Christmas (mis)Adventures

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas (Happy Holiday, etc.). I had a very nice Christmas week. Over a three-day span, I was able to spend time with three of my brothers and their families (well, partial families, in some cases).

On Christmas Eve, my mom and I were preparing our traditional Christmas treats – peanut clusters, Rice Krispies Treats®, and Chex® Party Mix. We ran into some problems, which ended up providing us with much humor.

Due to my last minute, two-week trip to London, I wasn’t quite prepared for Christmas, so I was shopping on Christmas Eve – the lines in the stores were crazy, by the way. My mom called and said she had run into a problem with the peanut clusters, and needed some help. So, after a fruitless shopping experience (I ended up buying stuff on-line and printing out a picture of the item to be unwrapped. Lame, I know, but what are you going to do?), I returned home to see what she needed. My mom has been using the same recipe for peanut clusters for, oh, about as long as we’ve had a microwave, so what, 20-some-odd years (maybe 30)? For some reason, this time, as she melted the butterscotch and chocolate chips, the butterscotch chips caramelized instead of melted. I really think she had a bad batch of butterscotch chips – because the next batch came out OK. However, my mom kept the messed up batch because, in her words, it was sweet so someone might eat it. OK…

Rice Krispies Treats® are my FAVORITE holiday treat. My mom has doctored up the usual recipe a little bit (including adding more marshmallows AND a tsp. of vanilla). Anyway, I got out a bag of marshmallows – they felt a little old, but they weren’t TOO hard, and since we were melting them anyway, I figured we’d be OK. Well, we weren’t OK. As the marshmallows started “melting” (and I use the term loosely), I quickly realized that this batch just wasn’t going to work. This mishap following so closely after the Peanut Cluster debacle, caused my mom and me to double over with laughter – we were laughing so hard we were crying. My mom had the genius idea to mix the caramelized chocolate/butterscotch mixture in with the clumping marshmallows– again, using the reasoning “they’re both sweet.” Needless to say, it was a mess and ended up in the garbage. Luckily we had some newer marshmallows on hand, so Rice Krispies Treats® were to be had.

All in all, we had a very nice, white Christmas (the snow has been crazy) – we were able to spend time with family, eat good food, watch Christmas shows (we watched A Christmas Story, finally), and celebrate the birth of our Savior.

Happy New Year, everyone!