These Kids Need More Than Crispy Treats

Sometimes my co-teachers at homeschool co-op remind me why i keep getting elected to teach the cooking class.

Please don't misunderstand, these are nice ladies. Few of those i've taught with, however, know anything about cast iron, how to just decide what tastes good with what with no recipe, or what really has to go into choosing a recipe for the class to make.

One of them offered to choose the recipe and bring all the ingredients for this week's class. We are talking 10 young people, ages 11-16, in a class for 40 minutes. They have to fix something and eat it in that time, and clean up. Often i teach "cooking show style", meaning i have the dish already prepared, pull it out when the one the first class prepares gets put on the stove or into the oven, and use the one the first class made to feed the second class when theirs starts cooking.

So we have to come up with semi complicated, but not overly complicated, recipes that require all of the kids get some time doing hands on work with the food.

She picked Peanut Butter and Jelly Rice Crispy Treats.

Anyone out there know how easy it is to make rice crispy treats? Yes, this added peanut butter, and yes we used blueberries to make a jelly like topping, but still.

Add to that the fact that she misread how many ounces each bag of marshmallows held, thus making them far too sticky and gloppy, and we had a bit of a mess on our hands.

Plus, peanut butter and jelly mixed with rice crispy treats is just a bit ... odd. Some of the kids liked it, some ate a bit and said no thank you, some declared it disgusting.

If you ever want to try it for yourself, just add 1/3 cup of smooth peanut butter to the basic recipe, and cook down some frozen or fresh fruit of your choice with 1/8 cup sugar and a tablespoon of cornstarch to thicken, and pour that over the top. Yes. Really.

There are a few ideas bubbling around in the old bean about what we will do next week to get that taste out of our mouths, and it will be a more complicated recipe, although not excessively so.

Meanwhile, if you want good rice crispy treats, add the peanut butter, yes, but also a bag of butterscotch chips, and leave out the jelly. Much better.


Today is:

Australia Day (Commemorates Captain Arthur Phillip's arrival at Sydney Cove with the First Fleet, on January 26, 1778.)

Duarte Day -- Dominican Republic

End of the Fifth Quarter of the Ninth Dozen of the Thirteenth Set -- Fairy Calendar

Liberation Day -- Uganda

Lotus 1-2-3 Day

National Peanut Brittle Day

National Popcorn Day

National Speak Up and Succeed Day

Republic Day -- India

Spike the Punch Day

Spouse's Day

St. Paula's Day (patron of widows)

Toad Hollow Day of Encouragement (Began at Toad Hollow School in Kalamazoo, Michigan in the 1800s, a day to encourage your friends.)



Anniversaries Today:

Michigan becomes the 26th US state, 1837



Birthdays Today:

Kherington Payne, 1990
Kirk Franklin, 1970
Wayne Gretzky, 1961
Anita Baker, 1958
Ellen DeGeneres, 1958
Eddie Van Halen, 1955
Lucinda Williams, 1953
Gene Siskel, 1946
Angela Davis, 1944
Scott Glenn, 1942
Bob Uecker, 1935
Jules Feiffer, 1929
Paul Newman, 1925
Anne Jeffreys, 1923
Maria Augusta von Trapp, 1905
Douglas MacArthur, 1880
Mary Maples Dodge, 1831
Emperor Go-Nara of Japan, 1497


Today in History:

The fifth recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet, 66
Vicente Yáñez Pinzón becomes the first European to set foot on Brazil, 1500
The Council of Trent issues its conclusions in the Tridentinum, establishing a distinction between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, 1564
Isaac Newton receives Jean Bernoulli's 6 month time-limit problem, and solves the problem before going to bed that same night, 1697
The magnitude 9 Cascadia Earthquake took place off the west coast of the North America, as evidenced by Japanese records, 1700
The British First Fleet, led by Arthur Phillip, sails into Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour) to establish Sydney, the first permanent European settlement on the continent of Australia, 1788
The Rum Rebellion, the only successful (albeit short-lived) armed takeover of the government in Australia, 1808
Tennessee enacts the first prohibition law in the United States, 1838
Hong Kong is proclaimed a sovereign territory of Britain, 1841
The first US income tax, passed to raise funds for the Civil War, is repealed, 1871
Muhammad Ahmed ("Mahdi") rebels conquer Khartoum, Sudan, 1885
The World's largest diamond, the 3,106-carat Cullinan, is found, 1905
The Short Magazine Lee-Enfield Mk III is officially introduced into British Military Service, and remains the oldest military rifle still in official use, 1907
Glenn H. Curtiss flies the first successful American seaplane, 1911
Richard Strauss' opera Der Rosenkavalier receives its debut performance at the Dresden State Opera, 1911
Former Ford Motor Co. executive Henry Leland launches the Lincoln Motor Company which he later sold to his former employer, 1920
Rioters burn Cairo's central business district, targeting British and upper-class Egyptian businesses, 1952
Danny Heater sets a worldwide high school basketball scoring record when he records 135 points for Burnsville High School (West Virginia), 1960
Ranger 3 is launched to study the moon, but misses its target by 22,000 miles (35,400 km), 1962
Hindi becomes the official language of India, 1965
The Great Blizzard of 1978, a rare severe blizzard with the lowest non-tropical atmospheric pressure ever recorded in the US, strikes the Ohio – Great Lakes region with heavy snow and winds up to 100 mph (161 km/h), 1978
Israel and Egypt establish diplomatic relations, 1980
An earthquake hits Gujarat, India, causing more than 20,000 deaths, 2001