Saltine Cracker Candy

I first found and fell in love with this recipe back in 1996.  There was an event at one of the preschools in the area entitled "A Taste of St. Johns".  Every year, the preschool parents assembled a cookbook.  One day a year, they would make every single recipe in the cookbook.  On the day of the event, you went to St. Johns, and in exchange for your ticket, you received a copy of that year's cookbook, a pen, a paper plate, a fork, and admission to the tasting event.  Every single dish in the cookbook was out on tables, in warming dishes, and on plates throughout the hall.  Slowly but surely, you'd wind your way in order through the tables, taking a bite here and there of the dishes throughout the hall.  The more motivated people would make detailed notes in their cookbooks, detailing how the dish tasted.

I just went for the food.

However, in 1996, I ran across this fantastic recipe for saltine cracker candy.  It was delicious.  It was addictive.  It was so memorable.

This was the first and only time I ever actually opened up the cookbook in the hall and made notes.  My note was simple:  LOVE THIS.

The recipe was super easy, requiring minimal ingredients and time.  Over the years since then, this has become my go-to dish when I need to take a desert in a hurry.  Last night was the art show at the high school, and the art parents were asked to provide snacks.  3 hours before the scheduled start time, I began this recipe.  I did have to stick it in the refrigerator to set the chocolate, and I was breaking up the candy 20 minutes before we left the house, but breaking up the candy was quick and easy.

You can find this recipe anywhere online.  This is my version.  

Saltine Cracker Candy:

Saltine Crackers
1 small bag semi-sweet chocolate chips.  
(Or 1 big bag, if you are like me and end up eating half of the chips before they actually make it onto the finished product.)
1 stick of butter
1 cup of brown sugar  (light or dark, doesn't matter, use what you have on hand.)
1 cup pecans, chopped  (optional)

Pre-Heat oven to 350*
Line a 13 x 9 cookie sheet with aluminum foil.  Spray with cooking spray.

Lay saltines out on the cookie sheet.  Snug them up, side by side, to get as many crackers on as possible.

In a saucepan, melt butter and brown sugar together, stirring constantly.

When the mixture reaches a boil, continue to stir for 3 minutes.

Immediately remove from heat and pour over the cracker mixture.  Use a rubber spatula to spread evenly out to the edges.

Bake tray in the oven for 5 minutes.  (Keep an eye on this part... the butter can burn easily.)

Remove pan from oven, let sit for about a minute (maybe 2). 

Spread the chocolate chips evenly across the surface of the saltines.  As they begin to melt, use a rubber spatula to evenly spread out the chocolate.

While the chocolate is still warm and melty, evenly spread the chopped nuts over top.

Put the entire kit and kaboodle in the refrigerator for 30 minutes so that everything will set.

To serve:
Pull the foil away from the cracker mass.
Use your hands to break the crackers into smaller pieces.
Serve. 

Variation:
I make this with gluten free crackers.  Just as good as the wheat filled version.

Daughter is allergic to dairy, so I make her batch with soy/dairy free chocolate chips and vegan butter.  The cook times are the same, but the "butter" did look a little different than full dairy butter looks.  According to her, everything tastes amazing!

Quinoa Pilaf / Quick and Easy Meals for College Students

I noticed I had only finished 4 of the 5 "Quick and Easy Meals for College Students" series that I was writing.  These are recipes I taught to my oldest son over the summer.  He wanted to add some variety and nutrition to his meals.

This is a Quinoa based meal.  Quinoa is a high quality protein, complete with all 8 essential amino acids.  It's also an ancient grain.  It's also gluten free.  Quinoa itself comes from South America.   BONUS- it's very easy to cook.

I want to start with a side note on Quinoa.  I've read differing reviews on whether or not to rinse quinoa.  I've cooked it both ways- rinsed and unrinsed, and I prefer the taste of rinsed Quinoa.  To this end, I have a fine mesh strainer that I found at a yard sale.  Quinoa is such a tiny grain that if you attempt to wash it in a regular strainer, it will fall through.  (Sad experience on my part.)  This fine mesh strainer that I picked up holds 1/3 of a cup of Quinoa and lets me give it a quick rinse.  I have seen fine mesh strainers in the kitchen area of stores.

