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Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Anti-recipe #20 friendship tea and chex mix

I have a long sordid history with chex mix. To me, and my sisters and brother, it is the key smell of the holidays, ushering in a season of dark afternoons, family gatherings, Harry Potter movies, holiday music, and overeating.

I make huge gigantic batches.

I eat it by the bowlful.

It is bad.

I mean. REALLY BAD.

A few years ago I came up with a rule. No chex mix before November, preferably not until mid-November. And no chex mix after January. Last year I caved and made it in mid-October. This year I held out. I am so proud. HA.

And of course, Friendship Tea, that sugary mixture of spicy goodness, is the perfect companion to chex mix.

So, without further ado. Chex mix and friendship tea, AKA Christmas in a bowl/mug.

Chex Mix:

Well, first a note about doing this gluten free. TOTALLY POSSIBLE. First off, rice and corn chex are gluten free. YAY. Then the cheerios. I made my first batch this season with regular cheerios. After all oats are lower gluten than wheat. Right? But, then my dear boy found a great gluten free alternative - Whole O's by Nature's Path - that are made with rice and corn. YIPEE. Then he found some rice/potato flour pretzels by Ener-G, which are super yummy on their on. I am not big on pretzels in chex mix. Something about them ruins the flow of the inhalation of the mixture. But, lots of people like this so. I added some in the batch in the oven right now.

Set your oven to 300. You will be stirring the mixture every ten minutes for more than an hour. You can speed it up and set it at 350 but you will need to stir more often.

Get a huge ass roasting pan. Drop in a stick of butter. Sure you can skimp and do half a stick. But to me that is like picking the chocolate chips out of the chocolate chip cookies. What is the point? Might as well just have a bowl of cereal and skip the making of the chex mix.

Melt the butter right in the pan as the oven preheats.

Add in roughly 3 tablespoons of Worstechire sauce.

Add in roughly 1 tsp garlic salt. 1 tsp onion powder. 1 tsp seasoned salt. I dont have the latter two ingredients so I added 1 tablespoon garlic salt. Also you can throw in some brown sugar.

Mix this all with butter right in the pan.

Combine a total of around 6 cups of rice chex, corn chex, wheat chex, cheerios/alternative O's, etc. You can play around with various cereals to use if you want. I am a purist though.

Add in some pretzels and peanuts. I go heavy on peanuts, light on pretzels.

This combination should about fill up your roasting pan.

Stir well. Put in oven, stirring every 10 minutes until crunchy and toasty.

Store in large ziplock bag. Totally best eaten warm out of the oven.


Friendship Tea:
(Also called Russian tea)

1 cup Tang
1 cup instant iced tea
Some people add instant lemonade too.
1 tbs (or more?) cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg or cloves or both

These are loose measurements. Mess with that ratios until you get it to the right sweetness/tang-y-ness, etc.

Mix a few tablespoons of the mixture with hot water in a large mug. YUM.

Ah. So there you have it. Christmas on the farm. Can't WAIT.

(posted on my sister's laptop. YAY. thanks auntie!)

2 comments:

  1. it is that time of year again isn't it? Yeah!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. i always put the cheerios in first so that they soak up the butter/Worstechire mix. i'll have to try some glutten free mix...

    ReplyDelete

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