Our cooking failure....

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.