This particular night was a Friday night. Ahhh yes…. a Friday which means NO HOMEWORK
and that could be reason enough for any Mom of four to celebrate. It had been a long week so I decided that I
was just going to enjoy the beautiful fall evening with my kids. I wasn’t going to worry about the huge pile
of laundry, the pile of papers that I never seem to get through, the toys
scattered throughout the house, dishes piled high…none of that. I was going to enjoy my kids and I had to
make a pan of bars for the Pumpkin Fest which was the next day.
The kids had quickly discovered there weren’t a lot of
options in the house for things to eat so they had found a loaf of bread and
peanut butter and were making themselves sandwiches. (I viewed
that as a victory. 1) they figured
it out themselves and learned an important life skill therefore it is less likely they will starve to death during this lifetime. 2) they clearly had “spoiled” their supper was my justification for me to not slave away at a
big supper. Maybe we could have frozen
pizza later if they were hungry. Yep,
that was a victory for me…please don’t judge)
As usual they all wanted to find a ride in some part of the harvesting
operation. It was determined that Hope
would get to ride that night with Darrin.
After returning from delivering her to the field, the three boys and I
went and picked pumpkins. That experience could be a topic for another blog as
everything seems to be an adventure these days. After
we got done we came in the house. Will,
Grant, and Gage headed to the living room and seemed to be content watching tv
and playing. I had planned on making the
bars after they went to bed but I thought there was really no reason why I
couldn’t attempt it right now. They all
seemed content.
I proceeded to begin making my bars. I chose my chocolate chip bars. They had become one of my new favorites as
they are easier and faster to make than cookies, disappear rather quickly
in our house, and I have even been asked for the recipe. So I thought they might have been good enough
to take despite the fact that my fellow committee members had shared their
Pinterest Halloween recipe finds that they were going to bring. Nope I wasn’t going to compete with these
Martha Stewarts and their cut out pumpkin cookies, apple bars, glorified
pumpkin rice crispy bars, cute cupcakes in a cone, or pumpkin fudge. I was just going to bring my plain chocolate
chip bars that I might jazz up a bit by throwing a few M and M’s on top.
I got out the mixer and I must have without realizing it let
out a holler that I needed help. Let it
be known that I often welcome help but sometimes there are times when I just
want to get it done, especially when I am cooking for someone other than our
family. I was in one of those “get it
done” moods….again please don’t judge. But,
how can you tell them no they can’t help when they want to…you can’t plus I had
told myself I was just going to enjoy the evening with the kids.
First comes Grant (age 7) and he wants to help. I learned that I always and I mean always
have to remind my kids to “wash his hands with soap” before beginning in the kitchen. Don’t think “wash your hands” is enough. Kids can be gross. And
just because you remind them of the need to wash your hands “with soap” doesn’t
mean it happens. You have to do the
smell test for soap residue. Grant
failed the smell test so he had to go wash again. He then began dumping some of the ingredients
into the mixer. Did I mention I decided
to double the recipe? The plan was for us all to enjoy some bars too and avoid the “you
always take the good stuff…you never make anything for us….”
Gage (almost 2) decides to join the crowd in the kitchen. He immediately scoots the step stool around
and climbs aboard the stool so he can extend his arms by what seems like 6
feet. Some of his favorite things to do
are putting the clean dishes in the sink with the dirty dishes, play with the
toaster or grab something like a knife or a breakable plate and see if anybody Is
watching…. While trying to stay ahead of Gage and keep Grant “dumping”
ingredients, Hope (age 6) gets dropped off at home and now wants to help
too. I quickly try to think of job for
her. I had had no luck with finding fall
colored M & M’s in the grocery store so I charged her with the task of separating out the green
and blue M & M’s from the others (remember I was going to “jazz up" my boring
chocolate chip bars with M & M’s).
My bag of M & M’s now looks tiny since they all want a “tweet” as
Gage says but of course they can only eat the blue and green ones. Will (age 10) now joins us as he hears that
they are begging to eat M&M’s and
joins in the fight to be able to lick the mixer beater and bowl. I soon realized that I shouldn’t have doubled
the batch as my mixer is very, very full and we have flour all over. Are we done yet? I just wanted to get them done…. Well we put them in the oven.
In the midst of the bars baking I begin to find my kitchen counter
again as the kids have now scattered because it was clean up time. Darrin stops in the house for a bit. While he was in I check on the bars and he
could tell by the look on my face that something was wrong. The bars weren’t rising so I double check my
recipe. Crap. I had forgot to put the baking soda in….I
read further….double crap…I forgot to put the vanilla. So not only were they flat but they would be
tasteless and guess what we had 2 pans of them!
Yeah!
Will tried the bars when they were done and confirmed that
they didn’t taste “normal.” I had to
then go to plan B for making bars for the next day. It would be scotcheroos as they only have 4 ingredients
and I should be able to get that right.... I didn’t attempt that until after the kids
were all in bed and I frosted them before they woke up.
The bars weren’t a total loss though. I left them on the counter for about a week
and whenever we, including Gage, needed a chocolate “tweet” we would chisel out
an M&M.
