Having nothing to do with tomorrow's Finance final...

but i thought i'd share anyway. this morning i was buttering a pan for pancakes and realized i was using salted butter. this is not a normal occurence in my life, but recently i've been won over by some wonderful people so i'm giving it a shot. it's very tasty!
small thing, but nevertheless a big deal because in the lozano household we barely had sugar, let alone salty things. my mom's cookies were always made with half the sugar and never included the obligatory 1/4 tsp salt most baked goods call for. i didn't particularly like them (nor anybody else's), and since they were the only "sweets" option in my childhood, i don't think i was much of a sweets girl. unless, of course, i went to a sleepover and got to junk out on things like (gasp!) rice krispies. they had enough sugar to sink a ship in my mother's eyes.
a childhood of disliking cookies brings my story to the 7th grade. mary casey was the 7th grade teacher at butte falls junior high. she was a pretty nice lady, though few hormone-addled kids appreciated her wit and honesty. i just noticed her jet-black hair and "mom pants". mrs. casey baked chocolate chip cookies for the class one day. all 20 of us. as she passed them out, i whispered to my friend celeste "if they have salt in them i'm gonna puke", knowing that salt was one of the most evil things in the world next to sugar and bad table manners. and i thought that was what made everybody's mom's cookies tasete funny. mrs. casey overheard and shouted "yes, mandy, they do have salt in them! 1/4 tsp to be exact! so you can just eat them and we'll all watch you puke! will you be happy then?"
the class was silent.
thus marked a jarring lesson in accepting generosity from people no matter what YOUR preferences. sure, mom and dad taught me this from day 1, but never had the lesson been driven home as it was in 7th grade. poor mrs. casey had doubtlessly taken an hour out of her busy weeknight to make cookies for her little hellions, and though she probably didn't want accolades; she surely didn't expect an ungrateful little wench like me to complain about 1/4 tsp of salt.
to this day i still feel awful about it. from that day forward i graciously accepted any gift given to me, trying to put myself in the shoes of the giver and acknowledging the true emotional wealth contained in giving.
less importantly: now that i'm a seasoned baker i see the merit of including the salt, so i do. i will not get hypertension from a cookie.
speaking of 7th grade, that's when i learned about osmosis. here i am, studying for my finance final via osmosis. it totally works.