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Author: Jay

A pan of puffed rice cereal treats with text reading, "World's Laziest Cereal Treats."

World’s Laziest Cereal Treats

My old college roommate couldn’t eat gluten, so the overlap between our respective diets was pretty slim (since most gluten-free flours and flour-based products have potato in them and I can’t eat nightshades). 

One thing we could both eat, though, was puffed rice cereal treats (aka Rice Krispies). So we alternated buying the ingredients and I’d make them while I was prepping other food. 

I didn’t think much of it until we had a couple people over for Halloween and she asked if I was going to be making my cereal treats, because mine were “the best [she] had EVER eaten.” Well, okay then! 

Honestly, I just make them the way I do because I’m lazy and don’t want to end up with random leftover ingredients. 

The original recipe from Kelloggs calls for 6 cups of cereal, which is in theory about half a box, but seemed to usually be slightly more than half. So if I wanted to make more later I’d have to buy another box and open it, which in turn wouldn’t be used up entirely and I’d need yet another box… rinse and repeat. Much easier to just use the whole thing. 

And if we’re already “measuring” one ingredient by what’s easiest, why not do everything that way?

…And so the World’s Laziest Cereal Treats were born. 

Items Needed

  • A really big pot
  • A 9”x13” baking dish
  • A silicone spatula or something similar that can stir the ingredients without getting super sticky

Ingredients

  • One 12-oz box of your choice of cereal (whatever floats your boat — puffed rice cereal like Rice Krispies are traditional, but I like Cinnamon Toast Crunch sometimes)
  • One and a half bags (15 oz) mini marshmallows — doesn’t have to be exact, just eyeball it
  • One stick (½ cup) of salted butter
  • A splash of vanilla extract (probably about ½ tsp, but these are lazy treats so I never actually measure anything)
  • Optional: ½ tsp cinnamon, cup or two of chocolate candies, some sprinkles, etc.

Instructions

  1. Take your stick of butter and run the end over the pan to grease it. Put remaining butter in the pot and melt it on medium-low heat.
  2. Add marshmallows and vanilla to the pot; melt marshmallows.
  3. Dump the whole box of cereal into the pot and stir everything together. Pour and press into greased pan. If you’re feeling fancy, add some melted chocolate or sprinkles to the top. Let cool.

And that’s it. It takes like five minutes and you only have one pot and one spatula to clean up. That’s why they’re the “World’s Laziest” Cereal Treats — you barely have to do anything. But they’re still so good! 

What do you think? Will you give them a try? Let me know in the comments how they turn out!

Pin for Later:

Quick Pickles, Three Ways

One of my summer celebration goals was to learn how to make quick pickles. I’m happy to say I’ve done it! 

In total, I tried my hand at making three different kinds of pickles: sweet pickles (like bread and butter), dill pickles, and special nightshade-free spicy pickles. 

The goal was to have tasty, crunchy pickles that were easy to make. By making them myself I get to control the ingredients and be sure there aren’t any hidden nightshades. 

Plus, it’s not like you can buy nightshade-free spicy pickles in the grocery store!

Here’s how to make three kinds of quick pickles, all nightshade-free… 

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A summery orange flatlay. A notebook has text reading, "Happiness in the Heat."

Happiness in the Heat

I have to be honest: summer is my least favorite season.

And it’s mostly because of the heat.

A screenshot of a ten-day weather forecast. Average lows are about 70F and average highs are about 90F.
For the international folks, these are lows of about 21C and highs of about 32C.

I’m really not a 90-degrees-outside kind of person.

But summer comes every year, and part of mindfulness is learning to accept what you can’t change. 

So I’m trying to find happiness in the heat. The silver lining of the it’s-so-hot-my-brain-is-melting cloud.

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A platter of American flag-themed cookies. One reads, "Freedom From Stuff."

Freedom From Stuff

It’s Independence Day, where Americans across the country go nuts celebrating our independence from Britain.

We might be independent from Britain, but we sure aren’t independent from our stuff.

Our homes are getting bigger (but are housing fewer people per unit), our consumer debt is rising, and almost 10% of us use our hard-earned money to pay for storage for our extra stuff.

Just in my own neighborhood, a self-storage company recently bought a big plot of land that had previously held six different stores — so they could build another storage building catty-corner to their current one. 

And not only is all this stuff costing us money — it’s also harming the environment. It takes a lot of resources to harvest, refine, make, package, ship, sell, and store the latest and greatest thing.

So this Independence Day, let’s talk about freedom from stuff.

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Many skeins of yarn surrounding text reading, "I Tried Twenty DK Yarns so You Don't Have To."

I Tried Twenty DK Yarns so You Don’t Have To

It’s always so hard to know what yarn’s the best for any given project, especially if you’re buying online. 

Which I am, right now, because my local yarn shop is moving stores and therefore is closed for the move. (Yay for them, but boo, no yarn!)

I’ve seen the LoveCrafts store around on Pinterest before, so I figured I’d give them a shot and order some yarn.

Twenty skeins, to be exact.

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Two loaves of banana bread, one with chocolate chips on top. White text reads, "Use-It-Up Banana Bread."

Use-It-Up Banana Bread

My dad loves banana bread, but honestly I was never much of a fan until this loaf of “Use-It-Up” banana bread.

It’s sweet, moist, and flavorful, with spices that help accentuate its banana flavor.

This is a combination-adaptation of Bread Dad’s two-banana bread recipe and the old family banana bread recipe, which hails from parts unknown. (Though there’s a pretty good chance it comes from the back of a box — turns out a lot of our “old family recipes” secretly do!)

It’s called “use-it-up” banana bread because it’s flexible — only have two small bananas and one egg, like I did the first time I made it? No problem. Got a bunch of nuts in the pantry on the verge of going off? Throw them in! Want it vegan? Easy to do. 

Use what you’ve got, and dump in whatever needs to be used up. I promise it’ll be delicious.

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A very, very flat loaf of cake, about 2" tall. White text reads, "Leaving Out the Baking Powder."

Leaving Out the Baking Powder

Recently I tried a new recipe for a loaf cake! Orange zest, fruits, brown sugar, and chocolate — yum. 

…Except I realized about 30 minutes into baking it that the recipe used self-rising flour and I’d used all-purpose. 

So there’s no leavening agent. AKA, nothing to make it rise, at all.

Whoops. 

When I went online to see how badly I’d goofed, most of the websites talked about what you could use to substitute baking powder, not what happens when you don’t use any leavening agent at all. 

(I did find a couple cool pages — one where the baker made 12 loaves of banana bread with different baking mistakes, and one with ideas on how to salvage common bad cake outcomes — but neither was specific to my issue.)

So: here’s what happened when I left baking powder out.

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