By their heels you will know them

At the bridal shower Sunday afternoon we were all doing what women do at bridal showers: sitting in a circle and talking. The bride was opening her gifts, her sister-in-law was recording gift and giver, and the rest of us were taking time out of our conversations with old/new friends to properly administer oohs and ahhs. In a word: typical.

Then, because, well, I don't know why, I looked at the floor, then up at everyone's shoes. With all legs crossed, perhaps it was the rhythm of the swinging ankles which caught my attention, but I started noticing the shoes, particularly the heels. We were a divided group: stilettos, high wedges, platform wedges on one side of the circle and flats, or nearly so, on the other.* Then I looked up. Sure enough, the bride and her entourage were swinging heels the rest of us used to wear without thinking about it, and the flat-foots were, well, older by a generation.

It's not like I was surprised or anything, but reality did finally hit home.

*Notable exception: MOO-1, or before I became enamored of Mother of the Occasion, the Mother of the Bride, who wore a wedge sandal.

A surfeit of sugar

Most times, there's no dessert in this kitchen. We're not counting calories or being snobbish, I've just stopped making for two people what four would eat and two will end up throwing away when it gets old. Not even ice cream in the freezer. But the opportunity to have guests for dinner always clicks on my 'what shall we have for dessert?' button. This Saturday I made a sweet cherry pie. Someone else in the house wanted it topped with ice cream (I'm a pie purist, I'd have done without), but we also had ice cream.

More than half the pie gone at the end of the evening and everyone else having had ice cream, we now had a bit of dessert around. Then I helped host a bridal shower and all hell broke loose in the sugars department at our house.

Instead of a large cake, we had "cake balls," little three-bite size rounds filled with rich cake and topped with a thick icing. You had to bite them; trying to eat it with knife and fork would have been like chasing that cherry tomato around the salad plate. These were so good. There were four left over and the hostess who'd provided them, made me take them home to the spouse.

Then, as a gift to the hostesses, the bride presented us with boxes of gourmet chocolates. There are 16 in the box, each a square with a picture on top. I'm looking at these as 16 days of apres-lunch goodness. It remains to be seen whether or not I shall share.

But, suffice it to say, where we had no dessert 48 hours ago, we now have a stockpile: pie (almost gone), 3/4 of a half-gallon of ice cream, two cake balls, and a full box of chocolates.

I shall have to pace myself.