Strawberries, peanut butter, and lots of Cheerios!

Let me start off with letting everyone one know that I am a NON COOK! The kitchen is a foreign world and I am a weary traveler. Hubby does all the main dinner cooking in our home. Yes, I know, I am a very lucky girl. Now don’t think I am totally helpless. I can make a rocking grilled cheese, waffles, omelets, and about five dinner meals. These I can completely cook on my own and are presentable to guests. I also make the assortment of cookies and cakes for the kids, but I confess they are semi home made. That is my repertoire, my comfort zone, and I stick to it.

So with that information in mind…..I looked into the fridge this morning to find an excess amount of strawberries. I mean, three large cartons on the verge of going bad. I then noticed we have two peanut butter jars that are open and I purchased the plain Cheerios versus the honey nut. ( You would have thought the world was ending. )

What to do?

I don’t know what came over me, but I decided to make a pie. With the strawberries of course.

My neighbor is an excellent cook. A “from scratch” kind of girl. A quick call to her and I had an easy to make strawberry pie recipe in my hands and lots of encouragement. I got a little nervous about making the entire pie from scratch, so I decided to cheat a little….Just a little.

Recipe in hand and kids in tow, I head off to the grocery store. The kids are in total awe, wondering what could have possible gotten over mommy.

I head straight to the baking section and select a pre made pie crust. What?… I swear I will do all the rest from scratch.

I quickly find the supplies that I need except for one.

I honesty never have heard of this product and was stumped were to find it in the store. I couldn’t find it in the baking section. I then headed to the salad dressing/oil section. Nope, not there. Ms. A then announced “It’s syrup, so would it be where the pancake stuff is?”

I was about to shush her so that I could think…hmmm, she might be on to something. Oh, let’s give it a try.

She was right…it was right next to the maple syrup.

Back at home we lay out the supplies and start the experiment. Ms. A dancing around the kitchen and Mr. D snacking on some cheese puffs watching us like a car wreck is about to happen. I finally made it to the stove to cook down the ingredients and had to ban Ms. A from the kitchen as she kept trying to spin and jump near the stove.

Argh….

I managed to brown up the crust with some egg whites. Fancy, yes?! I then dumped everything into the crust. Maybe dump was not the correct term, but that’s how I did it. Then in the fidge it goes.

Since I am in the kitchen, we might as well keep going.

Ms. A got on the iPad and googled “treat with Cheerios”. Voila! A modified rice crispy treat recipe. But what to do with all this peanut butter? Another google search and a recipe for rice crispy treats with peanut butter. Sounds good, so we give it a try.

They smell great and they get a thumbs up from Ms. A.

Lets hope the pie is as successful!