Archive for December, 2009
Adventures in fudge
Wednesday, December 30th, 2009For most people who do holiday cooking, the holiday season means that they will be making roast turkey/ham, some favorite side dishes, a pie or two, and maybe some Christmas cookies. For me, it’s fudge season. Specifically peanut butter fudge. I have made four batches of peanut butter fudge so far and I will be making another batch today (Mom has requested a batch for the New Year’s Eve party that she will be attending).
But this year, I decided that I needed to expand my horizons. What inspired me? On a recent trip down to Vincennes, my sister, my mother and I stopped at a roadside fruit stand/gas station that sold homemade fudge. I sampled their maple walnut fudge and was not impressed. My sister sampled their peanut butter fudge and said that it was pitiful, not anywhere near as good as mine (of course). My mother was happy with her chocolate fudge. I was looking over their offerings and got to thinking how I would go about making these fudges myself. And so, I decided to make 3 new kinds of fudge this year: chocolate, maple walnut and pumpkin.
For the chocolate fudge, I decided that the recipe that I use for peanut butter fudge would not be a good start, so I opened up my Betty Crocker Cookbook and used their recipe for chocolate fudge. It was a success, although it was a lot more work than peanut butter fudge. Mom really loved it. I think I had 3 or 4 pieces, I gave 4 pieces away, and Mom ate the rest.
My next experiment was maple walnut fudge. The maple walnut fudge had a great taste, but it turned out a little grainy. I think that is because I used a grinder to grind up the walnuts. I will use a blender next time and make sure I get it to a creamy texture. I will say, the flavor of this fudge was fabulous, so I will definitely do it again. I made it the same way as the peanut butter fudge, but I substituted walnut paste for the peanut butter and used maple flavoring.
The pumpkin fudge wasn’t quite as successful. The flavor was good, but the fudge never set properly. I made it the same way as the peanut butter fudge, but I used a can of pumpkin pie filling in place of peanut butter (I squeezed as much liquid out as I could beforehand by using a clean dish towel – I need to get cheese clothe). I also cooked it 10 degrees higher than I normally do (I had tried to make this fudge before and it did not set then either). It still turned out to be pumpkin sludge, not pumpkin fudge. The good news is, it makes a nice topping for ice cream and tastes great on toast. I am determined to succeed with this recipe, so next time I will cook it even longer. I will not stop until I succeed!
I also made a batch of cookies.
Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas
Thursday, December 24th, 2009I have not sent out Christmas cards this year, so I thought I would at least send out a Christmas greeting on my blog. It has been a very busy week since I have been working, dealing with a hacked email account, a virus infected computer, a new computer to set up and configure, and all the normal holiday preparations.
Christmas came early for me this year. I would like to thank my friend Paul for sending me a new computer. I am loving it. The computer is a Unix Ubuntu machine and I am looking forward to diving back into Unix.
I know most of you received a spam email from my email account, and I would just like to say I am sorry. I have sent a message to yahoo about this. Let’s see if they have any answers. In the meantime, I have changed passwords on a lot of my accounts. I am going to do a complete reinstall on my PC in case that is the root of my problems. But that is going to take a few days, so I will do that next week (or the week after).
As for holiday preparations, presents have been bought and wrapped and fudge and cookies have been made. Mom and I are going to have Christmas Eve dinner with my aunts and then have our own Christmas tomorrow.
However you plan on celebrating Christmas, I hope you have a wonderful holiday.
Pop Around the Clock
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009It takes awhile after you move to a new place before you find what is available in your new area. You find the chain stores right away, but it takes a little time, and usually luck, to find the fun places. I have lived in Indiana for over three years now, and I am finally feeling like I have found the necessary places. You know, the right shoe store (I’m picky), a place to buy used cds and dvds, a good bookstore, etc. Those special places that you like to go to when you are out and about that make your trip fun.
I recently found one of those stores, it is unique to this area, although I’m sure that there are similar places elsewhere. The name of the shop is Pop Around the Clock and it is a popcorn shop in Vincennes, Indiana. They make all sorts of flavored popcorn. Some of my favorite flavors are grape, cherry (and I don’t like cherry), carmel, butter pecan toffee, and cheese. I think my favorite flavor right now is root beer. I know, most of you are not in this area, however, the good news is that they are on line and they will ship anywhere in the country. Their website doesn’t list all of their flavors, but if you give them a call ((812) 882-0882), I’m sure you could get any flavor you want.
Mom and I stop by this shop every time we go to Vincennes now. This last trip we decided to try the Mexican restaurant in the same strip mall. And finally! We found a good Mexican restaurant! As you might suspect, Indiana is not the place you want to go to find Mexican food mecca. We have tried several Mexican restaurants since moving here, and although we have found some okay places, none of them were the kind you can’t wait to go back to. This place, on the other hand, had me planning my next trip to Vincennes before I even left the restaurant. So, I am doubly thankful to Pop Around the Clock, not only for their wonderful popcorn, but for helping me locate some delicious Mexican food.
Wish List 2: Spellbinder
Tuesday, December 8th, 2009I thought I would review another series that is not yet on DVD, at least not in the US: Spellbinder. I am sure that not many of you have heard of this series. I believe I saw it on the Disney Channel in the 90s. I watched quite a bit of childrens programming back then, including Ocean Girl, Space Cases, and the Secret World of Alex Mack. But my favorite was Spellbinder.
Spellbinder was a tale of alternate worlds. It starts in our world, where teenager Paul Reynolds is playing a prank and accidently stumbles through a gateway to a parallel world. This world has an agricultural society that is ruled by ‘Spellbinders’. Spellbinders are people who use powersuits to manipulate electricity. Paul is befriended by Riana in the Spellbinder world and together with his friends in our world, they work on a way to get Paul back.
I really enjoyed this series, but unfortunately, I did not tape it when it was on. This series was only shown once in the US to my knowledge, so I have never had the opportunity to see it all the way through, since I missed several episodes while it was being shown. There was a second series, Spellbinder 2: Land of the Dragon Lord, but it was not as well written and it had little to do with the first series so I soon lost interest in it.
If you would like to get more info about this series, check out these pages on Amazon, iMDb and Wikipedia.