You got chocolate on my peanut butter!

After the rain passed this weekend we were blessed with one of those perfect fall Sundays -sunny, a little windy and cold enough to make me track down several pairs of mismatched mittens and congratulate myself on buying Little Man a pair last week so I wouldn't have to put socks on his little paws again like I had to earlier in the fall during an unexpected cold snap.  Hubby graciously took the kids up the street to the park while I frantically tried to change my summer clothes out of the closet.  I'm sure I'll finish this task only to need them again weeks later.

When my brood returned Hubby was talking to them about hot chocolate and while #2 has been jabbering about this libation since she saw it on Blues Clues, she had yet to actually try it.  This had my oldest feeling left out because she really doesn't like chocolate or chocolate flavored things.  I know!  The insanity of this is staggering.  If she doesn't like wine when she gets older I will know she was switched at birth.  

They say necessity is the mother of invention, but I say motherhood is the mother of invention.  How many great inventions out there were invented by mothers who saw a need and filled it?  The automatic dishwasher, for one, and for that we are all eternally grateful.  So I came up with a beverage to satisfy my oldest's weird disturbingly lacking palette.  My invention was no where near as life altering and you can actually order what I created at Starbucks, but I thought, "Why not make hot vanilla?"  So I warmed up some milk with a bit of sugar and poured in a little vanilla extract.  It was amazing!  And a curse.  If I hear #2 ask me for "hot banilla" one more time today I will scream.

This new beverage did make me think about the way we assume certain flavors go together and wonder why.  Like, why all hot drinks are coffee or chocolate flavored.  Hubby wonders about these food assumptions all the time whenever he tries, unsuccessfully, to buy a banana muffin.  "Why do they always have to have nuts???", he screams spitting the bits of what looked like a nut-free baked good out of his craw.  I tell him disliking that combo is like hating apples and cinnamon.  I, personally, can not understand sweet and savory in a main dish.  "And the special tonight comes with a mango salsa" - and an air sickness bag?  Bleh.  And anything with raspberry sauce makes me want to die.

Of course there are some combos that are classic and we can not imagine life without them. Chocolate and peanut butter?  What took so damn long for someone to invent the peanut butter cup?  Sour cream and onion?  Who is the snack food genius I have to thank for that as well as salt and vinegar?  My blood pressure rises just thinking of that delicious combo.  

I definitely do not put myself in the same league as these food pioneers.  In fact, Hubby is dying right now since he is an actual cook and the only examples of flavor innovation I gave all come in a bag and have a shelf life of approximately one hundred years, but this is the woman who thinks Ragu is a big treat (and no I don't consider it Italian food, it's a food group unto itself).  But I am proud that I have created a something my daughter will probably pass down to her kids.  Although maybe they'll be asking her someday, "Who the heck thought hot vanilla milk was good?  Gah!"