Scene: the kitchen, where Middle and I are assembling pizza muffins for dinner.
In fact, we are making 24 of them to make sure we have enough for everyone, and the muffins have all been toasted, and now I'm doling out the pizza sauce. I've gone through the half a jar I had in the fridge from last time we did this (just last week). Middle helped me open the next jar I had in the pantry...but that one is getting kind of low, and I still have a lot more muffins to slather with sauce than I'd like.
I voiced my concerns about our sauce levels.
"Do we have more?" Middle asked.
At this point, not having pizza muffins is, well, not an option.
"Look in the pantry," I said. "I think there's another jar of Del Grosso sauce in there. It's sealed, so even if it's old, it should be okay."
Middle finds it and checks the date...and gives me a dubious look.
"What's the date?"
"Twenty-two."
Oooookay. I start conserving sauce a bit as I work my way around the muffins on the cookie sheet. Maybe we don't have a backup plan after all. I'm not crazy enough to serve two-and-a-half-year-old pizza sauce to my family.
"Maaaaaaybe," Middle intones quietly, "you and I eat the ones that are fine and everybody else eats the ones with the janky sauce. We just won't tell."
Apparently Middle has no qualms about poisoning her family.
I get down to the last three muffins, and by golly, there is just enough sauce to go around, with a little left over to make sure all the muffins are sufficiently covered.
"Now we don't have to poison the family!" Middle said as she started covering the muffins with shredded mozzarella.
"And if it ever comes out that the family does get poisoned, you're my first suspect," I told her.
She just laughed and kept piling on the cheese.
