Mrs. HM Endures A Thwarting

No good deed goes unthwarted! At least not around the Hillbilly Mansion during the holidays. Just when Mrs. HM is at her busiest. Okay. That doesn't take much, to be busier than her normal day of a trip to town for scratchers, and then throwing something together to feed Farmer H. But still. I am not doing these Christmas treats for myself.

The Chex Mix betrayed me this year! Oh, it's still very tasty, and mostly up to my high standards. Just a little more difficult to make it turn out that way.

I thought I had all my ingredients ready to go, until I got started. Where I thought I had four cans of whole cashews, one for each batch, in reality I only had TWO, plus two cans of mixed nuts, which were in the exact same color of yellow can. I had bought my mixed nuts in bags, because they were cheaper than the cans. So I had extra mixed nuts, and had to buy more cashews on my next trip to town.

I usually buy the store-brand fake Cheerios. This year, regular Cheerios were on sale, in a giant box, and cheaper than the store brand. I got two boxes, for making four batches of Chex Mix. The first batch was for my best old ex-teaching buddy Mabel, who prefers EXTRA Cheerios. They're her favorite ingredient. Her batch came out fine.

The second batch of Chex Mix kicked off with a sliced finger from prying open the box flap on store-brand rice chex. The cut was by the cuticle, and made its anger known every time I put my hands in the dishwater to clean the pans for subsequent batches.

But THEN, upon stirring the regular-Cheerioed batches of Chex Mix, I found that the Cheerios tended to SHRINK! How do they do THAT? I suppose there were not as many on the bottom of the pans as in Mabel's version. Some Cheerios got downright black and hard-chewy! They looked kind of like that thing I found in my fake Honey Nut Cheerios, only they were not rock-hard. Still, you could break a tooth on them! Yes, I tested, but didn't break a tooth. This meant I had to pick out all the burnt Cheerios before putting my gifts in their containers.

You can't mess with the heat or the cooking time on Chex Mix, or the whole batch is off. So I just had to remove those cantankerous Cheerios from the three big pans after each batch was done.

Batch three saw the Worcestershire Sauce acting up when I sprinkled it over the mix before adding the garlic powder and garlic salt. All at once, it shot out over the edge of the pan, onto the cutting block, onto the floor. So there was that mess to clean up.

Batch four was doing just fine, until the last half hour, when I put the three pans back into the oven after stirring. In closing, the oven door caught on the bottom of my fleece jacket that I wear around the house to keep from getting hypothermia in the 70-degree furnace setting. I was almost Hansel-and-Greteled!

I must say, I taste-tested every batch of Chex Mix, and declared them all delicious, and suitable for giving. 

Tomorrow we'll delve into the Oreo Cake issues...