On the first day of Christmas…

I woke up this morning to this view:

By the time Dad and I finished our first pass at shoveling the driveway, there were just over two inches of snow on the (non-driveway) ground.  By the time Mom and I finished the second pass after dinner, it was just shy of six and slowly coming to a stop.

There is nothing particularly crafty about this lovely Christmas treat – this is just my loving “Neener-neener-neeeeener” to all my fellow Texans before I get into my Christmas projects.

That said – part 1 of the Christmas blitz:

Let’s face it – Christmas is a good excuse for making good things.  I’ve done more crafting and creating in the last four weeks than the previous four months.  Last week I made the open of the Christmas Season official…

I made Scramble.

I think I have referenced an old cook book in the past.  Usually, that old cook book is the Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book, specifically, the 1969 edition.  For my first post-graduation Christmas, my sister went to the trouble of finding two of the very same cook books that our mother has been working out of since well before we were born (I can only assume they were wedding gifts), and even marked some of the staple recipes for me.  As much as I would love to credit her with the idea, she actually stole it from a family friend who did the same thing for her three daughters (thank you, Ebay).

Anyway, one of the noted recipes has long been a holiday staple at our house.  It may be just another Chex mix, but it’s our Chex mix.  The recipe calls for a few varieties of cereal that we generally don’t include (the Shredded Wheat soaks up all the goodies and leaves everything else bare, and that’s just no good), but the critical ingredients are Worcestershire sauce, garlic salt, and seasoned salt, mixed with vegetable oil and baked into the whole mess.

I was thrilled when I successfully made my first batch last year and it actually tasted just like Mom makes.  It seems like just a dump-and-bake thing, but the two-hour process requires careful skill, acquired over many years of practice under Mother’s watchful eye.

It’s all in the stirring, you see.  All the oil and seasonings sink to the bottom of the pan, and if you don’t stir thoroughly enough, the pieces on top don’t get enough flavor.  But then if you stir too much, you have cereal all over your kitchen.  (Then in my case, you have a dog consuming things covered in garlic, which is apparently bad for him.)

Needless to say, I’ve been working really hard at staying hydrated this last week, as I don’t generally consume that much sodium, nor can I resist eating unhealthy quantities of this stuff.

(Next year I’ll be working out a less salty version.)

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