With this particular recipe, I also pick up a container of the pre-cooked veggies at the grocery store.  They are diced finer than anything I can dice, and contain peppers and onions.  Our grocery store calls it the fritata blend.

Quinoa Pilaf:
1 cup Quinoa, uncooked
1 small box fritata blend veggies
1 1/2 cups water
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
1 cinnamon stick
1 bay leaf
1/2 cup dried cranberries

In a deep skillet, brown the veggies in olive oil. (stir frequently)  When the onions look translucent, add Quinoa and toast for 1 minute.  Quickly add the water.  Bring the water to a boil, stirring ingredients frequently.  Add the cinnamon stick and bay leaf, cover and lower the temperature to med-low.

Cook covered, stirring occasionally for 20 minutes.

Remove from heat, stir in sunflower seeds and cranberries.  Let sit for 5 minutes, remove cinnamon stick and bay leaf, stir and eat.

*Note: pecans, almonds, walnuts, or pine nuts can be used in place of the sunflower seeds.  If using any of these heartier nuts, you are going to add them to the skillet with the Quinoa at the beginning and toast them. 

Even with the added cost of the pre-cut veggies, this meal still comes in under $5, and it will serve one hungry college student about 2 meals.  (Depending upon the size of their appetite.)

This House

*This is another post from my old blog.  We spent the weekend working on the basement, and we were reminiscing about the time we pulled the freezer out of the basement.  This post originally ran on  Jan. 7, 2010. We bought our house from our in-laws in 2008.  When they moved out, they didn't clean out. We've been working on it ever since...

Cleaning out the basement in our house has proved to be a greater challenge than we were anticipating.

Once we finally got up the nerve to go into the basement, we wanted to run back upstairs again, screaming for our very lives!  Armed with trash bags, rubber gloves, and dust masks, we went down and began sifting through the piles of stuff in the basement.  The mind-numbing job of cleaning out the basement blurs in my mind.  There is one particular episode that stands out very clear.

The basement had turned into a repository of dead and unused appliances.  As we cleared out the trash, we were stunned at what we found underneath.  One freezer, circa. 1959.  One free standing stove, circa. 1962.  Two concrete sinks- you know, the laundry tub kind that your washing machine drain into.  The sinks were broken, but they were still in the basement.  Two old microwaves: One from 1978, and another from 1988.  One old stereo, four old speakers, and two old, broken television sets.  And three dehumidifiers. Somehow, these appliances needed to get out of our basement.
We borrowed a heavy-duty hand truck from my brother-in-law, and we borrowed a pick up truck from a friend.  My husband took a Friday off work, and we were ready to run to the dump.
The first things we hauled out were easy.  The microwaves, the dehumidifiers, the televisions, and the old stereos.  We had no problems hauling them out of the basement and out to the truck.  We loaded up our first load and hauled it off to the dump.

The large items in our basement presented more of a challenge.  The stove and the freezer.  Due to the odd turn at the top and bottom of the interior stairs, we could not take them up through the house.  We were going to have to use the walk-up from the basement.  It's a tight turn from the door up the stairs, but the basement door opens towards the concrete wall, so we thought we could get everything out through that door.  Husband managed to get the stove out and up the stairs with minimal help.  My job was to stand at ground level and hold the storm door on the basement open from above while he attempted to get the stove out and turned up the stairs.

And then came the big challenge.  The freezer.  That monster was heavy.  Much heavier than what we were anticipating.  We attempted to move it towards the door, but it was too heavy.  Husband pulled out the tool box and took the door off the freezer and hauled it out to the truck.

The freezer was still heavy, but with the two of us- we managed to get it onto the hand cart.  John took one handle of the cart, and I took the other and we carefully moved it over to the door.

Now, there's a problem we hadn't anticipated with the back door.  The door does not open all of the way.  When my in-laws finished the basement, they put a wall next to the basement door.  The interior door only opens up 90* from it's closed position.  It doesn't open all the way.  Try as we might, we could not get the freezer through that door.

