A recipe from the Calvin Prison Initiative

Ingredients

8 strawberries, 1.3-oz. Nutri-Grain™ bars

2 Scotts™ 2.2-oz. milk chocolate with almonds bars

16 ozs. Market Square™ vanilla wafers (awkward since they come in a 12-oz. box)

1 sleeve of Honey Maid™ graham crackers (there’s 3 sleeves per 14.4-oz. box)

4.5 ozs. Swiss Miss™ hot cocoa mix

2 pair of food-safe disposable gloves

3 microwave-safe one-quart bowls (at least one with a substantially flat interior bottom)

1 sturdy spork (substitution of a wooden spoon or the like is reluctantly permitted)

1 driver’s license, credit card, or similar object (washed for the occasion)

1 microwave oven

Part 1: Crust

Put on the first pair of gloves. Smush all 8 Nutri-Grain™ bars up in their wrappers, then open them and dump them in a bowl. Treat the graham crackers similarly, dumping them in the same bowl and then mixing those crumbs with the Nutri-Grain™ bars. Continue mixing until consistency is even, then press the (slightly sticky) mixture into the flat-bottomed bowl to form a crust. Remove the gloves and toss them.

Part 2: Filling

Put on that second pair of gloves. Dump about 2 ozs. of vanilla wafers at a time into an empty bowl, smash them into crumbs, and proceed likewise with the rest of the cookies until they are all mashed to fine crumbs. Assistance from suitably clean hammer-like objects (empty cups, for example) permitted.  Part ways with the second pair of gloves.

Next, put the Swiss Miss™ cocoa into the last empty bowl, then stir in just enough hot water to dissolve it all; less than half a cup should suffice. Dump in the Scotts™ chocolate bars, and break them up with the spork. Microwave this happy mixture for 10 seconds, stir, and contemplate the chocolatey goodness. If needed, nuke it again briefly — the result should be a thick sauce with even consistency, disturbed only by bits of almond.

Pour the chocolate sauce over the crumbs, scraping with the spork to collect as much sauce as possible. Stir it together. This will not go terribly well at first, as the filling mix is relatively dry. As needed, while continuing to stir, add just enough water to get all of the crumbs in contact with chocolate sauce.

Part 3: Combination

When the filling mixture feels evenly consistent, pour and scrape it into the crust, then smooth it down with that handy spork. Boo-ya! Park it in a cool place for at least four hours, to let the cookie crumbs get mushy from the chocolate sauce while the sauce stiffens with vanilla wafer ‘starch.’

Part 4: Serving

Use that ID card, credit card, or the like as a ‘knife’ to cut the pie into 4 equal portions. The card also serves as a spatula of sorts, with the spork to assist, in removing each piece from the pie. It gets easier with practice. (Cheaters just use a pie knife.)

Yield: 4 portions, for ambitious appetites. For the full experience, serve with hot Keefe™ instant coffee.