It all started with pride. I take pride in cooking things for folks that they otherwise might not enjoy. I’ve had enough success to know it’s not my cooking per se, rather the abundance of bad cooking out there. Anyway, enter clams. I can’t remember if they’re something she didn’t like until I made them, honestly, but I’m sure I was showing off.

Wrath. My darling daughter has been brimming with it lately. She refused to touch a peanut butter and banana sandwich even after it was dressed with chestnut honey. Stubborn. I sent her from the room, which is always worth at least a few minutes of wrath. Of course she’d already announced she was done. But she reserves the right to change her mind even when she hasn’t really.

Envy. Both kids were out of the kitchen so I served my wife the clams I’d been promising to make for a day or so. Eyes appeared over the ledge of the Dutch door. “C’mon then!”

He liked them: greed. While I tried to take a few pictures (so I could talk about my family to you behind their backs) the kid ate half my clams. I didn’t care; the bread is the best part. Toasted and buttered baguette dipped in the broth. Yeah. Well, damned if my wife didn’t dispatch all that while I was beating the boy off of my clams. She was entirely unapologetic. I should be happy to have gotten a shrug out of her.

So I ate up all the crispy pork bits and sipped the other stuff straight from the pan. Gluttony. Then I went to the couch to sulk. Sloth.

I shouldn’t discuss lust at length for the sake of propriety. Suffice it to say that an accomplished cook catches an eye here and there…

alright, alright, the Dachschund mounted my leg before bed. So there you have it. All seven.