Sweet Tooth

In support of The Experiment, our friend Pam gave us several jars of homemade apple butter, and my parents came home from a trip with homemade jam for us in assorted Southwestern flavors like choke cherry and jalapeño. Jam has been a sticking point, as it were, because most commercial jars of sweet spreadables, though glass, come with a plastic seal around their necks. And because Rick has a considerable appetite for the stuff. A bagel is really just a way to get jam from the jar to his mouth.

Rick's other source of suffering is cookielessness. Cookies, a staple, invariably come in plastic packaging of some kind, unless you get them from a bakery. But at a buck or more a pop, bakery cookies could not satisfy Rick's hunger. At his rate of consumption, he'd have to choose between cookies and health insurance. 

His lovely wife actually made cookies at home last week, and they were darned good, too. But that might have been a fluke. Rick has hit on a brilliant solution. He's compiled a list of all the commercial venues in town he frequents -- the woodworking supply store, the credit union, the vet -- that leave out plates of cookies for their customers. He can address his appetites when he's out running errands. He will not suffer from insufficient Vitamin C, or Vitamin J, either.