Rooster's First Cooking Disaster

ACDWR: PSA for the holidays

This cooking disaster was so long ago that I wasn't even Rooster yet and, heck, I doubt if I was even in the public school system yet, so we are talking about three scores and seven years ago. My parents left me and my twin brother alone at the farm while they took a mid day and evening off for something.

Now this is no big deal. It was safe, the older siblings would be home from school in the afternoon and there were sandwiches prepared for us for lunch. So the deal was to stay out of trouble and clean up any mess we made.

The sandwiches were fine but I had a hankering for some peanut butter oatmeal cookies. It looked so easy when I watched Ma make them and it seems really fast too, so I thought why not? I found something like a receipt that called for two cups of oatmeal and some other ingredients.

The first problem was the two cups of oatmeal. Didn't find any. I figured I would “substitute” cornflakes. I loved that word substitute. Heard Ma used it a time or two and, like basketball, you put something or someone in, that may not be quite as good as what you needed, but it will do.

So I substituted cornflakes, but only had a half of cups of cornflakes. Maybe grocery shopping was one of the reasons they were gone. Anyway, I reasoned that oatmeal or cornflakes was NOT what made cookies taste so good but it was the other ingredients. Peanut butter, butter, milk, sugar, syrup, and some spices that I didn't know. Don't remember if it called for milk and eggs but normally we would have those since we had milk cows and chickens.

I figured you mixed it all together and I did, but wasn't sure how long to bake them. Then I remembered that the usual amount of time was 20 minutes on small stuff and 350 degrees on about everything. When the kitchen started smelling kind of funny, you turn the kitchen fan on. It still works today.

Pulling the creation out of the oven left us kind of wondering if we missed something. The tar substance was not really eatable, although we tried. When Ma returned she was a little disgusted with us and thought that even the dogs and varmints wouldn't eat it and she told us to throw it out.

Wanting to salvage something out of this experiment, I suggested using the mixture to patch a small hole in the barn roof. I got me a ladder and did that so it wasn't a complete waste.* Last year when the 100 year old barn burned down after being struck by lightning, I noticed in the ashes a small piece of roof that survived the flames. You guessed it. It was the piece of roof that I had patched those many years ago. By the way, I found out recently that I was attempting to make No-bake cookies.

So what lessons should be taken from this Public Service announcement? Well, for one, if you leave kids at home alone tell them to make a larger batch of cookies.

*Jawing Alert