Creative Challenge Monday

So this week's theme at The Debutante Ball is creativity, and yesterday I posted that much as I adore writing, it's really my only creative outlet — I don't cook, or play an instrument, or craft — and maybe I should expand my horizons.  I proudly declared that I'd make this week Creative Challenge Week, wherein I do one uniquely creative non-writing thing every day.

Yesterday I told my daughter we'd cook.  And by "cook," I meant eschew all recipes, toss ingredients together as we saw fit, and see what happened.

She was ecstatic, especially when I told her chocolate and tasting would be involved.

I imagined us making something like tweaked-out chocolate Rice Krispie Treats — marshmallows, chocolate, and butter melted in a saucepan, mixed with cereal plus whatever deliciousness we could find to toss in.  I imagined us forming the finished product into whimsically charming shapes and figures.

The actual end result… I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Okay, so it might not look like much, but it's actually a delicately balanced combination of everything even remotely delicious we had in the house: marshmallows, chocolate chips, brown sugar, cashews, cheerios, maple nut oatmeal, crushed graham crackers, whipped cream, prunes, strawberries, milk, sherbet, syrup, honey, and frozen yogurt, all blended into a viscous goo with the cloying scent of maple tinged with burning barely-ever-used blender gears.

Making it was spectacular.  Miss M couldn't believe we were just tossing in anything, with no regard for the right way to use it, or whether it would even be edible in the end.  Who cared if the microwaved marshmallow/chocolate/brown sugar blob had hardened into a petrified turd in the middle of our otherwise creamy glop?  It added crunch!

I have to admit, I still had big dreams for our creation.  I had visions of Miss M and I as Zell and Ingrid in Alicia Bessette's amazing book, Simply From Scratch, bumping into greatness through the most bizarre trial and error.  I imagined we'd spread the concoction onto a cookie sheet and bake it into a wild new energy snack.  Cliff Bar wouldn't know what hit it.

Then I asked Miss M what we should call our invention, and she chose "Uranus."

Miss M loves Uranus, and has ever since I explained why it was the funniest planet in the solar system.  She and I love reading about Uranus.  We especially love reading sentences like, "Uranus is a Gas Giant."

So once it was Uranus, it was all over.  The next half hour was just the two of us going back and forth:

"Ewww, Uranus smells funny."

"Why is Uranus so lumpy?"

"I'm going to take a huge bite of Uranus!"

In the end (of course), Miss M determined Uranus is a dish best served cold, so we dumped it into a cup and sat it in the freezer.  Here's what it looks like eight hours later:

My conclusion?

Uranus might not be tasty, but playing with it can bring hours of fun!

So what do you think… what creative venture should Miss M and I take on tomorrow?