reasons. 1) The weather. Some days it's hot, other days it's not. 2) It's easier to get non chocolate related treats out of the house. Chocolate in any form around here is usually confiscated and devoured in record time. 3) I was looking for something that would hold up well in shipping. These cookies do just that. 4) Due to inflated postal rates (*shakes fist at the postal system*), it's only reasonable to send things so that they arrive in a few days, rather than overnight. Priority mail is said to take 2-3 days. I've never had anything arrive in less than five. I needed something that wouldn't melt, fall apart, get stale, or spontaneously combust by the time the postal carriers get around to actually delivering the mail.


I also sent a Pedigree bone for his pup to have his own nibbles.

And also, I sent this. This is Melvin and he sort of forced me to create him. I guess you could say that he inspired me to be inspired to put him together. And he's another reason why sending things out around here takes so long. Cookies (if I can get them out of the oven, cooled, and hidden away to send before anyone finds them) don't take very long. Projects usually take several days depending on the time available to me to work on them. By the time I get stuff out to work on, and set things up, the girls are usually screaming at each other, demanding things, needing my help, etc etc. And working on a project for half a minute at a time isn't really conducive to anything except getting frustrated. Melvin took about a week to make. If I could have worked on him consistently, he probably would have only taken a couple of hours.

Introducing Melvin.


When I showed Melvin to Eddie, he was a little lost for words. "What the hell is it!?!" I told him that Melvin was a 'moldy cupcake'. Okay, still lost for words. "Ummm..... whhhyyyyy????" Well it seemed like a good idea at the time. Our friend is a bachelor, doesn't cook, eats just about everything...... Okay, so there's no real cohesive train of thought, but it SEEMED like a good idea at the time and he simply demanded to be made. And he was fun to make. And he's cute. Well *I* like him. And the girls did too. In fact, Melvin almost didn't make it into the box because the girls wanted to adopt him.


And since somebody in the house thought that if I was going to send such a 'thing', it needed a little further explanation as far as what 'it' was.


So he was sent with a little introductory note including care and feeding instructions. Yeah yeah yeah. I hope that at least somebody else appreciates him. Even moldy cupcakes need some love.