Last Sunday we hosted my family for Easter dinner and had a wonderful time.
Matt was home from school and received a little bucket of goodies from his best gal but left them on his desk when he packed up to leave on Monday morning.
As any good and thoughtful parent, we swooped down on the bucket, promptly text Matt and let him know he forgot the goodies. He was sad, but did allow us to have them. So we promptly split the three scotcheroos - one for Terry and two for me. (I let him have the other candy).
Now...for the interesting part of this story.
Tuesday evening we went to the grocery store since we had only stocked up on Easter dinner necessities. And as we were walking up and down the aisles trying to decide what to make for dinner...I promptly picked up a bag of milk chocolate chips and butterscotch chips...to make....SCOTCHEROOS! The peanutbutterychocolatebuterscotchrisekripietreat that everyone LOVES!
As I reached for the HyVee brand rice krispies...Terry asked what those were for so I had to admit what I was trying to "sneak" into the cart. He replies "if you're going to make those - you have to use Kelloggs...they are better". To which I replied "Kelloggs probably makes them for HyVee - you cereal snob".
He wouldn't waiver on the rice krispies....so I switched out the HyVee brand for the "good" ones. Then he spied "milk chocolate" chips and demanded that we switch them to Nestle Semi-sweet chips. I put my foot down. Chips are chips and the Nestle are a $1.50 more a bag. So I caved in and switched them out for the "semi-sweet" non brand name chips. Then he asked "Do you have the syrup". "Yes. I know there's syrup up on the top shelf of the cupboard". Terry replied, "yeah but it's probably been there for 4 years so you better get a new one". Off in search of the karo syrup we go...and as I reach for the off brand...he says NO!
"You must get the Karo brand - it has more vanilla" he said. (and is at least a dollar more). Karo syrup is karo syrup I said...so he started to compare the ingredients. OMG.
Thank goodness we had a new jar of peanut butter at home. Can't imagine comparing Jiff to Skippy. I know choosy mothers choose Jiff, but what in the heck to choosy fathers pick?
After dinner is over, I start to get all the ingredients ready and he says..."don't start without me". Can you see me roll my eyes right now?
As I'm getting ingredients out, he's watching a freakin You Tube video by a teenager on how to make scotcheroos. "Dude, this is not my first rodeo" I tell him. He says, "yeah, but i think the last time you made them they wouldn't come out of the pan". "Well" I said, "that's because if you boil the syrup and sugar too long, it turns to hard ball stage"..."and you don't want that". "Come watch this" he says. The girl in the video is boiling the syrup so long that it's expanded to the top of the pan. I find my recipe and he goes on line to fine a comparable recipe and decides mine is ok - we'll use it. Have I mentioned that he's getting much better and finding stuff on the computer? (Shh.. don't tell..but sometimes it's annoying).
As he tells me to "butter" the pan, I reach for the butter flavored crisco. He has a fit and yells "Stop!. I said "BUTTER" the pan. Get me the real butter - I'll do it." he says.
So needless to say...we work as a team to put together a entire 9 x 13 pan of scotcheroos (which should be outlawed by Weight Watchers). Didn't boil the sugar/syrup mixture too long, put the peanut butter in and then mixed it into the cereal - all without further incident.
Once we melt the chips and spread them on top the bars, he starts to bang the pan flat on the counter. "What in the world are you doing that for?" I ask. "I'm getting the chocolate to be even across the top, why?"
I replied, "No reason, I've just never done that before".
"At least this way the chocolate will get down into the little openings" is his reasoning.
OMG...can you say Scotcheroo nazi? (reference Seinfeld's Soup Nazi episode).
At least they are edible.