We looked at each other, aghast.  Were we going to have to chop the freezer into tiny bits with the sledge hammer in order to get it out of the basement?  As we sat on the floor and pondered our options, we looked again at the door opening and the freezer.  It looked like we could get the freezer door through if we pulled the door off the hinges.  So, husband pulled out his tools and we took the basement door off the hinges and set it aside.

Once again, we wiggled and waggled the freezer, trying to figure out the magic angle to get it through the doorway.  No matter how we worked it, we could not get the freezer through that door.  It kept catching on the freezer hinges that had previously held the door.  Muttering unmentionable things under his breath, husband took the sledge hammer to the hinges on the freezer and pounded them into submission.  After 10 minutes, both hinges were pounded flat against the surface of the freezer.
Before we decided to attempt moving the freezer again, we took a good, hard look at the storm door.  It did not look as if we were going to be able to pull the freezer out of the basement without doing serious damage to the storm door.  Our biggest fear was that if we dropped the freezer while we were hauling it up the stairs, it would go hurtling down the steps and destroy the storm door.  Once again, out came the tool box and husband took the storm door off the hinges and gently set it inside, next to the door.

Muttering silently, we managed to pull the freezer out of the basement and turn it so that it was ready to be pulled up the stairs.

Heaven help us-- we were not prepared for the weight of that freezer.  I'm not certain how much it weighed, but I am willing to say it weighed at least 300 pounds.  It took two of us to pull that freezer up the basement steps.  We tilted the hand cart back until it would go back no more.  And then, we pulled it up a step.  Panting, we looked at each other.

"What do we do next?"  I asked.

"Slowly"  husband said, looking at the freezer and back at the 12 steps we still needed to haul the freezer up.  "Shift yourself up a step.  I'll hold the freezer while you move.  Then you hold the freezer and I'll shift up a step."

We moved ourselves around and then, on the count of three, we pulled the freezer up the next step.  We continued on in this slow and painful manner until, two hours later we finally pulled the freezer up the last step and onto the level ground.  Too tired to even talk to each other, we pulled the freezer over to the truck and stopped dead.

We were going to have to lift that freezer over 2 feet at once to get it into the bed of the truck.

"I've got an idea" said husband.  We live on the top of a hill, and the driveway slopes down steeply from the carport to street level.  Husband had the truck backed up the driveway.  He pulled the car part way down the driveway, until the back of the truck was only a little above the carport.  He then found a heavy duty piece of wood that he used as a ramp to cover the short distance from the carport pad to the truck bed.  We pulled the freezer up into the bed of the truck with minimal effort and tied it tightly down to the bed of the truck.  He left the freezer on the hand cart, and put blocks under the wheels of the cart.

Once we got to the dump, we used the same board to make a ramp from the truck bed to the ground, untied the freezer and pulled it down the ramp.  When the freezer was halfway down the ramp, the wood splintered, and the freezer came crashing down to the ground. 

At that point, the staff took pity on us.  They took charge of the freezer and the splintered wooden ramp.  We put the remains of the hand truck in the back and headed back home.

But what about the basement doors?  We so desperately wanted that freezer out of our lives that we left the house with the basement doors sitting in the middle of the basement!

Virtual House Cleaning

I have a lot of pictures that I have stored online.

I'd like to tell you that I organized them all when they were uploaded.  Organized by year and activity, I've been able to access all of the photos at need whenever the fancy strikes me.  Any time I go to work on an album, or to print pictures, I've been able to find the pictures with minimum effort, and complete my projects quickly and easily.

That would be a lie.

I have a jumble of pictures online that I have to shuffle through every single time I attempt to do anything.  It can take me hours to track down a handful of pictures. 

Uploaded willy-nilly over the years, the biggest culprit appears to be pictures I have uploaded from the cell phone.  I'm never certain which folder those pictures are going to land in.  You'd think they'd land in the album labeled "cell phone".  Not so.  They fall into everything from girl scout pictures to "cat".  There appears to be no rhyme or reason for the pattern in which they upload.  Okay, I admit, there is one common factor - me and my slip shod methods when I go to upload photos.

