Frazz by Jef Mallett for March 31, 2013

My mom always threw in a piece of bread, worked fine.

Please, please, please, let’s not forget that somebody isn’t baking enough cookies…

Time to get your Cookie Momster on!

but, isn’t sugar bad for you? how about eating an apple, instead of sugar?

How about taking the apple slice back out of the brown sugar all coated and putting it in your mouth?

This tip comes from the days when sugar was more expensive and many people lived far from the market but had fruit trees. Still, if you have apples in your pantry and you have to drive to the market for brown sugar, the apple might be an economical solution.

vacuum seal it

Or you can just stick in the microwave for a bit.

Cue Rolling Stones song.

Oh yes, indeed, I’ve heard of brown sugar cookies….

Some tips like this come from areas where apples are very cheap or free (during the season… although out of season, it used to be you couldn’t even get some stuff.) Lots of people around me have apple trees and there’s an old orchard not too far (walking distance) from me, as well. On the other hand, brown sugar, at least the stuff I get, is expensive. And since I’m using it to make apple pies, anyway, that’s just fine. This tip escaped out of the area it was intended for. And since common sense is far from common, it never occurs to some people NOT to do something, just because they read it in a book.

What I take from today’s strip is how Frazz stops what he’s doing to talk to a kid, like any other person. I grew up when kids were treated like second-class citizens by most adults, kinda like the “kids should be seen and not heard” mentality. Frazz is a great mentor; every school should have one.

half a slice of white bread works just as well

I agree, half a piece of bread works peachy.

Or, soak a piece of terra cotta in water and put that in with it to keep it soft, bonus is it’s reausable!!! (lived in the desert for awhile, 2 months or less to dry rock hard even in tupperware.).As for a quick softening? microwave it for a few seconds.

The soaked-terracotta method works great in semi-arid Denver, where it keeps our brown sugar soft for those occasions when we wake up and realize it’s high time we made some cookies!

So, in my Sunday paper, this strip had and extra panel at the the beginning – the girl’s Dad looking at his multipurpose electronic device and saying, “Why does my iPhone smell like brown sugar?” That put’s a bit of a different spin on things, no?