Recipes, Dad-Style (or, When I Take This Blog to the Next Level)

Mommy bloggers always seem to have a lot of recipes on their site, so I thought I should fall into line with some of my own - Dad-style! In an effort to maintain the copyright authority on these recipes, I would like to formally ask all who read this to please NOT publish them and pretend that you made them up. I'm absolutely certain you will want to and the temptation will be great once you read the recipes to these culinary masterpieces, but, please. Please do not steal them.

Both of these recipes highlight peanut butter as the primary ingredient. Relatively cheap, good source of protein, and more healthy if you buy the health-food store variety (which we don't) or make your own (not happening in our house). The kids sort of like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but that is not the best way to utilize such an amazing ingredient (and usually they don't like them together).

Some of the kids like to just eat a spoonful of PB if they are hungry. A healthy plan would be to eat it with celery or bananas. I mostly like it with chocolate wrapped around it in the shape of a little cup and inserted into bright orange packaging. My wife has not yet learned how to make them like this. (Sigh!)

Here are two of the most popular snack ideas in our house involving peanut butter:

Peanut Butter Balls - a great snack for the kid who never seems to eat enough protein at meals and so you want to trick them into eating some protein later on in the day.

Put a glob of peanut butter in a bowl. Mix in some maple syrup, honey, or corn syrup. Add some powdered milk. It should be easy to stir at this point (starting to form together), but still too sticky to form into balls. So, you add a little powdered sugar to help the process along. These should feel like soft play-doh as the end product, but trust me, they taste much better.

NOTE: At first, the Wife liked to add in wheat germ (I know, what the wha...?!). Then, one day she ran out and so made a batch without it. It was such a hit with everyone that they made her promise never to add wheat germ in it ever again. So, she didn't. (Good wife! And this is where I pat her.)

Peanut Butter and Marshmallow Toast

We've tried to think of a wittier name than this, but apparently we're not that creative. Once you read the recipe, maybe you can help us out with that in the comments or through facebook or twitter (do you like how I did those shameless plugs? Seamless, eh?)

Take a piece of bread (it can be white, wheat, gluten-free, homemade, whatever). Spread your choice of peanut butter on it. Sprinkle marshmallows on top. Broil until marshmallows are warm and toasty. Eat.

NOTE #1: Little marshmallows are preferable to big ones. However, if you only have the big ones, just split them in half or thirds and use those. Marshmallow cream or fluff only works if you are making a regular sandwich, or what's commonly known as the "Fluffernutter." That is very different from the "Peanut Butter and Marshmallow Toast" but I guess just as good, in a different way.

NOTE #2: My wife has also made these with saltines instead of bread. That's how she grew up eating them. I think the bread way is better. 

And if you don't have any of those ingredients, just grab a bag of chips with a coke.