*It’s Tuesday and I’m fat. It’s Fat Tuesday.

*All of my friends are going on and on about Downton Abbey. I’m not going to watch it. The whole time I was addicted to Lost I would hate having to wait until the next season to know what the heck was going and really I never did. Plus I just kept thinking what if I die before I see the ending of Lost. That can’t be good. I’m stuck watching Grey’s Anatomy every week not because I really like it anymore, I’m just invested. So I am only going to watch shows now that are completely come and gone. That way I can rent all the season and do a week long marathon and not have to wait to see how it ends.

*I watched a great video about the amazing benefits of just getting 20-30 minutes of exercise a day. While I may be a chunkster I am one that has all the good numbers. My heart rate, pulse, sugar level, cholesterol etc is not only good but great. It’s because I do something active every day. As the video says you get 23 ½ hours a day to do everything else. Move it peeps.

*I’m against the new Jack and the Box milkshake because there is no actual bacon in it….just bacon flavoring. WTF? That’s like bacon salt. Screw bacon salt, just sprinkle bacon on top of stuff.

*Oreo turned 100 this year. They came out with a Birthday Oreo that is suspiciously like Funfetti and taste like it too. So to honour that I made Rice Krispie Treats for my hockey team using them. Extra sprinkles since it is Fat Tuesday after all. 

Birthday Oreo Rice Krispie Treats

6 TBSP unsalted butter
1 16-ounce bag of mini marshmallows
12 ounces Rice Krispies Cereal
1 package Birthday Oreos, chopped into pieces
1 tsp. vanilla extract
6 ounces white chocolate
1/3 cup Funfetti Cake Mix
Sprinkles

Melt butter in a large saucepan over low heat and add marshmallows and vanilla.

Stir until they begin to melt.

When melted stir in cereal and cookies so it they are completely coated with marshmallow mixture.

Press into a baking dish (9 by 13…but you need tall sides).

Melt white chocolate in a double boiler, when melted mix in the cake batter and drizzle over the pan. Add extra sprinkles so they stick to the white chocolate mixture.

Let sit for about 30 minutes before cutting.

I’m often surprised when people tell me that they don’t have any holiday traditions. My ex-husband didn’t have any, which I actually loved because that meant we would just do mine. But I have met more than a few people in my time that don’t do this. And while I think traditions are fun, in some ways, they can also cause unnecessary stress to your holiday season.

This year one of my traditions is getting broken. Ever since I can remember we were allowed to open one gift on Christmas Eve, which amazingly were always new pajamas. My mom always bought them for me even as an adult, until I got married in which she let my ex-husband know that he was in charge of that now. Even last year, my ex-husband’s gift to me was pajamas since he knows that is one of my major holiday traditions. This year when he told me that he was playing Santa I wrongly assumed that I was getting pajamas. Don’t get me wrong he got me a way cool gift that is more exciting than pajamas it just made me realize I wasn’t getting them this year. I have to be flexible and go with it. So I bought a cheap pair of pajama bottoms (I usually just wear a t-shirt on top) and wrapped them up and put on the tag that they were from CCS and the Little Fuzzy Bunny. Would I have preferred to have someone get them for me, sure, because we never really get surprises as adults, but those are the breaks. I have a new normal now. And maybe now my tradition is that I buy myself a new pair each year.

I think too many people put emphasis on the traditions and they get a little freaked out if they don’t get done. It’s okay if they don’t get done. As the Grinch can attest to, you can’t keep Christmas from coming. So you can either be a stress case and make other people miserable right along with you or you can not worry about it…I’d go with option two if I were you.

One thing that isn’t so much a tradition as it is fun to do is decorating a gingerbread house. Last year I didn’t get mine done for the holidays, and if you remember I just ended up making one for Valentine’s instead. Which was pretty fun as well. They are pretty time consuming and I was thinking about how when I taught 6th grade we would always go down and help the kindergarteners make gingerbread houses using little milk cartons and graham crackers. They were messy and ugly and I was usually covered in frosting with random gum drops on me. But they had fun and that was all that mattered. While making Rice Krispie Treats for my hockey team I started thinking, I should make a little house using Rice Krispie Treats instead of milk cartons. They are a good size and completely edible. Because let’s face it, even though the gingerbread is edible…it doesn’t taste that great since it’s made more for structure than it is for eating.

So if you don’t get to all your holiday traditions this year, give yourself and the others around you a break and don’t sweat it.

