Food, cooking, eating, and me

Everybody knows (they do, don’t they?) that Rice Crispies have barley malt flavoring in them, which makes them non-gluten-free. Erewhon makes a crispy brown rice cereal that is gluten-free. Last night the draw was too great. I read the recipe for crispy rice treats on the back of that bag of gluten-free marshmallows I bought at Walmart, tore it open, and started measuring.

I don’t use margarine (IMO, margarine is not a food, but a product of a chemical factory) and I’m trying to avoid butter as much as possible, so I substituted coconut oil (LouAna brand, also a Walmart product) for the butter in the recipe. I greased one of those flexible silicone baking pans with coconut oil. In fact, the box had exactly the amount of rice cereal called for by the recipe after the single bowl I had eaten, so I didn’t even need to measure. I melted the coconut oil with the marshmallows in a pan, stirring until it was a goo, added the crisp rice cereal, mixed, and packed half in the pan. A few chocolate chips, and I packed the rest on top.

Later, when the pan was cool, I turned it out on a cutting board and sawed it into squares with a bread knife. It made far more crispy rice/marshmallow squares than I needed – 16 giant squares, but food for the soul.