This one is too easy. Too, TOO easy, but it's one that we can't do without each Christmas season.
Ingredients:
1 lb white almond bark
1 cup crushed peppermint candy
Directions:
Melt the almond bark over very low heat or in the top of a double boiler. Be careful not to scorch the almond bark. When the almond bark is completely melted, stir in the crushed peppermint candy. Spread onto a foil-lined cookie sheet and allow to cool. When completely cool, break into irregular pieces.
These buttery caramels have been a delicious holiday treat in my home since I was a child.
Ingredients:
1 12-oz can of evaporated milk
Dash salt
2 cups sugar
1 3/4 cups Karo syrup
1/2 lb butter
2 tsp vanilla
Directions:
Combine 2/3 of the can of milk, salt, sugar, Karo syrup and butter in a heavy pan. bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Continue stirring and boil over medium heat about 10 minutes. Add the remaining 1/3 can of evaporated milk. Boil, stirring constantly until it reaches soft ball stage and is a nice caramel color. The total boiling time should be about 30 minutes. Add the vanilla and stir to combine. Pour into a buttered 9x13 pan. You can put a layer of chopped nuts (walnuts, pecans, or toasted almonds) in the bottom of the pan if desired. When completely cooled, cut into 1-inch squares and individually wrap in wax paper.
Last year, I did a post a day for the twelve days of Christmas. This year, I'm going to do it again, but this year, it will be the twelve culinary days of Christmas. I'm going to share some of my favorite recipes with you. Some of them are Christmas treats and others are recipes I use all year long.
I'll also link back to the same day from last year so you can enjoy both at the same time.
So Merry Christmas from Mr. Me! I hope you find a recipe or two that you enjoy this year.
I don't know WHERE in the broccoli those critters were hiding. They must have burrowed into one of the stems somewhere, because I thoroughly washed the broccoli and didn't see anything out of the ordinary when I cut the broccoli up to cook it.
It wasn't until I had completely finished making the soup and had it dished up and on the table that my son asked what the little black things were. I thought it might have been some little broccoli bits that were overcooked, but upon closer inspection, we realized that broccoli bits don't have legs, wings, and antennae.
*shudder*
At least I had only eaten a couple of bites.
*double shudder*
So we had Gandolfo's sandwiches for dinner instead, which doesn't help us out much for tonight when we were expecting to have leftovers.
This was, of course, "organic" broccoli, which apparently means that it hasn't been sprayed with the pesticides that would have kept the bugs OUT of the broccoli, and therefore, out of my soup. This doesn't make me want to buy "organic" any more. It cost more, and it turned out to be unusable, AND it made the other ingredients in the soup unusable. Yes, I'm done buying "organic."
It must have been 13 or 14 years ago that we discovered Saturn. We were looking for a new car and we stumbled, quite by accident, into Saturn of Orem.
We weren't really expecting to buy a Saturn, especially since my wife didn't know how to drive a car with a manual transmission, and the only Saturn we could really afford had a stick shift.
The sales lady spent an evening in the parking lot near the Saturn "retail facility" teaching my wife how to drive a manual transmission car.
The next day, we owned our first Saturn. A couple of days later, my wife got to try out her new driving skills as she drove me to the emergency room early in the morning with my first kidney stone.
We liked the Saturn philosophy. We liked that it was a "retail facility" and not a "dealership." We liked the no haggle process. The more we learned, the more we liked,
A few years later, we traded that Saturn in on another, newer one. I ended up in a pretty bad wreck in that one. The truck that hit me mashed the front wheel and driver's side door. I had a bump on my noggin and had nightmares for a while, but was otherwise unhurt.
We again traded up to a newer Saturn back in 1999. This one was a barely-owned fully loaded Saturn. That was the car that we drove all over in with kids' car seats in the back.
When we needed an inexpensive commuter car, we bought yet another Saturn--this one the oldest one we had ever owned. I drove that one to work for a few years. We gave that one away to my sister-in-law and they're still driving it.
Tonight, the "barely-owned fully loaded" Saturn drove away. After a few repairs, another fender bender, and even a teenaged driver, our days of owning Saturns are over. They just don't make it up our driveway in the winter. Not to mention that Saturn, as a company, is no more.
Over the weekend, the Utah National Parks Council of the Boy Scouts of America held a celebration of 100 years of scouting. We camped out in Heber City, Utah with 2500 of our closest scouting friends, and we had a very good time.
When we arrived, we found out that we would not be camping in a farmer's field as I had been told. Instead, we would be camping out in a cow pasture. There is a distinct and important difference...welcome to "Camp Cow Patty." But even that is a shared experience that these scouts will continue to chuckle about in years to come.
The boys were able to participate in a wide variety of activities including sports clinics and tournaments, chess tournaments, model rocketry, horseback riding, 5k runs, and vintage photography. They all seemed to have a really good time.
We ate lots of good food--half of which was prepared in dutch ovens. We shivered in our sleeping bags as temperatures in the Heber Valley dropped down to the mid-teens during the night. We sat around the propane heater (no campfires were allowed in Camp Cow Patty), and at times laughed, and at other times were spiritually fed. During the day, it got up into the mid 70's with full sun, and that led to my sunburn.
My Scouts did well in the competitions, taking first place in Ultimate Frisbee and third place in the golf tournament. They took fourth place in the soccer, basketball, and chess tournaments--an impressive feat because my scouts (12-13 years old) were often competing against Varsity Scouts (15-16 years old) and Venturers (16-17 years old).
It was a very successful, very enjoyable, once-in-a-lifetime type of experience.
Yesterday evening, we received a knock at our door. When I opened the door, the two boys who live next door were standing on the front porch with a plate of homemade muffins, a very kind note, and a CD that they bought for us because they thought our family would enjoy it. It's really nice to live next door to such nice people!
They, unfortunately, live next to some very UN-neighborly neighbors. No, silly reader, I'm not referring to my family! I'm referring to the people that live on the OTHER side.
The neighbor in question chased our previous neighbors away. Seriously. The reason that our former next-door neighbors moved was because they didn't feel comfortable in their own house because of the unfriendly and downright aggressive actions of the people next door. It's sad, really.
I'm not going to go into specifics--its really not MY problem, because I haven't had any negative dealings with these particular people. Suffice it to say that the unfriendly, aggressive behavior has continued.
It saddens me. Because my new neighbors who have been so kind and friendly to us have to deal with such ugliness that shouldn't be happening in the first place.
I hope they don't end up feeling like they have to move as well. I would miss them as much or more as I miss my previous neighbors.
Yesterday, older son looked out the front door to see if it was still raining and found a UPS Express envelope on the front porch. It was from my mortgage company. I wondered what might be inside.
Advertising.
My mortgage company wants me to refinance my home mortgage.
I looked at the rates and other information and saw that I could cut my interest rate by 1% and have a sub-4% interest rate. It looked like it might be something that I might investigate further...
...until I read the fine print.
It said that the rates and other information was based on the assumption that the borrower would purchase 1% discount at closing.
Wait, WHAT??
I can decrease my interest rate by 1% by pre-paying the 1% at closing??
In other words, this refinancing plan gives me no advantage at all and the mortgage company would gain thousands of dollars in closing costs. What a deal!