Scotcheroos

When I was growing up we'd spend most of our 4th of Julys camping on Camano Island. My dad's high school friend's parents owned property there and my dad and all their friends had been camping there since they met. This is where I first remember having scotcheroos: peanut butter Rice Krispies treats topped with a melted chocolate-butterscotch chips mixture. I even copied the recipe from what the mom had written down - which ended up being unnecessary as it's pretty much from Rice Krispies itself.

I'd been craving them for a while so I decided to make them for Rowan Fae's annual St. Patrick's Day weekend road trip - except due to scheduling conflicts, we only had two shows on Sunday night. Oh well - these last a while so more for me!

Caramel-Filled Pretzel Bites

When it comes to non-staple ingredients in my pantry, I try to not have extras sitting around for a while (with the exception of coconut - since only Mom and Nonni like it, I just leave the bag alone). So a while back I started looking for a recipe to use up the caramel squares I still had from previous recipes. I eventually decided on Caramel-Filled Pretzel Bites from Amy's Healthy Baking. Which sat saved on my bookmarks bar for 6 months or so as I tried to figure out when to make them.

Enter St. Patrick's Day. While trying to decide what snacks I wanted to make for spending half the day in the car, I had a lightbulb moment: why not make the pretzel bites? So I did.

St. Patrick's Day Double Post: Irish Shortbread and Mint Sugar Cookies

I didn't just make pretzel bites for our day of St. Patrick's Day performances; I also made Irish shortbread. Amber had asked me one day if I knew how to make Irish shortbread and I said no but I could most likely follow a recipe for it. This basically got the idea in my head that I had to make it for St. Patrick's Day.

My original plan was that I would make a batch then divide it in two: half for performance day and half for work. But I ended up only making about 8 so I figured I'd make something else for work. So I turned to my cookbooks for a sugar cookie recipe (since I wanted to give my hard copies some attention). At the end of performance day, though, I had almost the same amount of shortbread that I'd started with. So I still made the sugar cookies and took both to work on St. Patrick's Day.

Homemade Pretzel Bites

Last year, after an almost 8-year absence, I finally returned to Irish dance. Coincidentally, it was with the same school that I had been with for my first 7 years; it was just under a different director/teacher as my former teacher/the school's founder had somewhat retired from Irish dance (Amber, the new director/teacher, knows Anne through homeschooling so that's how that happened). The day I returned was St. Patrick's Day, a Thursday, with 3 performances.

Apparently, this was a relaxing day compared to their usual (a lot had changed since I left, apparently; I only remember doing a recital when we went through Kent Parks & Rec). This year was more the norm: a weekend full of performances.

To prepare for a day of driving around from performance to performance, I decided to make some snacks for the road (this was also because I didn't know if/when we would eat lunch nor when we would eat dinner). Because of my continuous pretzel kick, I decided on pretzel bites. I even searched for a spider strainer to easily remove the bites from their boiling water bath as I knew the wooden slotted spoon I had wouldn't be effective (finally found one at Bed Bath & Beyond).