Kate O’Neill: The Quest for Easter Peeps
(Elite Athlete Blog - Entry #6)
Posted March 31st, 2008 at 5:00 PM by Kate O'Neill
Section: Elite Athlete Blogs, Kate O'Neill
Hi, this is my blog in TFS’s Elite Athlete Blog Series. Bookmark kateoneill.thefinalsprint.com and check back every other Monday for my latest entry as I strive for the 2008 Summer Olympics!
Last Sunday, we celebrated Easter as a team. We started the day off like any other group of people on a holiday – with long runs ranging from 17 to 23 miles. Then we all went home to rest up and prepare a dish to bring to Sara and Steve Slatterys’ condominium for Easter dinner.
I felt inspired to bring something that fit the holiday, but something that would also force me to be a little creative. After much hemming and hawing, I finally resolved to make sweet potato puree with a twist. Rather than adding marshmallows to the dish, I would add Easter peeps.
My sister and I have always loved Easter peeps. Every year, we bought a box as soon as they arrived in the stores. In the last few years, I’ve started to like them a little less, but I still crave them, mostly for nostalgic reasons. Their novelty has started to wear off a little bit now that they make them for every holiday (part of the company’s campaign called “Peeps – Always in Season”), but the Easter ones are still the real deal. I’ve bought the Christmas-tree-shaped peeps for gingerbread houses a few times, but most years I save up my peep appetite for Easter.
Mammoth Lakes is a small town, but we can usually find just about anything that we need. Unfortunately, the supply of Easter candy in the stores was not quite large enough for all the families that had arrived in town for the weekend. By the time that my boyfriend and I went the grocery store on Saturday night, the shelves of Easter candy had been ransacked. We sifted through the remaining bags of Cadbury eggs, jelly beans, and chocolate bunnies, but never found the desired marshmallow candies. We asked a store employee for help, but he had actually never heard of them. He directed us toward the shelf in the baking aisle that held regular marshmallows. We explained that we didn’t want mundane marshmallows. We wanted special ones that were pastel colored and in the shape of chicks and bunnies, but he looked at us like we were insane.
Next we tried the Rite-Aid drugstore. Once again, we met nearly empty shelves. No traditional peeps remained, but we did find some “peep knockoffs.” It’s hard to describe, but these confections just weren’t the same. They were supposed to be in the shape of bunnies and ducks, but I never would have recognized them without the manufacturer’s description on the bag. Unless we wanted to drive to another store 45 minutes away, this was our only option. We decided to cope with this ingredient substitution and bought the knockoffs.
We followed the recipe at the link below, but our final product did not look nearly as nice as the one shown in the pictures.
The recipe said to bake the completed casserole for 30 minutes, then place the peeps around the edges of the pan, and bake for 5 more minutes. We baked ours for the recommended time, placed the marshmallows on top, and then brought it over to the Slatterys’ house. We had planned to heat the casserole for the remaining 5 minutes when we got there, but by the time we arrived, our peep knockoffs had already melted and oozed together. I started to question the validity of the internet recipe, but later learned that peeps have some qualities that some other marshmallow candies apparently lack. In 1998, two Emory University scientists conducted a series of experiments hoping to learn what could dissolve a peep. They tried piercing the peeps with a burning a cigarette, immersing them in liquid nitrogen, and boiling them in water. The magical Easter candy held its own against all these threats.
One experiment did finally destroy them. When they placed a purple chick into Phenol (a protein-dissolving solvent that can kill humans in amounts as small as a one gram), it dissolved into a purple soupy substance. Only its eyes remained intact, but this is not really surprising when you consider that the eyes are made from carnauba wax, which is also an important ingredient in many car waxes and shoe polishes.
Apparently, our peep knockoffs did not have the same power. Just a few minutes of resting on a hot sweet potato casserole was enough to push them toward their demise. Needless to say, the dish looked very strange. We could not see the sweet potatoes at all. They were completely covered by a layer of pastel-colored marshmallow. I would not have blamed anyone for not trying it. Luckily all of my teammates were very polite and took some.
Hopefully I can show the same strength as those magical Easter candies over the last few weeks of training as we head into the Olympic Marathon Trials! (I’m referring of course to the REAL peeps, not the knockoffs.)
To comment on this entry and to send questions & feedback to Kate, please click here.
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(Elite Athlete Blog Entry 22) - Jon Rankin: Being Human
(Elite Athlete Blog Entry 20) - Nick Symmonds:
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Tags: Easter peeps, elite athlete, elite athlete blog series, elite runner, irish, kate oneill, Mammoth Lakes, olympic hopeful, Olympic Trials, team running usa, tfs elite athlete blog series, the final sprint elite athlete blog series, thefinalsprint.com elite athlete blog series, track and field, u.s. olympic track & field trials, u.s. olympic womens marathon trials
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The Final Sprint
A harrowing tale, well told!
Thanks for linking to my post. Just a note re the recipe. I also add a handful or two of regular mini-marshmallows to the puree before the final 30-minute bake, which provides little bursts of melted white pure sugar within the puree itself.
Best of luck to you in your quest for Olympic glory.
:-)
March 31st, 2008 at 1:28 pmI can’t believe that guy had never heard of Peeps!
April 1st, 2008 at 12:05 am“But(God’s purpose)is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath ABOLISHED DEATH, and hath BROUGHT LIFE and immortality to light through the gospel” II TIMOTHY 1:10
Hi Kate,
While not a fan of peeps, we enjoyed your story of the Mammoth group’s Easter. You always share such insightful and unique information.
Go for Beijing in Boston!
Thanks & God Bless.
April 2nd, 2008 at 2:52 pmKnockoff Peeps - no way :) :)
April 21st, 2008 at 4:56 pm