Rice Krispie Treat Gingerbread Houses

6 TBSP unsalted butter
16 ounces marshmallows
12 cups Rice Krispie Cereal (I used a mix of plain and chocolate)
In large saucepan melt butter over low heat. Add marshmallows and stir until completely melted. Remove from heat.

Add cereal. Stir until well coated.

Using buttered spatula or wax paper evenly press mixture into 13 x 9 x 2-inch pan coated with cooking spray. Cool.

Cut the treats the size you would like your house to be. Then cut a square…cut that diagonal so that it makes the roof. How many you get is really going to depend on how big you cut your houses. I got four houses and some ends to eat as I decorated.

Make royal icing and put into a piping bag. Using the icing, attach the roof to the top of the house and let it dry a little.

Continue to decorate as desired.

Royal Icing:

5 TBSP meringue powder (you can find this at the grocery store or craft supply store)
1 TBSP cream of tarter
¾ cup warm water
4 cups powdered sugar
Using a stand mixer with the paddle or whisk attachment, add the meringue powder, cream of tarter, and water. Just hand whisk the ingredients together to make sure there are no lumps.

Add the powdered sugar and mix on low speed for about three minutes. Increase speed to medium and let mix for about 5-7 minutes. This is a thicker icing for gingerbread house making. If you want to use leftovers for cookies, add water to it to thin it out. This makes a very large batch of icing.

My favorite cereal of all time is Count Chocula. Growing up I always knew that my favorite season was around the corner, fall, when the Count Chocula, BooBerry, and FrankenBerry cereals hit the shelf. The rest of the year I mostly stuck to Lucky Charms which is pretty much the same concept but not chocolate. Frosted covered shapes with the world’s crunchiest marshmallows also in shapes. I was crushed when stores stopped carrying it. I mean crushed.

Then came the exciting world or realizing that you could order it on line for a hefty price, which sadly I paid. Yes, that’s right; I had Count Chocula shipped to me for years. Luckily a few years back, slowly but surely Count Chocula was making its way back. Except as whole grain. Whole grain I thought? Who the F*@K makes a chocolate cereal with chocolate marshmallows whole grain? Evil people that’s who. Seriously, you changed the flavor of it by trying to make it healthier. Chocolate cereal healthier? I was more than happy with my unhealthy (not that It’s healthy now) cereal. Bring it back. Bring back the real Count Chocula!!!

In the meantime I don’t get the real Count Chocula but I will settle for what I have. I mostly just still love it for nostalgia reasons. Though unlike Spaghetti-O’s I actually still like it. I figured I make everything else into a marshmallow treat, why not this. That way I can make them back to be unhealthy the way they deserve to be!!!

Count Chocula Marshmallow Treats

6 TBSP unsalted butter, at room temperature
16 ounces marshmallows
1 ½ boxes (or about 16 ounces) Count Chocula cereal
25 Oreo Chocolate Crème Cookies, crushed up, but leave pieces somewhat big
1 cup milk chocolate chips

Butter a 9-x-13-inch baking pan. Or be lazy like me and spray it with non-stick baking spray. Set aside.
Over low heat melt butter in a large pot (I like to use my stock pot because I am a messy person).

Once butter has melted, add marshmallows and continue to cook over low heat while they melt.

It may take a little time. Don’t turn up the heat to try and make it go quicker, you could end up with burned marshmallows or your treats could end up too hard once they firm up.

When most of the marshmallows have melted and they resemble marshmallow crème with a few lumps, remove from heat and add the cereal and cookies.

Using a wooden spoon, stir, stir, stir some more, until all the cereal is fully coated and other parts of the pot are not hogging all the marshmallows (so evenly coated). Add the chocolate chips and stir to evenly distribute.

Pour into prepared baking pan. Take a rubber spatula and either spray it with non-stick spray or simply get some water on it (I just put mine under the faucet real quick). Using the spatula, press the cereal/marshmallow mixture down into the pan, attempting to create a flat, even surface.

Cover with foil and let sit for a few hours to firm up.

Take foil off. Place wax paper down that is a little bit longer than the baking pan. Flip the pan over onto the wax paper. Cut into squares. Some would say 2-inch.

So I usually tell a different story when I do Way Back Wednesdays but this is one that always makes me happy and many of my teacher friends in Arizona are headed back into the trenches this week and so I thought I might remind them of some of the great things about teaching. This is originally from August 30th, 2008. This is a great recipe and perfect for an after school snack to go with your homework.

