After an active morning of splashing in puddles and drinking hot cocoa, Carter and I decided to make homemade rolls.  I use a recipe handed down to me from my mom; it is a recipe my mom got from her Aunt Syl.

I pour the yeast, a tablespoon and a half of sugar and a 1/4 cup warm water into a small bowl and give Carter a wooden spoon to stir it until it starts to dissolve.  As he is stirring, I explain to him that the yeast are alive and are happily eating the sugar and producing carbon dioxide to make our rolls rise up and be nice and fluffy.  He thinks about this for a minute, asks me a couple of time if the yeast are really alive, and then asks if they are little aliens.

Carter:  Hi little buddy aliens!  You happy eating, aliens?

Me:  Well, Carter they are not really aliens.  They are yeast.

Carter: Hi little buddy alien yeast!

I can’t win.  Right now the rolls are shaped and resting on their cookie sheets hopefully rising away.  Carter knows that we will be baking them, but he has not yet put it together that his “little buddy alien yeast” friends will also be going in the hot oven.  Will today be the day my three year old will raise up his little chubby finger, point it at me accusingly, and ask if I am going to kill several hundred of his new little friends?

Is that a mass murderer hiding under that chef hat?