Remember the first time you tried to bake with the \u201chelp\u201d of a small child? I do. I had one kid back then. A very high-energy toddler. A toddler so energetic that even a modest dose of sugar\u2014or those freaky chemicals found in so many packaged foods\u2014nudged her into a level of frenzy usually only seen amongst startled squirrels.<\/p>\n
For reasons that no longer make sense to me, I decided that for our first family cooking event, we\u2019d make rice krispies squares. Everyone told me they were super-easy to make. You can\u2019t go wrong!<\/em> everyone said.<\/p>\n Everyone lied. Yes, you can<\/em> go wrong making rice krispies squares. I know, because I did it.<\/p>\n The morning started off calmly enough. I put a gob of butter in the pan, dumped in the big bag of marshmallows (except the handful that I gave to my toddler to keep her entertained) and waited. Soon, I was frantically scraping molten marshmallow foam off the sides of the pot while holding onto Frenzy Child\u2019s diaper so she wouldn\u2019t climb right onto the stove. She\u2019d had her first taste of marshmallows and was determined<\/em> to eat the rest of them, even though they\u2019d now liquified into a nasty mess that was probably never going to wash off the pot.<\/p>\n I\u2019d just dumped in the cereal when I noticed an odd smell filling the room. The marshmallows smelled like…playdough. I decided to read the ingredients listed on the bag while I stirred, and that\u2019s when it hit me: I\u2019d just fed my already-hyper kid something that contained no recognizable food ingredients whatsoever. Marshmallows, I discovered, are made from the same chemicals as the bags in which they\u2019re packaged. Plus sugar.<\/p>\n There would be no quiet time, no nap time and no calm, sleepy bedtime tonight. And it was too late to change recipes. She\u2019d tasted marshmallow bliss, and would not stop begging until she\u2019d eaten the final product\u2014rice chemical squares.<\/p>\n I tried to spread the batter in the greased pan. It wouldn\u2019t spread. Unfortunately, while I\u2019d been trying to figure out how to pronounce the ingredients listed on the marshmallow bag, the batter had cooled. It could not be coaxed out of the ball shape that it had acquired in the pot.<\/p>\n I had created a rice krispie melon. This is a dessert which looks like an anemic cantaloupe with a blistered skin disorder, emits the delicate aroma of playdough and will make chemical-sensitive toddlers behave as if you accidentally put espresso in their sippy cups.<\/p>\n When kid number two came along, our<\/em> first family cooking event was fruit and cheese kebabs.<\/p>\n Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to my blog and you\u2019ll never miss my monthly posts (plus I\u2019ll send you a free copy of There\u2019s Nothing Wrong With Claudia<\/em> to say thanks). It\u2019s easy: Just enter your email address in the upper right corner of this page. I\u2019ll never sell, share, or rent your contact information, because I hate it when people do that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Remember the first time you tried to bake with the \u201chelp\u201d of a small child? I do. I had one kid back then. A very high-energy toddler. A toddler so energetic that even a modest dose of sugar\u2014or those freaky chemicals found in so many packaged foods\u2014nudged her into a level of frenzy usually only […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funny-bits"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":196,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions\/196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}