Category: parenthood

Whiskey in the Jar-O

Tonight was “Heritage Night” at Minime’s school, and the kids each signed up to bring a food from the land o’ their heritage.  Now somehow we missed signup day initially, so my plans to celebrate my Irish heritage with Irish coffee for the kids went down the drain (all school functions are better with coffee and whiskey, children!). 
England got taken.  I wanted to fake being Italian so I could just make spaghetti, but that was taken as well.  We ended up with
Scotland, as some relative or other is a Scot, so fine and dandy, it can’t be too hard to come up with something. 

I started researching recipes, and you can only imagine the foods from the country that brought us haggis are a little scary.  I found lots of recipes involving animal guts and whiskey that I opted to skip, so I thought perhaps we should look for dessert recipes instead…and found a lot of recipes with fruit and whiskey.  Whiskey is an important part o’ my pale heritage! 

Finally I tracked down a recipe for a sweet treat that didn’t involve sheep guts or alcohol, and woohooooooooo, the results turned out really, really good and it’s very easy! 

Oat Cakes

8 tablespoons butter

¼ cup sugar

2 cups quick cooking oatmeal

¼ cup white corn syrup 

Melt the butter in a 10 inch skillet over medium heat. Stir in sugar with a wooden spoon. Let it bubble together for 20 seconds, taking care not to let it burn. Add oatmeal and stir over heat until it is golden brown. Remove from heat, dump contents into a big bowl and stir in corn syrup.(Pause to celebrate your heritage and drink some whiskey.) Pack mixture into 12 muffin tins, dividing equally.   Really smoosh (we’re not smushing, we’re smooooooshing) it down so they stick together.Refrigerate at least 3 hours, or freeze 20-30 minutes. Loosen by running knife around edges, gently slide out.  

Now, at this point, the oat cakes are nice tasty little cookies, sweet and good with a cold glass o’ (soy!) milk.  Or whiskey. 

But if you want to kick it up a notch Kat-style when you make them, get some mini chocolate chips.  Throw a ¼ cup of chocolate chips in the bottom of the bowl before you dump your hot buttery oats in the bowl.  Throw your buttery oats on top of the chips, then throw in your corn syrup as above, and toss another ¼ cup of those mini chips on top of the warm sticky mess and stir.  Pack into the muffin tins and yadda yadda yadda as directed above.  Super good, I swear, whether you’re wearing a kilt or not.

The joys of parenthood

There are so many moments as a parent that you look forward to with great joy: first steps, first word, first tooth, riding a bike, going to school on the bus.  Those are the moments and milestones the books prepare us for, the Kodak moments, the stuff of Nescafe commercials and Hallmark cards.

There are tons of other moments that no one prepares us for, like the first time your child tiptoes quietly through the house, past the bathroom, into your room so she can throw up on you while you’re fast asleep.  Or those times when you’ve got guests over and your child strips naked, jumps up on a box, slaps her butt and sings her brand new song, “This is My ButtyButt.”  As they get older, you can enjoy the first time she stuffs the top of her swimsuit with socks for a summer camp field trip, or the first time you get a call from the principal because your child shoved another child face first down a hill (“but he asked me to, he said he wanted to be a bobsledder”).

And this morning, another magical moment:  removing the love-seat cushions to vacuum, only to find a stash of Halloween candy layered under the cushions…gummy Lifesavers, Reese’s Cups, Dubble Bubble…all stored for winter under my cushions…and all sat upon and smushed for the last month.  Items had to be scraped off the cushions and the couch with a butter knife in their melty disarray.  I had wondered where the Halloween candy went, but thought back to my own childhood, when I would stash it in a drawer and ration it out for a month or more, so I didn’t worry.

Of course, when I asked MiniMe about it, she said she had no idea who did it.  There is a potential speck of truth to her words, since herds of other people’s children reside at my home every weekend and do all manner of insane things.  I didn’t give MiniMe a hard time, I just gave her a butter knife and invited her to join in on the scraping fun and the beautiful memories we were creating…ahhh, the magic.

 Happy Thanksgiving, ya’ll…