I've had some time on my hands recently, so I've been organizing the photos.  I began by making folders for every year.  As I open the messy miscellaneous folders, I add an album under the appropriate year, and then move the pictures over to that album.  Thankfully, the online software is intuitive and easy to use.

Photos that I thought would take me a year or more to organize are now organized.

Ten years worth of photos, organized by year and activity.  (Like I said, I've had some time on my hands.)

Looking back through the old photos has been wonderful.  I've enjoyed looking back over what we've done for the last 10 years.  Good heavens, my kids have grown up so fast.  Where did the time go?  My daughter was 8 when we moved out here.  Next month, she'll be 18 years old.  She has grown into an amazing young woman in the time we've been here.

I used to keep up with the photos and scrapbook an album at the end of every year.  It's been a while since I've done that.  Now that all of the photos are organized, I'm going to have to go back through our albums and see how far behind I am, and work towards catching up on the albums.

Once I figure out where I need to start, I will have my husband's Christmas present.  The boys get home from school soon, and I'd love to have them add their memories to the album as I go!

Now, if only cleaning my basement was this easy.  I still haven't made a lot of progress down there, but by God, I am getting the rest of the house cleaned in my quest to avoid cleaning the basement!

Brave New World

I ran across this book the other day.  I vaguely remember reading it before.  I believe I read it at the same time I read 1984 and Animal Farm.  All 3 books are about Dystopian societies.

I had a little time to spare, so I thought I'd tackle it once again, and see what, if anything, I got out of the book.

Funny thing.  Aldous Huxley wrote this book in 1932.  He was writing about an imaginary society that existed 600 years in the future. At that time, Huxley postulated a world in which people had become total wards of the state.  They were bred in a laboratory, hatched in the warmth of a laboratory, and brought into the world.

From the time that their embryos were fertilized, their entire life, from their physical features, to their caste, to their mental capabilities were determined for them by the scientists in the laboratory.

Raised within the facility by the state, divided by caste, these infants are indoctrinated into the philosophies of the state through negative reinforcement, as well as sleep teaching- where a voice droned on and on throughout the night that teaches them the "official" views that they are to keep.

Raised to live alone, these people are also trained to value a hedonistic lifestyle that puts their own pleasure and comfort above all else.

If anything uncomfortable faces them, why, they don't have to deal with these uncomfortable feelings.  The state issues them an official drug, Soma, and they are encouraged to use it whenever those messy feelings get in the way of them pursuing that hedonistic lifestyle that is condoned by the state.

Life and death are meaningless.  No value is placed on life.  Children are conditioned to death in order to make it seem like "no big deal".  With the advances in genetic engineering, the residents never age.  They stay in a perpetual state of youth until they "expire" and are taken to be decommissioned.

There's more. Oh, so much more.  Aldous Huxley wrote this book to disturb.  He intended to shake his audience up a bit, show them what horrible future awaited them if they didn't wake up and realize that their choices - and what he saw at the time in the rise of Communism and the Soviet Union - could easily become the official way of life, with no choices and no free will to make choices in front of them.

I remember back when I originally read this book in 1982, I thought how ridiculously far fetched these ideas were.

Reading it now, over 30 years later, I begin to wonder because so much that future is not only before us - it seems to be coming a reality.

We live in a hedonistic society that places materialism above all else.  Doubt me?  Take a look at the video footage of crowds stampeding on Black Friday to get the best deals. 

Advertisers on television and the radio encourage us to pursue a materialistic, me first mentality that ignores the needs of others or the less fortunate around us. 

Genetic Engineering is here.  It's a reality.  With the advent of test tube babies (now known as IVF fertilization), we began to cross that uncomfortable line.  While we do not yet have the ability to "design" a human being (read infant) to meet our personal needs- hair and eye color, intelligence, we do have the ability to get into the cells of an embryo who will have mitochondrial disease and change the DNA of that individual before birth. 

Cloning.  Huxley didn't even dream of this reality in his novel.  Instead, he spoke of manipulating an ovum so that up to 90 viable embryos could result.  Instead of recreating the ovum, scientists have skipped that step entirely and are capable of taking the DNA of an organism and recreating this organism exactly.

