A good(?) start to a new quarter

John cooked breakfast this morning. He wanted to make the kids a good breakfast (other than the cold cereal they usually get from me) before they go to school. It's a new quarter, a new start, and he wanted to send them off on the right foot.

I don't know how early he got up, but he wanted to make hash browns. From scratch. He boiled the potatoes, got impatient waiting for them to cool so turned them to mulch in my food processor, then cooked them in a frying pan on the stove. I was pretty impressed at all this, this is not something I could do- get up before every one else to make a big breakfast. Brunch, sure, but probably not breakfast. I say probably because I've never tried.

But then I noticed the empty box of butter on the counter. I had opened that box a couple days ago, and used one cube to make caramels, and one cube to make cookies. There were two cubes left when I went to bed last night. "How much butter did you use?" "A little bit." "No, seriously, how much butter? Did you use two whole cubes?" "Maybe."

Holey Moley. Three pounds of potatoes cooked in a half a pound of butter. I overreacted slightly- "Don't eat it kids! your dad's trying to kill you!!!!" Nick looked worried, but Madison just shrugged her shoulders and dove right in. To drive the point home just a little more, I pointed out that John had divided the hash browns between 4 plates, and if they were even (which they weren't- Madison and Nick ate about 2/3 the total between the two of them) so if it were evenly divided, each serving would have 400 calories in butter alone. Not including the actual potatoes themselves, just butter. (Nick and Maddie probably had around 600 calories in just butter for breakfast) And to round out this hearty meal John served bacon and buttered toast.

To be fair, the potatoes were tasty, there's no denying that. I had a couple forkfuls, and enjoyed them. Also he says he knew as soon as he dumped that last half a stick in, it was gonna be too much. And the smell of bacon sizzling is hands down the best way to wake up in the morning, and I am totally grateful for a husband who cares enough to go to all that trouble. But I still can't help but be slightly horrified.