ugly desserts and school lunch confessions

So a couple of weeks ago, I decided that I needed to do the mommy thing and make some homemade goodies for LO's preschool class for Thanksgiving. What possessed me to try out a new recipe I can't explain, but I did. And I'm pretty much so scarred by the outcome that I probably won't try this recipe again!

***Semi-related long nostalgia moment sidebar alert***: When I was a little girl, probably about second grade or so, my mom started packing our school lunches - a sandwich, a "fun size" bag of chips, a drink, and maybe a mini candy bar or Little Debbie snackcake. Specifically, I remember the peanut butter sandwiches - sometimes PB&J, and sometimes peanut butter and syrup. Now, I don't know if this was a concoction exclusive to rural kids or if it was something that other Okies enjoyed, but I know my hubby sure thinks it's odd... and to this day I get an occasional craving for PB&S - not in a sandwich, but just kind of stirred up in a little bowl - except I have switched out the Griffin Waffle Syrup for pure maple. Anyway.

The point is, my mom used to make these sandwiches on white bread - peanut butter on one side, and jelly on the other. The PB&S was made by mixing the two namesake ingredients and slathering it onto the bread.

I guess my mom used a lot of syrup! By the time I would open my lunch bag, the syrup or jelly had completely soaked through the bread. I was horrified! This went on for quite some time. At some point, for reasons even I cannot explain, I got the brilliant idea of bringing the uneatened sandwich home and hiding it in the piano bench. What a genius scheme! I'm pretty sure I thought that those sandwiches would either be sucked into some Chronicles of Narnia-like secret portal or I completely overestimated the bench's capacity for sandwiches, because for some reason, this plan made complete sense to me. (As opposed to tossing the sandwiches in the cafeteria trash can.)

I'm not sure how long I did this - obviously not very long... since, you know, it was a piano bench (that was also already partially filled with sheet music and piano lesson books) and not a fifty-five-gallon drum - but one day I did the drill... sneaked back into my bedroom and lifted up that bench lid... and there were no more sandwiches in there. After an "Oh, crap!" epiphany, I whipped around to see my mom standing in the doorway with her arms crossed. There was a brief moment of silence, and then she spoke. "What do you think I ought to do?"

I burst into the most convincing fake crying jag I could muster. "I don't know. Spank me?"

I didn't get spanked that day, but I remember she gave me a speech that entailed something about the risk of ants in the house and whatnot. Clemency! I suppose that's the net result of having done something so mind-boggling that your parents are too amused flabbergasted to punish you.

So, did my PB&J sandwiches get better? I honestly can't remember. But that experience has completely shaped the way I make LO's sandwiches for school. Seriously. PB on both pieces of bread, jelly in the middle. Problem solved! /end Memory Lane detour

OK, so the point is that if I cared so much about how LO would deal with sub-par lunches, how on earth could I have possibly felt OK with sending these to school with him:

These look nothing short of mini-BARF PIES. The color! The white specks! The lumpy appearance! The "rustic-looking" crusts! My only saving grace is that at this age, kids aren't trying to impress anyone with aesthetics. I have a few more years yet before I'm dealing with that. The taste, though? Only decent.

In theory, these are precious. (Check out Bakerella's recipe and photos.) They're supposed to look like itty-bitty pumpkin pies!! I think my problem was, I didn't let the cream cheese soften enough; I should've creamed the cream cheese and sugar together first; because I didn't do the first two things, I over-beat the filling, which caused the eggs to stiffen (boo!) but did nothing to get rid of the white cream-cheese specks. But anyway. Barf pies.

Frankly, I don't know how to do a clever wrap-up to this post, so we'll just leave it at that.

Barf pies. Perhaps next year I'll make these for Halloween.