Soma.  In the novel, Soma was used to pacify the masses.  When they experienced feelings, they took drugs to supress the feelings.  By supressing the feelings, people never questioned why and never looked for deeper meanings of life.  As a result, they turned away from all religion.  What need is there of religion when the state can guarantee you will never feel the need of anything but the pursuit of pleasure?  Not quite so far fetched, now.  Marijuana is legal in Colorado and Washington State.  Beginning next year, it will be legal in Washington DC and Alaska.  (What really is the driving force behind approving mood altering drugs, anyway?)

If you are up for a read that is going to make you look hard - very hard - at today's society, take the time to read Brave New World.

It's not a "Feel Good Book".  It will make you think, and think hard, about our world today.

Remember, Huxley wrote it to upset his audience.  What does it say that 80 years later, it is still upsetting and angering people?  Why is it still a relevant read?

Just Because I Can, Doesn't Mean I Should

I've lost a little over 20 pounds this year!

HOORAY!

I've gone down a size!

HOORAY!

When we first moved out here 10 years ago and I put on all of this weight, I put away the clothes as I went up a size.  Over the weekend, I pulled out the bag of clothes that is the next size down.

I began putting them on, and experienced a fashion flashback from the middle of the 2000's.
An interesting decade in clothing.

Pants were of an interesting cut back then.  Not bad, but they aren't the same cut that they aren't now, and it's very obvious that they are ten years old.  I think with most of them, I can wear them again.  Well, except for the herringbone pattern.  That's a VERY dated pattern, and it's difficult to find anything I can wear that will go with those pants.

Then we get to the tops.  Yeah, the tops.  This is where fashion has changed most drastically over the last ten years.  I can salvage the sweaters.  Even if they are a little out of style, they're not the ugly sweaters from the 90's (That's another bag, a little farther back in the closet that will fit when I lose 50 pounds.)  The polo shirts can be worn again.  I can layer them under another shirt, or wear them with a sweater.  Those aren't a problem.  However, there are a few Hawaiian type shirts of questionable colors that I will not be sporting anywhere, anytime soon. 

But, there's this tiny little part of me that really wants to pull these shirts out and wear them to work.  I know they are horribly out of style, but there's a part of me that really wants to strut into work saying "That's right, see this?  I'm fitting into clothes I wore ten years ago.  Just look at this fashion that is screaming TURN OF THE MILLENIUM!!!  Don't you wish you could be me?  Check out this twin set!  OH, oh, look at this flower print crepe skirt that falls at mid-calf!  Look at my ankles!  Quick, check out my ankles!" 

If I actually did wear any of these outfits to work, nobody would notice.  Nobody would say anything to me.  I am pretty sure nobody would think twice about how I was dressed.

However, if I buy a new outfit in the newer, smaller size, I'm pretty sure that somebody would take note, comment, and I would feel good about how I look in my new outfit with my new clothes.

I am not going to give away those new/old clothes.  I am going to wear them at home, to the grocery store, and running errands on the weekend.  This way, I have some "casual" clothes that look nice that I can wear when I am out and about.

But wearing some of this stuff to work? 

Not unless if I haven't done laundry.   And with my track record, I'll most likely be wearing one of those outfits before the end of the week!

My Resolutions and Accomplishments

Thanksgiving has come and gone.  I had a wonderful 4 days with my kids.  It was so good to have the boys home from school for a few days!  (Even if they did spend the entire time working on final projects, it was wonderful to have them all over the house, with their books and computers spread everywhere!  Their semester ends a week from tomorrow.)

I worked that turkey all weekend.  We never had to go back out for food, and that turkey provided us with multiple meals:

1) Sandwiches.

2) Pulled turkey BBQ sandwiches.  I tore up some of the turkey leftovers, and smothered them in this amazing BBQ sauce that I made with the recipe I found here: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/blackberry-bbq-sauce/.

