Morning Buzz Rice Krispies Treats -- The Friday Payoff After a Week of Solo Dad Duty

Lisa is on a stretch of nights this week — three twelves in a row at Denver Health — and that means I am on solo dad duty in the mornings. Four kids, five backpacks, seven activities between them, one truck. The orchestration of getting four Medina children out the door before seven-thirty is the kind of operation that football coaches train for. There is a script. There are formations. There is a point in the operation where someone is going to lose a shoe and you have to know which child is most likely to lose which shoe and where they last had it.

The fuel for this operation is the breakfast burrito. I want to be clear about something here, because this is a hill I will die on along with the cumin hill: a breakfast burrito is not a pile of stuff in a tortilla. A breakfast burrito is a discipline. It has structure. It has rules. The eggs have to be soft scrambled with a little bit of butter, not those dry rubber pucks you get at chain restaurants. The potatoes have to be crisped on the outside and tender on the inside, which means you parboil them or you steam them first and then you crisp them in a hot skillet — you do not just throw raw potato cubes into a pan and call it breakfast. The chile, of course, is green. The cheese is sharp cheddar or jack, melted into the eggs while they are still in the pan. And the tortilla — the tortilla is the foundation. A bad tortilla ruins the whole exercise. I drive to the Mexican grocery on Federal twice a month and buy fresh tortillas, the kind that come from the place that makes them on site, and I keep them in the fridge wrapped in foil and I warm them on the comal before I assemble.

This week I made breakfast burritos at five-forty-five every morning. Diego eats two. Sofia eats half of one and saves the other half for lunch, which is a habit she developed in middle school and which I have stopped trying to talk her out of. Marco eats one and asks if he can have another. Elena eats one with extra cheese and no chile, which I tolerate because she is ten, and I have decided that the point at which you force chile on a child is a parenting decision I have not yet made. She will come around. They all come around. Diego came around at twelve. Sofia at eleven. Marco at nine. Elena is the holdout. Lisa was twenty-five. Some people just take longer.

Tuesday morning I dropped the twins at school and then drove Sofia to her cross-country practice — the high school team has voluntary winter conditioning two mornings a week and Sofia, who is a freshman in her first year on the high school team, is at every single one. She is going to be very good. She is already very good. I have watched a lot of athletes in my life and I know the look — the way she runs is efficient, almost boring, and what looks boring at fourteen is what wins races at eighteen. The other kids out there are flailing. Sofia is gliding. She is going to surprise people for years.

I dropped her off and she said, "Bye, Dad," and got out of the truck and ran toward the gym without looking back, because she is fourteen and that is the age at which fathers become slightly mortifying. I did not take it personally. I was the same at fourteen. The hard part of fatherhood at this stage is that the affection has to be backloaded — you give it now, you receive it later, and the gap in the middle is the part you have to ride out. Some dads do not ride it out well. They take the distance personally and they get short with the kid and they make the gap permanent. I have coached enough boys whose fathers did that. I am not going to be that.

Diego stayed late at school for film with the assistant coach. I picked him up at six. The drive home was twenty minutes and he was quiet. He gets quiet sometimes after film. I asked, "Anything I should know." He said, "I had a bad rep on a slant in October. I have been thinking about it." I said, "October was four months ago." He said, "I know." I said, "What did you take from it." He said, "I dropped my eyes." I said, "What is the fix." He said, "Eyes up through the catch." I said, "Then the rep is fixed." He said, "Yeah." Pause. "It still bugs me." I said, "It is supposed to. Bugs you, fixes you. That is the loop." He nodded. We pulled into the driveway. He got out and got his backpack. He said, "Thanks, Dad." That was it. That was the conversation. Some weeks the most important conversations of fatherhood are forty seconds long.

I made breakfast burritos again this morning. The twins fought over the last tortilla. I broke it in half. I told them they were fortunate to live in a house where breakfast burritos existed at all, and that there are children in the world who eat dry cereal in the morning, and they should be grateful. Marco said, "Dad, this speech is the same every Wednesday." I said, "Because you keep fighting over the last tortilla on Wednesdays." Elena laughed. We were out the door by seven-twenty-eight. Operation complete. Lisa is asleep upstairs because she got home at seven-forty. The house is quiet now. I am going to make myself a burrito with the last egg and go to the office.

Feed your people. Even on Wednesday. Especially on Wednesday.

By Friday the burrito operation has run its course, the twins have fought over the last tortilla for the last time that week, and I want to make something that does not require a comal or a parboiled potato. These Morning Buzz Rice Krispies Treats are what I put together on Friday afternoons when the house is quiet and Lisa is still asleep upstairs — something the kids find waiting for them after school, a little sweet, a little coffee-forward, the kind of thing that says the week is done and you survived it. Sofia takes one in her bag for conditioning. Diego eats two without asking. That tracks.

Morning Buzz Rice Krispies Treats

Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cook Time: 10 minutes | Total Time: 15 minutes + 20 minutes cooling | Servings: 12 bars

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, plus more for greasing
• 10 oz mini marshmallows (about 4 cups)
• 1 tablespoon instant espresso powder
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
• 6 cups Rice Krispies cereal
• 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips (optional, but recommended)

Instructions

1. Prep the pan. Grease a 9x13-inch baking dish generously with butter or nonstick spray and set aside.
2. Melt the butter. In a large heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium-low heat, melt the butter until it just begins to foam. Do not let it brown.
3. Add marshmallows and espresso. Add the marshmallows and espresso powder all at once. Stir constantly with a silicone spatula until the marshmallows are fully melted and the espresso is evenly incorporated, about 3 to 4 minutes. The mixture will turn a light caramel color.
4. Finish the base. Remove from heat. Stir in the vanilla extract and salt.
5. Fold in the cereal. Add the Rice Krispies all at once and fold quickly until every piece is coated. If using chocolate chips, fold them in now — they will partially melt and streak through, which is the right outcome.
6. Press into the pan. Transfer the mixture to the prepared baking dish. Using lightly buttered hands or a buttered offset spatula, press into an even layer. Press firmly enough to hold together but not so hard you crush the cereal — you want some air in the texture.
7. Cool and cut. Let the pan sit at room temperature uncovered for at least 20 minutes. Cut into 12 bars. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days, though they will not last that long.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 185 | Protein: 1g | Fat: 4g | Carbs: 36g | Fiber: 0g | Sodium: 125mg