Since school started, we have had a bunch of after school snack sessions like this,”Here’s a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a glass of milk.  And a banana.  And a bowl of yogurt.  And I guess you can have a granola bar.”  And so on until dinner time.  We also need snacks for school, and during and after practice. So I started to research healthy and hearty snacks.  I spent so much time thinking and reading that by the time I got to baking, I only had 20 minutes before I had to leave to do pick up Jack.  In the 20 minutes I had,  I made “Frankenstein Rice Krispie Treats.”  I used 75% of a bag of marshmallows (the goal here was to get rid of the marshmallows in some way other than opening the pantry, untying the bag, eating a marshmallow, closing the bag, putting the bag back, closing the pantry and then starting over again a couple minutes later.)  I used regular cheerios instead of rice krispies, and I threw in a blob of peanut butter and and I topped it with some m&ms.  (about 75% of an individual bag of m&ms.)  Thank goodness for the M&Ms because it turned out sort of… brown.  Tasty, but nothing to write to pinterest about.  The boys liked it.  I only got a little melted marshmallow in my hair.

Next up, I made a frankenstein version of these Peanut Butter Apple Bars.  Instead of a shredded apple, I put all the non mushy parts of all the fruit in the fruit bowl into the food processor and came out with a random amount of nectarine, apple, and peach.  I added extra oats because it seemed necessary.  And as a rule, I do not measure peanut butter because I am 100% sure I can eyeball 1/4 cup of PB.  These bars came out… ok.  A little dry, but I served them for breakfast with a bowl of yogurt, and they were eaten after school a bunch of times too.  Very hearty.

The problem with my obession with adding peanut butter to everything is that then Jack can’t take it to school because his classroom is peanut free.  Or is it nut free?  I may have just made another snack that can’t be taken to school.  Pictured above are the fresh from the oven Oatmeal, Walnut, Banana bars from this month’s O magazine.  As you can see, I #nailedit.  But we’ll have to see if this recipe is a hit or not – they have a tanginess from the cream cheese that may not be loved by certain boys.  And nuts are always risky. I hope they like it, because it took about  2 seconds to make.  I had picky eaters do the mixing while I measured/eyeballed the ingredients.

Another day, another z bar for snack.

I have a love/hate relationship with magazines, as everyone knows.  Remember my monthly column about Panic Attack Magazine?  Hey, I wrote it for 3 months, that is some serious dedication.  Well, now that my children are all grown up, and I have stopped caring worrying enough to read parenting magazines, I have moved on to cooking/decorating/lifestyle magazines, and the love/hate affair has continued.  Mostly I read recipes in the car on the way to Eldora, decide what to make someday, fold down the corners to mark the page, and then lazily cook the same old meals and recycle the magazine because it told me to get rid of clutter.  But when I was reading all my magazines on the beach, it was dangerously close to New Years Day, and I decided to turn over a new leaf and cook some of the recipes.  For real.  I also read an article that was so wonderfully awful, I could write about it for days.  It had the perfect mixture of a good idea taken too far, first world problems, pretention, and hypocrisy.  I laughed and laughed and then mocked it with my friend Laura.  And then…  and then we came up with an article I could write about my own family that followed that exact formula and it would be so perfect for that magazine.  So do I link to the article and make fun of it, or do I write my own version and become magazine famous?  It’s a real Sophie’s choice.

In the meantime – here is a round up/review of the recipes I have tried last month:

Martha Stewart Roast Spatchcocked Lemon Chicken – (Martha Stewart Living, January 2013) Dave made this one, so I can’t comment on how hard/easy it was, but it tasted good.  It wasn’t the best or worst thing I have ever had, but it was necessary for the following:

Roast Lemon Chicken and Rice Soup – (Martha Stewart Living, January 2013) I usually have an idea of whether or not I am going to like something, and I usually like it.  This was the rare exception.  This soup was gag-inducingly bad.  “It tasted like a cough drop” was the nicest thing I could say about it.  It was gross.  Thankfully, I didn’t use all the leftover chicken from above, because it would have gone to waste.  I did make the kids eat the chicken out of their bowls, and I did the same.  Dave made a valiant effort to eat the leftovers but most of it got tossed.  Oddly, the Daily Camera featured this exact recipe this week and I gagged all over again.  Do Not Make.

But I did use the rest of the chicken in a noodle bowl recipe from Sunset February 2013.  The noodles are here, and the veggies  here, (I just used veggies that I had and that the kids like) and I threw the leftover chicken in broth with some scallions.  I seasoned half the noodles and half the veggies and let people pick what they wanted in their bowl.  Everybody went with broth, chicken, noodles, and veggies.  (Kids unseasoned, adults – seasoned.)  The kids LOVED it.  Luke said he wanted me to make it for his birthday dinner.  We’ve already had it twice.  I may have set the bar really low with the cough drop soup.  The noodle bowl recipes were in an article about this book: The Hakka Cookbook.

Quinoa and Pumpkin Seed Granola – (Better Homes and Gardens January 2013) I am not going to link to this one because it’s from Better Homes and Gardens and you have to login to see the recipe.  But if you are motivated, you can find it.  It was really yummy, and good, but I was the only one who liked it so I probably won’t make it again.  The kids were sad that it was nothing like granola made with oats, and it was very crumbly so it was hard for them to eat by the handful.  I liked it on top of oatmeal, and in yogurt.  It’s great if you get your organic quinoa in a giant bag from costco and then worry about what to do with it.  Yep, that is a problem that people have.

So there you go – not too bad for January.

I’d like to take a time machine back to Saturday at the farmer’s market when I said, “Oh hey!  We should get together because I am going to make caramel and I am sure I will have way too much, because seriously how much caramel can you eat? Anyway, I should give you some caramel, because, what am I going to do with all that caramel?”

I mean how much caramel can you eat? And what is it good on besides ice cream?  Well, so far I have come up with: coffee, oatmeal, spoons.  But that was just as of this morning.

If I could prevent myself from saying that, I wouldn’t be so embarrassed about my sink full of spoons.  See, the thing is, I don’t like to double dip.  And I am pretty lazy about putting dishes in the dish washer.  So there we are.  Turns out, caramel doesn’t last that long.

Related: I am taking a cooking class.  Everyone wants to know how it’s going so I should probably put some thoughts together.  The day after the first class I said to Dave, “Is it OK if I start every sentence from now on with, “Chef Michael says…” and then sort of trail off and stare dreamily into space?”

He said it was fine.