If it aint broke ...

When I took Maggie to the doctor for her cough last week (the first pre-Christmas dr. visit), she wanted to get a treat afterward. Her treat of choice? A Panera bagel. And not a sinful, delicious bagel like their cinnamon crunch, but a plain bagel, sliced and not toasted. So to Panera we went, and we sat at the tall table closest to the fire -- Maggie's favorite place. While we were there, two ladies at the table next to us were talking loudly about their holiday baking, and one mentioned homemade chex mix.

Since that day, I couldn't stop thinking about homemade chex mix, so last Friday I made some. I had enough cereal, so I made both the original and the sweet kind. I love making the original stuff myself because I can use even more of certain spices to make it just the way I like it. And whenever I eat chex mix, my favorite is to get a piece of cereal that's been doused in the spice mixture. So what better to do than to make an entire batch of chex mix that consists only of cereal doused in spice mix?

You've heard of the phrase "if it aint broke, don't fix it"? Yeah, it applies here. I discovered that those peanuts, pretzels, and bagel chips are included in the recipe for a reason.

Don't get me wrong; my chex mix is good ... at least for the first three bites. After that, it sort of turns into an overpowering crunchy mouthfire. There's nothing to counteract the strong spicyness. I found myself eating two bites of original chex mix and one bite of sweet -- not that these are delicious in combination, necessarily, but I had to have something to break up the flavor of the original. In a sort of experiment -- not to mention a desperate need to get rid of it -- I set out both types for snacks on Christmas day; the sweet chex mix got wolfed down while a big bag of the spicy remains.

I wonder if birds like really spicy chex cereal?