Thursday, November 12, 2009

Peaceful Cracker

From my forthcoming cookbook, How to Make Snacks Like a Dork, comes this little gem: Sugar Out the Yin Yang. Its origin is this...

As a follow up from the My Daughter's Starting Kindergarten and I'm Starting my Mid-Life Crisis blog post, which is probably a lot like the fanfare-heavy Red Book that's coming out, I've become adept at the school lunch. This basically means that I make a lunch and two snacks for Sophie each day, she ignores all of it, and I pretend not to care. The sad truth is: The full lunch box at the end of every day is making me crazy.

So, instead of letting her eat or not eat, I've decided to go the extra mile, think outside the box, and embody a lot of other lame sayings. These mental and epicurean gymnastics have finally lead to today's masterpiece. I told her in the car, "You can eat it now or zen." She didn't get it, which is good. In our family, you can get punched in the head for a stupid pun like that.

I'm not sure whether this is my greatest achievement to date, or my greatest shame. Here's what it is:
About a tablespoon marshmallow cream
About a tablespoon Nutella
1 plain rice cake
1 marshmallow
1 chocolate chip
Calories per serving: Who cares?

What I like about this little treat is that it's like ebony and ivory, living together in perfect harmony on a rice cake. What Sophie likes about it is that she can pick off the chocolate chip, lick the marshmallow cream off one side, and easily toss the rest in the bushes. Everybody wins.