No, not the board game. I’m talking about the party mix! If you’ve never heard of Scrabble, you are seriously missing out. It’s like Chex Mix on steroids. If you make this, you’ll never go back to that bland stuff in a bag again. (Now, I’m not knocking ALL Chex Mix– I still love me some of the Cheddar kind, but the boring plain variety in the blue bag? No thanks.)

This recipe is pretty synonymous with Christmas for me… maybe because that’s when we usually make it. Probably because Christmas is when there are a lot of unsuspecting people to foist goodies off on. You’ll want those people around because this recipe makes a LOT of party mix, and it’s thoroughly addicting. After you make it through an entire batch by yourself, you’ll be begging people to take it off your hands so that you can still fit into your fat pants next week. This would be great to make for any party, like say, the Superbowl? So you have something to do with your hands between all the excitement (read: the new and funny commercials!).

For a change in scenery, you’ll notice different counter tops and hands. I made this at my mother’s house, and I confess, for a whole lot of the process, SHE made it while I took pictures and offered a running commentary. I’ll also say, it feels a whole lot more absurd to take pictures of every step of the process when someone else is waiting for you. But moving on! This recipe is time intensive enough as it is without you having to listen to me blathering on.

You’ll need: Rice chex, corn chex, wheat chex, cheerios, pretzels, mixed nuts, canola oil, seasoned salt, garlic powder, worcestershire sauce and optional: rye chips.

You’ll also need two large roaster pans.

You’ll start by splitting your cereal up between the two pans. We started with the corn chex

Followed by the wheat chex…

And the rice chex. It’s not terribly important how much goes in each pan, just try and put about half the box in each pan.

Split the cheerios between the two pans.

Same with the pretzels.

There was only 1 bag in the ingredients picture, but I had two bags of rye chips, so we poured one bag in each pan.

Finally, open all of your nuts, and pour them on top of everything else. A word to the wise: you can not put too many nuts in this. It’s impossible to do. Of course, the nuts is exactly what makes this kind of expensive to make. We used six cans of nuts, and it seemed like a lot at the time, but we were still picking through the mix wishing there were more. Don’t SKIMP!

Get your hands in there and get everything mixed up so we can move on to the seasoning.

This is where I apologize. My mother does not believe in measurements. I’m pretty sure it’s just to torture me. Anyways, pour some oil in a bowl. My mom used a canola blend.

Shake in some season salt. Just some. Mom says, “I don’t measure…”

Add some garlic powder. Mom says, “I don’t measure…”

Pour in some Worcestershire sauce. Mom says, well, you know. Give it a good stir.

Ladle the seasoning mixture over the cereal mix.

Keep ladling until you’ve used up your bowl of seasoned oil.

Give everything a good stir

And put the pans in the oven at 255 for 15 minutes.

After 15 minutes, you’ll take the pans out of the oven, and stir up the scrabble mix.

Mix up another batch of seasoning to pour over the cereal.

Give it a quick stir, and then the pans go back in the oven for another 15 minutes. We ended up adding a third round of seasoning to the Scrabble because there was still a lot of cereal that didn’t seem to have a coating on them. When you’re satisfied with the seasoning, you’re going to continue baking the mix in 15 minute increments. Keep in mind that the flavor will be stronger as it cooks.

Every 15 minutes or so, take the scrabble out of the oven and give it a quick stir. It will be done when it no longer looks shiny. The whole process takes a couple of hours, but trust me when I tell you that it’s worth it!

When it cools, portion it out into air tight containers to keep it fresh, and enjoy!! I used a few large Ziploc containers, and a couple plastic bags. Total yield… I had 2 large round ziploc containers, 2 large rectangular ziploc containers and 2 gallon sized plastic bags. And that’s not including the large container I managed to dump on the kitchen floor before I got the lid on it. Yes, I did think about crying.

Seriously. Look at this… I just want to crawl through the screen and eat that! Or make another batch, and I’ve already eaten enough Scrabble to hold me over for a year.