Is There Such As Thing As Too Much Dessert?

Is that a stupid question or what? Think about all the little phrases -- like "life's short, eat dessert first" -- and the sheer volume of cookbooks devoted solely to chocolate and it's hard to ignore the fact that dessert rocks. Ever heard of a birthday salad? Yeah, I didn't think so.

My taste testers have pointed out to me that almost all of the recipes I've been working on for the book are for desserts. Sure I cook as well as bake, but dessert is just my favorite thing to make. But I'm bowing to pressure from my co-author (and test baker) and am including a few of my favorite food recipes as well. It has occurred to me that although my taste-testers thought I should include some non-dessert recipes, they seem to be more interested in dropping by when I'm baking dessert.

My husband is rarely home for dinner as he has an average of three dinner meetings a week and tends to work late to catch up his paperwork so that he gets home after normal dinner hours. And I'm so not interested in eating dinner at 9:00 at night. So he usually fixes himself a salad and sandwich and that's dinner. But now that I'm testing and tweaking my Deep South food recipes, he's cut back his meetings and has been asking "what's for dinner?" with an alarming regularity. Uh-oh, I think I'm starting something.

I've gotten away with cooking dinner twice a year (Thanksgiving and Christmas) for years starting with when my son left for college more than a dozen years ago. While I was still practicing law, I always had that as an excuse for not having time to cook. But now that I work from home and it's one short flight of stairs from my home office to the kitchen, it's a little harder. My husband's schedule was my excuse, and now he's interested in bringing work home so that he can have dinner with me. At least on nights where the answer to "what's for dinner?" isn't "whatever you pick up on the way home!"

So what's on for tonight? Well, he has a meeting, so I'm working on my Crock-Pot Brunswick Stew. It's really best on the second day after the stew sits in the refrigerator overnight and all the seasonings have a chance to meld. He doesn't have a meeting tomorrow, so I'm thinking he'll be home for dinner, especially if I bake my Best-Ever Cornbread.

He just called while I was writing this to tell me that he wouldn't be home for dinner tonight (I had already called his assistant this morning to check) but that he would be home tomorrow. And what would I be cooking? Yep, it's started. Guess I'll be hitting the grocery store more than once a month now. I suspect my bank's fraud department will be calling to make sure it's really me using my ATM card there...