Obviously there has to be a good side to teaching, for if there wasn’t, no one would do it. There are many great moments in teaching. Many of those moments you will never know about, and that’s the hard part. So often it is years later after you were that child’s teacher that you realize the impact that you made on that child. And it usually never the kid you would have thought.
Case in point. I had a student when I taught 6th grade. Her older brother was in 8th grade and struggling something horrible in science. At the time the science teacher was what one might call technical(you might know it as dry and boring) and he could just not catch on. A very shy kid, he finally got the nerve to ask me after school one day for help while his sister was hanging out reorganizing my books(slave labor comes cheap when you have goodie-goodie’s in class ). I was the type of person who likes to use more real life terms. I tell people the real term but I also translate to real people speak. You know like when I went to a fancy restaurant with my now ex- husband and the menu says Potatoes Gaufrette, I turn to my perplexed hubby and say “waffle fries” and he understands.
Apparently I had an impact. So much that his senior year of high school he nominated me for a state award for best teacher through out his years. I was not eligible as I was never his actual teacher but the high school was nice enough to forward me the 4 page essay about how my simple after school lessons shaped the boys life. He is now a science teacher in New Mexico.

But my proudest moment of all came of at all places the State Fair. My parents and I were in the livestock section watching cows be judged. We mostly wanted to just be in the shade as it was a balmy 95F in October in AZ.
My first year of teaching I had a student who was a pain in the ass to put it mildly. I team taught and so he was not actually in my homeroom, but I saw him for two classes. M and his dad lived in their car. I taught in a poor district where 96% the schools students qualified for free lunch. Many teachers coddled him because of his circumstance, which in turn made him be more of an ass. I rode him hard all year and he never rose to the challenge. I chalked M up to one that got away and one that made me drink a lot of beer after work.

So imagine my surprise when a voice from the past spoke. “Hello Ms. G, it’s a pleasure to see you again.” In a slight state of shock that he even came over to say hi, I asked what he was doing here. He told me how he had gone to live on a boys ranch for homeless children and how to earn their keep they helped run the farm. He had raised a cow and was showing it and hoping to place so that the cow would sale, as he would get to keep the money. He asked if we would stay and watch his cow. I said sure. He was not up for about an hour. He sat with my parents and I going over all the things they look for in the judging and how things were in general in his life, including the program that he felt changed his life. Then when he got up to go and prepare his cow he said to me, “I want to thank you for never treating me different than any other kid in your classroom. That really meant a lot to me. “ I held back my tears when said that but they minute he left my mother had already pulled the Kleenex from her purse.
I watched M get first place for his cow that day. I pretty much was a ball of tears. So not what I thought my day at the Fair was going to be. So not the student I thought I would ever hear that from.

Marshmallow Crunch Brownie Bars

Brownie Ingredients:
4 ounces unsweetened chocolate
2/3 cup unsalted butter
1 ¼   cups semisweet chocolate chips, divided
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
½  tsp salt
4 large eggs, room temperature
2 cups granulated sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract

Topping Ingredients:
7 ounces mini marshmallows
1 ½  cups milk chocolate chips
1 cup Jif peanut butter
1 TBSP unsalted butter
1 ½  cups Rice Krispies
Preheat oven to 350F.
Grease a 9×13-inch baking pan.
In a medium saucepan, melt the chocolate, butter, and ¾ cup of the semisweet chocolate chips on medium heat. Stir occasionally while melting. Set aside and cool for 5 minutes. In a medium bowl, sift the flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside. In a large bowl, place the eggs and whisk thoroughly. Add in the sugar and vanilla. Stir the melted ingredients into the egg mixture, mixing well. Stir in the dry sifted ingredients and mix well. Fold in the remaining ½ cup semisweet chocolate chips.
Pour the batter into the prepared pan, and even with a spatula. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted into the corner of the pan comes out with moist crumbs.
Remove the brownies from the oven, and immediately sprinkle the marshmallows over them. Return the pan to the oven for 3 more minutes.
While the brownies are baking, place the chocolate chips, peanut butter, and butter in a medium saucepan. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly until melted. Remove from heat, add the cereal,and mix well. Allow this to cool for 3 minutes or so.
Spread the mixture evenly over the marshmallow layer. Refrigerate until chilled before cutting. Makes 12 3×3-inch bars.

Adapted from Buttercup Bakes at Home by Jennifer Appel