Kellogg's Rice Krispies: Snap, Crackle and Gag

It's not as if I don't like Rice Krispies. 

I do.

There's not a box in my cupboard, mind you, but once in a while, when I'm at one of those hotel/motel dealies that come with breakfast, and Rice Krispies are an option, I'm not above pouring some milk into the box and leaning my ear in to hear the sweet sounds of snap, crackle and pop. As an aural remembrance of things past, it's almost as good as holding a conch shell up to your ear and listening to the ocean.

And my mother made a very tasty Rice Krispies-based cookie that involved dates (and walnuts?). They were quite good, and if my thinking that my sister Trish resurrected this recipe within the last few years is a false memory, well, it's not too late for Trish to dig up the recipe and make us some.

Admittedly, I'm not partial to the classic Rice Krispies Treats made with the cereal and Marshmallow Fluff. I think they're more suitable for construction projects than they are for eating. But to each their own. 

I would, however, eat nothing but those yucky non-treats for the rest of my life before I'd snack down on one of these foul little items:

No, your eyes are not deceiving you. 

That's a Rice Krispies Treat combined with bits of hot dog and smeared with mustard, ketchup, and relish. 

Yuck, yuck, a thousand times yuck.

As with Rice Krispies, it's not as if I don't like hot dogs. I do. They absolutely have their times and places. And those times and places are a) when I'm at Fenway Park for a ballgame, b) when I'm walking along the Esplanade on the Charles River and the little snack bar is open for business, and c) at a cookout. Alas, Fenway is closed to us fans, and the snack bar isn't opening this season, and there are no cookouts on my horizon, so this may will be a hot dog-less year for me. 

But while I always ate hot dogs, even as a kid I was violently opposed to hot dogs sliced up and added to anything. Hot dogs and beans churned my stomach. Sometimes my mother cut up a couple of hot dogs and threw them into the slime that was and is Franco-American Spaghetti. The horror!

For a German girl married to an Irishman, my mother made excellent spaghetti sauce, but sometimes for lunch she opened up a can of Franco-American for us. It bore absolutely no resemblance to real spaghetti, but I loved it. I didn't mind the kind with the mini-meatballs added in, but when my mother decided to up the protein ante and slice in a couple of hot dogs... One roiling kid stomach, coming right up!

No doubt the Rice Krispies Treat hot dogged up is the product of pandemic boredom. Still, this one's a monstrosity too far.

I will forgive my sister Trish for sending this one - which she saw on Twitter, but which came via the Nerdist (ur source: the Vulgar Chef) - if she promises to make some of those Rice Krispies date cookies. What they lack in snap, crackle and pop they more than make up for in yum.