Puppy Chow

Here's another tasty treat and a nice change from the millions of cookies I've been making recently. I made puppy chow today for our church Family Fall Festival or Festival of Family Fun in the Fall. Now that I think about it I'm not sure what the exact name is, but it does have the words Fall, Family, and Festival in it. If you're in town Saturday stop by and check it out (and try my puppy chow).

Puppy Chow

Notice a trend here? Apparently, I only shop at Kroger. Except I don't.

You'll need:

9 cups Crispex or Chex or Kroger's Hexa Grains

1 cup peanuts

1 cup chocolate chips

1/2 cup peanut butter

1/2 cup butter

1/2 tsp. vanilla

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

Helpful Hints:

- Use a spatula with a head that doesn't fall off. You don't want your spatula falling apart in your chocolate mixture. Not that I'm speaking from experience.

- Turn on food network while you're "cooking" it makes you feel like you have your own show, except you don't have the Food Network kitchen elves to clean up for you when you're done.

- If you do turn on Food Network, make sure it's not Ina. I'm pretty sure Puppy Chow is beneath her and is only to be served to the peasants. I found Giada to be rather motivational. Paula is probably a safe bet as well since this recipe is mainly butter and we all know that is her fav!

- If you're like me and hate strongly dislike Kroger's Krappy Peanut Butter (go Meijer!), this is a great recipe to make to get rid of it (if you're also like me and only have the KK peanut butter around because you have been meaning to take it to the food pantry for weeks months).
- Also do not check Puppy Chow in your luggage if you're traveling. During the flight, it will figure out how to make it out of the sealed container and all over everything else you packed.

Enough bantering, here's what you need to do:

Melt the chocolate chips, butter, and peanut butter. Once melted add in the vanilla.

In a large bowl combine cereal and peanuts. Pour chocolate mixture over cereal and stir until well coated.

In a large plastic Ziploc bag (or paper grocery bag) combine the chocolate covered cereal and powdered sugar. Seal well and shake, shake, shake.

Once the cereal is covered in powdered sugar you'll have delicious puppy chow...

And a very messy kitchen....

We could play iSpy with this mess (there's even an empty vanilla extract bottle on the floor - don't ask). Please note the wine glass on the counter. It's been there for a couple of weeks because I keep forgetting to ask Charles to put it away for me. But you may want to have a wine glass readily available since you will probably need a drink after cleaning up your own iSpy worthy kitchen after making your puppy chow (unless you have access to the Food Network kitchen elves). I would have enjoyed some after my cleaning, but we only had a bottle of wine open that, according to the label, has a buttery essence to it. That just doesn't do it for me. I bet Paula Deen would like it.

Speaking of messy kitchens, I need to start cleaning. Tomorrow we're headed to StL to celebrate Charles' graduation from law school.

By the end of the weekend I will have been to more Cardinals games than Indians games this year. But then again, I did go to 6ish Clippers games and since the Indians traded away all of their talent and most of the team and thus had to call up 4/5 of the team from Columbus, I think it's safe to say I really saw 9ish Indians games.

Sorry about the Indians tangent, back to the cleaning discussion. I used to always make fun of my mom for cleaning the house before she went out of town, but now I have no room to talk as I do the same thing. After all, you want your place to be neat and tidy so it'll be easier for the robbers to find stuff when they break in while you're away.

Enjoy the weekend!