Recently, my six children under the age of ten told me that they wanted Pop-Tarts. Because I’m a trad wife, I’ve raised my kids in a very classical manner and have no idea how they’d even heard of Pop-Tarts! But I decided I would give them my traditional spin on the treat.
I started with the first step of any traditional recipe: screaming. The sun had just gone down and, like any modest housewife, I’ve taught my children to fear that the sun, once gone, may never return. This is the only way to keep your food truly organic. And it’s an easy way to let the kiddos be part of the process. All my children love to scream! Screaming is one of their favorite classes when I homeschool them in our School Basin.
We prepare to cook not by washing our hands with soap and water. Germs are a modern fad—in our household, we don’t believe in anything smaller than an acorn. And we keep many acorns around for reference, which is why I crafted an acorn bowl from the skull of a coyote that I shot with a cannon. But we are very sanitary. We open all the windows and get the bad air out of the kitchen and into the nearby Alo Yoga store where it belongs. Then my little ones clean their hands by dunking them into hot sand and rinsing them with children’s wine.
By this point in the Pop-Tarts process, the kids were so excited to start the recipe. Though a couple had to sit this one out: baby Mercy has rubella and baby Rubella has “grocer’s itch.”
I’d decided to make a fruit filling for the Pop-Tarts, so I needed to plan ahead. Most fruits are genetically modified—a huge no-no—so my kids and I just dug through whatever animal dung was nearby to see if there were any usable berries. Like the pillows I embroider with my own hair say: “If it didn’t kill a bear, it’s good for you!”
To make the crusts for the tarts, I first publicly claimed that all of my female neighbors within a thirty-mile radius were witches. I wouldn’t want any of them to blight my wheat crops. Plus, if they were to tempt my husband, he would not be able to provide my family with a home or finely aged children’s wine.
The dough needs to rise after kneading, so I returned the children to the School Basin for their lessons. We go through all the standards: Biblical Penmanship, Apron Humility, Faith-Based Math, Husband-Washing. Little Scarlet Fever is a prodigy at Stove.
I needed some dairy for the glaze. You are free to use whatever milk you prefer, though I find the milk of the oldest animals on earth to be the most traditional. The Greenland shark has been around for about 2.34 million years, so I really like that one. It’s hard to find a shark’s nipples but, like my other hair-embroidered pillows say: “If you squeeze any animal hard enough, you’ll get milk out of somewhere!”
We used an open flame in the back yard to bake the Pop-Tarts. Unfortunately, a neighbor from a few miles off saw the flame and assumed I set it with witchcraft. I like her, but now I have to counter-accuse her of witchcraft. My daughters helped—they love the part where they get to say that they saw her taking part in the He-Goat’s Sabbath!
I always clean up as I go, making liberal use of my all-purpose spray. The spray gets used for everything: cleaning, hydration, disciplining the children. I do not know what is in the spray. My great-great-great-grandmother speaks of the spray with reverence in her diaries. I fear that the spray is not God’s spray but the Devil’s spray—my own mother sprayed me in the face with it when I was fourteen and never again have I been able to see the color blue.
And there you go! A mere sixteen years after they asked, my kiddos’ homemade, traditional Pop-Tarts were ready. They loved them! My eldest even shared one with his daughter!