3) Turkey Soup.  After Thanksgiving Dinner was finished, we pulled the rest of the meat off of the carcass.  We then took the carcass, as well as whatever meat we might have missed, and put it into the slow cooker.  We filled the pot with water, and let it cook for about 12 hours on low.  The next morning, I strained the broth out, removing the bones and assorted other stuff and put it into a large pot on the stove.  I added leftover mashed potatoes, leftover carrots, corn, and green beans.  I then cut up and added a potato, onion, and some celery and let it all stew for an hour more. When it was time to serve, I pulled out the wild rice and minced some leftover turkey.  The idea was to put the wild rice and turkey into the bowl, and then cover all with the hot soup.  (An idea I borrowed from the Vietnamese Pho. If you've never tried it, you should.  It is amazing.)

4) Turkey Wreath.  It's an old Pampered Chef recipe.  It requires the use of crescent rolls.  I can't eat it because of the gluten, but I pulled some of the turkey salad out and made my a very tasty panini on gluten free bread.  You can find the recipe here: http://tinyurl.com/mcvvwmg

5) Turkey A La King. The recipe is here: http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/turkey-a-la-king-with-rice.  You can serve this over toast, rice, or noodles. 

I've got a very little bit of turkey left today.  I'm debating whether to make it into a casserole or a Chef Salad.  I only have enough to make one, not both.

With the exception of my spectacular pecan pie, Thanksgiving was a wonderful success!

Blackened Pecan Pie! Look at that black crust!

 

 

 

Back in January, I set a list of Resolutions I wanted to keep this year.  I've been checking back on them once a month, just to see how I'm doing.  Since it's the first of the month, here we go!

1) 365 Grateful.  Check out my Blog Post from yesterday: http://mini-van-mom.blogspot.com/2014/11/an-attitude-of-gratitude.html.

 2) Lose 10 pounds.  I've lost a total of 22 pounds.  I had hoped to lose 3 more in order to make it an even 25 pounds, but that just isn't going to happen.  Instead of stressing out about losing the next 3 pounds, I am going to sit back, enjoy the holidays, and strive to maintain the 22 pounds I have lost, so that I'm not going back and re-losing this weight again in January.

 3) Run/Walk. I'm walking long distances on weekends with my hubby.  In addition to parking on the far side of the lot from my office building, I am taking a complete turn around the lot before going in and after I finish for the day.  I'm not sure how many steps I'm adding, but that does add 5 minutes of walking both before and after my shift is finished.  (Even when it's raining/snowing, I'm still walking around the lot.)

4) Get out of debt.  Working on it.

5) Finish Cleaning Out the Basement.  BWah-Ha-Ha.  I should just bring a dumpster in and dump it all.  I sent a van load full of stuff to the White Elephant sale at the church, another to Goodwill, and still another to the dump.  I also burned out the motor on my shredder.  I'm going to have to get a new shredder so I can keep going!

6) Finish Oldest Child's Quilt.  The top is finished.  I added a border to it in order to make it long enough to fit him - all 6 feet some inches of him.  I pieced out the back, and purchased the batting to go inside.  I am going to have to find a big space of floor somewhere to pin it all together soon.  I still don't think I'm going to finish this before Christmas. It would take a miracle.

7) Spend More Time With My Family.  This month, I have spent time, a lot of time, with my kids, and I have loved every minute of it!

8) Finish the Book I Keep Saying I'm Going to Write.  Done!  I have it uploaded to Lulu, and I'm waiting for my copy to arrive - so I can make certain that the formatting is right and that I didn't miss anything in the way of spelling and grammar before I let it go public.  My goal is to release it no later than Dec. 15.

9) Finish The Hallway Bathroom.  Okay, this is a post for another day.  I've found the money suckers.  I'm beginning to save money.  It makes me wonder what's going to break next?

10) Get Back into my Music.  Have done.  The Christmas Cantata is two weeks from tomorrow.  I'll be singing Alto, but NO SOLOS!  (Ha... I sing solo no one can hear me! hahaha!   Alto joke...)

Lots and lots of progress is being made.  We have one credit card that should be completely paid off this month. More money to add to the "finish the yellow bathroom in the hallway" fund!