Wild Grape Dumplings

I made wild grape dumplings for the Native American project open house in my son’s classroom today.  As he says, “they sold out!”

No – we weren’t actually selling them, just sampling them.  But in seeing how fast the samples went, he hatched a brilliant plan wherein I make more dumplings and he takes them around in the wagon to various neighbors and sells them for 25 cents each or 2 for $1.00.

There are so many flaws in the plan, I don’t know where to begin – other than to say the dumplings are absolutely horrible and no one would ever buy them.  Picture a chicken nugget from McDonald’s but a weird gray/purple color.   And rubbery.  In order to make them halfway palatable for 75 third graders I squirted a ton of grape jelly on them.  I sent them off to school with a bunch of toothpicks and strict instructions that each child should use a NEW toothpick when they took a sample.

Too bad I didn’t get a chance to give my son’s classmate, Andrew, the same speech.  I found out on the car ride home that Andrew was collecting the used toothpicks on the back end and then going around to the front of the line and handing them out again.  What?!!?  Good Lord!!!  Who is Andrew and WHY did he think that would be helpful?

Funny?  Totally.  Parentally approved?  Absolutely not because now I’m pretty sure the majority of the third graders will shortly be coming down with throwing up sickness and when the vomir is purple, they’ll know exactly what caused it.

The person I feel most sorry for in this whole scenario is the Seminole stay at home mom who had to make the wild grape dumpling “treats” for her kids without sugar, an oven, sugar, flour, grape jelly or really anything useful.  Do you suppose the first Seminole mom whipped the recipe up in her boiling pot when the kiddos complained, “there’s nothing good to eat!” ?!   God bless the ingenuity of all moms when faced with that comment.

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