It wasn't Alton after all

Ramona brought me her tiny plastic toaster. The edges looked a little rough, as if it had been scraped with something.

"Mommy, look what happened to this."

"Hmmm ... what happened?"

"Well, I was rubbing a lot of toy food over it, and it got like this."

"Oh ... well, why were you rubbing food over it?"

"It was my zester."

Now, the average cooking mom would think, "Oh, isn't that sweet? She's remembering things I taught her when we were together in the kitchen. She knows what 'zesting' means. What a good mommy I am. I'm really doing well."

But, I (not thinking of myself as the model cooking mom) thought this: "Oh, my. We really have been watching too much Food Network."

As I recounted the whole thing to Atticus, I remembered that I actually had zested something with Ramona, and perhaps she really did pick up on that from me, and not from Alton Brown.

I asked her, "Where did you learn about zesting?" and she answered, "From you, Mommy. From Lucia bread."

Oh, joyous day! This sometimes-domestically-challenged mom is actually passing on a few things culinary and domestic to her daughters after all.

I'm off for a zestful day.