A Fitting Close

As things wind down over here at Burnstopia, in preparation to a permanent move to The New Digs, I thought that this post, from Smitten Kitchen was, perhaps, the most perfect union of what we're all about.

Regardless of what we call ourselves, regardless of the clothes we wear, the words we speak or those left unsaid, please know that Pop Tarts shall live forever.

And how, HOW have I lived this long and NOT realized that you can MAKE Pop Tarts from scratch?

The idea has me a little teary just thinking of it.  I know what I'm doing this weekend!


And for your Pop Tart flashback:

I was 16.  A Great and Mighty Fourth Year at my church's annual Summer torture event known simply as Girls Camp.  Every summer we girls, from 12 to 18 would gather together for a week in the wilderness.  (At the risk of sounding OLD I would like to say that back in my day it was HARD!)  We actually had to rough it!  There were showers and flush toilets but you had to hoof it to the center of the camp.  By in large it was cooking over a fire and putting up with the endless supply of melodramatic teen-aged girls that was the real trial.  The wilderness doesn't scare me, but group together 50 girls under the age of 18 with their attendant hormones and socio-political issues and it's rife with tension.  I seriously contemplated hitchhiking out of there for the first 3 years.  But then!  Then!  I was a FOURTH YEAR. 

Traditionally Fourth years Plan Camp.  They choose the theme, the structure, the activities and classes and, most importantly, they conduct INSPECTION.  See, every morning BEFORE the flag ceremony (the flag is hoisted, we say the pledge of allegiance, someone usually has to retrieve their bra etc.), we would make the rounds as a GROUP.  And let me tell you 16 Fourth Years all sleep deprived and mean is a fearsome thing to behold.  Anyway, we poked around the camp sites making sure that things were tidy and that fires were put out appropriately etc etc.  It sounds quite boring, but there were always awards given out at the end of Camp and Cleanest Camp Site was one of them so we wielded our own sort of power. 

Anyway, back to why my Fourth Year was so magical.  My Dad was supposed to go with me on the Fourth Year hike--come to think of it, that sort of requires its own post, perhaps another time--anyway, he developed bursitis in his knee so he couldn't go but he still felt bad about it.  And being a mean and selfish 16 year old, I let him.  I also let him shower me with things that we NEVER would have normally had access to--like Pop Tarts.  My Dad took me to Costco with him to buy food to help me survive camp (there was NO WAY I was eating the nasty stuff they tried to foist on me the previous 3 years), so he bought me a giant box of Pop Tarts and a box of Teddy Grahams and some granola bars etc.  I had a nice tidy box of prepackaged (terrible, cancer and diabetes causing) foods that I gleefully consumed whilst my envious Fourth Year colleagues looked on.  Never had Pop Tarts tasted so sweet.  It still sucked that my Dad couldn't go on the hike with me (that was a whole different kind of torture) but the Pop Tarts made actual camp much more bearable.

And so this weekend, in a fit of nostalgia, I'm going to make up a batch of homemade Pop Tarts.  Being more conscientious of my health I shall probably substitute part wheat flour and I'll use jam and nutella for fillings and no glaze whatsoever, but it shall still prove a charming blast back to the past.  I may just call my Dad as well.