Peanut Butter Fritos: the Sister Wives Diet

Janelle's Peanut Butter Fritos

Janelle's Peanut Butter Fritos

INGREDIENTS

1	cup corn syrup, like Karo Syrup
1	cup white sugar
1	cup peanut butter
1	large bag Fritos scoops

PREPARATION:

1. Spread fritos out on a big jelly roll pan turning them so most of the scoop sides are up.
2. In a sauce pan combine corn syrup and sugar and stir gently.
3. Cook only until little bubbles begin to form. Do not cook too long or it will get too hard when it cools.
4. Remove from heat and mix in peanut butter until it melts. Pour over chips on pan. Good to eat immediately. Sometimes we melt chocolate chips and drizzle over the top.

Meri's Soda Cracker Surprise Toffee

Meri's Soda Cracker Surprise Toffee

INGREDIENTS

saltine crackers
1	cup butter
1	cup sugar
1	package chocolate chips
1	cup finely chopped walnuts

PREPARATION:

1. Line jelly roll pan with foil and spray with pan spray. Place saltine crackers close together covering entire pan.
2. Bring butter and sugar to boil for 2-1/2 minutes, pour over crackers.
3. Bake at 400 for 5 minutes. Pour chocolate chips on top, spreading as they melt. Sprinkle with chopped nuts.

Meri's Caramel Corn

Meri's Caramel Corn

INGREDIENTS

1	cube butter
1	pound brown sugar (2 3/8 cup)
1	cup white corn syrup INGREDIENT NOTE"
1	Eagle® brand condensed milk
1	teaspoon vanilla
3	gallons popped corn

PREPARATION:

1. Cook butter, brown sugar and white corn syrup in a double boiler. Test periodically by dropping a small amount of batter into cold water. If batter can be formed into a firm ball in the cold water, it is finished cooking.
2. Add condensed milk and vanilla. Boil and pour over popped corn.

Ohhhhhh. . . kay. We might just be on to something here, the secret key as to why the four wives (oh, three: one of them is pregnant and usually thin anyway) have been having a teensy bit of trouble losing weight on Sister Wives.

Don't tell me I'm obsessed with Sister Wives, because I already know. I watch them as you'd watch a train wreck staged for public amusement. Most of you will know that this is a "reality" show which follows the adventures and peccadilloes of a fundamentalist Mormon family in a "plural" (polygamous) marriage. They have about a zillion kids and lots of money from unknown sources, which is why they could afford a massive house in Utah before the proverbial shit hit the fan.


The patriarch, a sort of middle-aged Beach Boy named Kody, is the only rooster in a henhouse initially made up of three wives: but soft! Do I see a fourth wife on the horizon, a much younger, much thinner wife, a rather submissive wife who cries at the drop of a hat?


A soon-to-be-pregnant wife?


Hurricane Robyn was nothing to what happened next. In one of many "duh" moments, the family was astounded to learn that authorities were doing an "investigation" of the family on the grounds that they were breaking the law. Then, oh boy, it was getting-out-of-Dodge time.

Though it seems to me highly unlikely that Kody would have been thrown in jail for something that is widely practiced in Utah (he was more likely being punished and held up for ridicule for appearing on television), he dragged his family out of their relative security and stability all the way to Las Vegas, which seems like the worst possible choice for so-called devout Mormons who won't even let their daughters wear tank tops to school.


The big thing now - there's always a big thing - is that the clan needs a source of income to pay for all the furniture-buying jags they're going on. On one episode they said they were going into real estate, but that rather vague plan seems to have been dropped in favour of something way more hip: opening their own gym.

The gals have been making an attempt to lose weight and get in shape. Though the cameras played this down at first, it's obvious all of them except Robyn are seriously obese, well over 200 pounds.
Janelle easily qualifies as morbidly obese.


It's funny to watch them working out with a hunky male trainer for two months, then getting on the scale and being puzzled to see that they've only lost 2 or 3 pounds. When I looked up the Sister Wives recipe book, the mystery was revealed. Though the examples posted here are, I guess, meant for 20 people, a pound of sugar in a single recipe seems extreme. Even main dishes are heavily based on refined carbohydrates, with not much mention of fruits or vegetables. I didn't have space enough for the Mock Tapioca (and surely tapioca itself is "mock" enough), made mostly of Cream of Wheat. I've always thought of that as a post-op food, sort of like the lime jello they give you the day after surgery.

It amazes me that five adults responsible for a huge gaggle of kids can be so irresonsible as to think they can support themselves with this kind of venture. It just doesn't make sense. All the wives seem stressed, with Christine, the supposedly level-headed one, "confessing" that she had been on antidepressants, hastily adding that she was "half off them", to be warmly applauded by Janelle (and do not get me started on "friends" encouraging you to go off your medication! Only your doctor knows for sure.)


Meri is cracking up, obviously, and headed for something pretty dire. Janelle hides behind obesity and blandness, her eyes disturbingly blank. Robyn, well. . .Robyn has already had her baby in "real time", little Solomon Brown (a worse name even than Truely, the name of that bald-headed baby who still looks like a space alien after 18 months).

The more the Meri-er, I suppose, until the money runs out.  But with TLC footing the bill, maybe that won't happen. So Solomon may have a little brother or sister by-and-by, springing from Kody's hyperactive Latter-Day loins.

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm