Scout House Toffee

No sewing for this year's Scout House fundraiser.  I had even made a pair of oven mitts in advance!  I guess they'll have to wait for the next silent auction.

Zebra streaking?

I was asked, instead, to make my Almond Butter Crunch.  I obtained this recipe years ago and in typical Sally style, have modified it a bit.  The original recipe calls for chocolate chips to be melted on the top of the hot toffee, and then break it into pieces when it has cooled.  I didn't like how the toffee could be a bit greasy (there's a lot of butter in it!), so I started breaking it apart first, and then hand dipping the pieces.  This is very time consuming, which is why I normally only make this twice a year (Easter and Christmas).

For the auction, I stuck with the original recipe method.  The zebra-striping didn't come out quite what I wanted.  That's what I get for trying a new brand of white chocolate.  <sigh>  However, they look great once I broke up the batch.  The buttercrunch looks a lot different than my dipped version, but this way you can see exactly what you're bidding on.

Dark chocolate and milk chocolate topped toffee

I like my toffee with dark chocolate, since the toffee is already so sweet.  But I know some people like milk chocolate better.  So I did both:  half a batch with milk chocolate chips, the other half with semi-sweet chocolate.  I wonder which will get the higher bid?

Fingers crossed that my toffee will be popular.  Meanwhile, I'm hoping that Christa's fudge is up for auction.  I'll be bringing my checkbook in hopes that I'll win!

Exit Stage Right

Let's face it:  guinea pigs are goofy.  It's one of the things I love about them.  You never quite know what's going through that little pea brain of theirs.  Popcorning is always entertaining.  I love when Bertie does donuts in the cage.  Sometimes their begging will make us laugh, especially if one or the other of us has just fed them.  Occasionally, it's the simplest of actions that will get me to chuckle.  This video is a perfect example.

Willow, being Willow:

I have no idea what could have been so riveting that she needed to drop everything and go.  With traveling noise to boot.  Such a peculiar rodent.

Ornament Season

It's November.  That's when I start gearing up for my home-made Christmas gifts.  There's a flurry of activity near the end of the month:  making almond butter crunch, baking cookies, herding guinea pigs for the annual holiday card photo.  I started making ornaments this week.

I always intend to make them in the summer, when the house is warm and the Sculpey is probably easier to work with.  I was all set to get a jump start this summer, when I was stuck on the couch doing nothing else.  But did that happen?  No.  However, I did get some ideas of what I wanted to make, which is usually my biggest hurdle.

Apricot Chocolate Ring

A schedule change suddenly bumped up my Breakfast Club obligation by a week.  As I mused what to bake, a coworker suggested one of their favorites:  Apricot Chocolate Ring.

My cousin gave me Chocolate (Practical Cooking) for Christmas several years ago.  It's been a great cookbook so far (although I've only done a few recipes -- I need to start trying more of them!).  All of my friends love the ginger chocolate clusters we make for Easter.  The Apricot Chocolate Ring looked impressive, so I decided to try making it.

It was an instant hit at work and has become one of my Breakfast Club staples.  The dough is a biscuity/sconey consistency and flavor.  Most of the sweetness comes from the swirls of chocolate and chopped up apricot.  Yum.  It goes great with a cup of coffee or tea.  My co-workers agree (because this ring disappeared before the end of the day).

Back for More: Adopting Willow and Pippin

This is the sequel to Discovering Adoption: Athena and Victoria.

I have yet to have a pair of guinea pigs with such a strong bond as Vicky and Athena.  They would bicker and hassle each other like a pair of siblings and yet would cram themselves in their hidey house to sleep together every day.  When we lost Athena, Vicky quickly became lonely and depressed without her constant companion.  This was new for me - my previous single pigs had done well, even thrived, on their own.  I feared for Vicky's well being, so I began my search for suitable companions.

Willow and Pippin

I visited the MSPCA in Boston soon afterward, having seen a pair of guinea pigs on Petfinder.com that  fit my requirements: a pair that were no more than 1 year old.  I brought carrots tops in a plastic bag in hopes of making friends (I had checked with the shelter about bringing food).  I walked into the "small animal" room and discovered that the reaction to a crinkling plastic bag is universal:  an entire wall erupted with frantic wheeking.  Fresh greens were a rare treat for these guys.

The shelter had a dozen guinea pigs, far more than what was posted on Petfinder, aged from 3 months to a few years old.  I wanted to take them all home with me.  After spending an hour observing and examining all of those cute pigs, I finally settled on a mother/daughter pair.  They were  named Alberta and Sheba.  I soon renamed them Willow and Pippin.

Wrangling Wired Pigs

One decent group shot

If I didn't know better, I'd swear my trio of guinea pigs had gotten into the Halloween candy yesterday.  They were certainly jacked up on something!

All I wanted to do was a quick November-themed photo shoot.  I put them in their scenery around 3:30 so they could get used to their surroundings.  I figured they'd be done sniffing and taste-testing in about 20 minutes and we could get to work with a minimum of fidgeting.

Ha.

In 20 minutes Willow was yelling that she was tired of Pinni chasing and climbing on her.  Bertie was taking pot shots at Willow whenever she ran by.  There was rumblestrutting, butt-dragging, teeth-chartering and humping galore.  It was like I suddenly had a trio of boars.  What gives?  It was chaos.

Bertie on the move

So I gave up and let them loose on the floor.  I hoped some more space would let them burn off the extra energy.  The noise!  Pigs were percolating all around the living room and kitchen.  Willow was still squawking at Pinni because she wouldn't leave her alone.  Pinni was grousing at everything.  Only Bertie was fairly quiet and placid, only reaching out to bite Willow as she ran by.

At 5pm I decided to get something productive done and clean their cages while they were on the floor.  The girls get pretty excited when I scoop out old bedding and wash down the cage.  But they get truly hyped up at the sound of fresh bedding getting dumped in the cage.  They line up at the edge of the kitchen doorway and look longingly at their cages.  Please, can we go home now??

Sweet, innocent Willow

Fine.  I put them in their cages.  I figured they'd been running around enough that they'd spend 10 minutes checking every nook and cranny, then plop down for a nap.  Wrong.  Those pigs were so wired, it was nearly another hour before they started to settle in.  Three hours of running around, non-stop, and they still showed no indication of sacking out.

It was getting late I needed those photos.  I decided to take my chances.  Stuffing the cornucopia with hay, parsley and Willow helped a lot.  In the end, after all of that waiting, the photo shoot went pretty smoothly.  One set of shots did the trick.  Amen.

Aren't they adorable?  Such lovely photos with apparently calm, well behaved guinea pigs.  Who would ever believe me if I said it took over three hours to get those little hellions to pose for a few deceptively simple pictures?  They're lucky they're cute or I'd be contemplating Bad Pig Stew for dinner.

Halloween Rehoboth Dance

I always love the Halloween contra dance at Rehoboth.  People dress up in all sorts of neat costumes, get together and have a good time.  Lots of goodies at the break.  Charlie (the cookie man) even brought Oreo Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies, which were positively evil.

There were some great costumes, as usual.  I always get a kick out of the simple, clever costumes.  One girl came as pumpkin pie: an orange shirt with a jack-o-lantern on the front, and the symbol for pi on the back.  There were tons of beautiful and elaborate costumes there last night.  I saw several swashbuckling types with costumes to swoon over.  I even danced briefly with Dr. Horrible!  There was a witch doctor, a couple of flappers, a Hands of Blue (without his partner?), Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, Zorro, a ballerina, some clowns, some farmers, some pirates and others in generally festive/spooky gear.  What fun!

Usually I plan my costume several weeks in advance, to make sure I can get all of the bits and pieces I need.  But somehow Halloween snuck up on me this year, and I found myself wondering what to dress up as on the morning of the dance.  I dug through my closet and came across my goth paraphernalia which I hadn't worn in many years.  Alas, my black nail polish was unusable and I lost my extra tattoo.  I had to do without.

It's one of those basic outfits that can cover a lot of bases.  I was asked if I was a ghoul, a vampire (with a cross around my neck?!?), a dominatrix or a zombie.  Whatever.  It was fun just to dress up in something different.  I kind of ruined the whole severe effect by laughing or smiling (which I tend to do at a dance). 

A new guy is starting work at my company on Monday.  I plan on dressing up like this.  Wonder what kind of first impression that will make?  Whee!

An Abundance of Apples

A couple of weeks ago I bought a bag of apples at my local farmer's market with the intent of making several things, which never quite happened.  I inspected the apples last night and found that one or two of them had gone soft.  Obviously I needed to cook them up, quick!

My first apple pie

Someone in this house (I won't name names) is not overly fond of my apple crisp because it's not sweet enough.  So I decided to try my hand at apple pie.

I dug through my Joy of Cooking (I wonder if anyone in my family has my grandmother's "secret" recipe?) and roughly followed the basic apple pie recipe.  I followed the instructions for a 9" crust, and then discovered I have a 10" pie pan.  Oops.  I will need to fix that if I make this again.  But it covered enough., and into the over it went.

Isn't it a thing of beauty?  (not)  I am obviously not ready to compete with Ever So Humble Pie Company.  The whole kitchen smelled delicious, regardless.


But wait!  There's more! 

French Apple Cake (which passed Poison Check)

I had more apples than would fit in the pie.  While flipping through my cookbook, I came across something called French Apple Cake which seems to be an upside-down cake.  It was an odd recipe:  all of the sugar goes into the fruit; the batter is unsweetened.  And there's not much batter.  I gave it a try.  I had a hard time spreading the batter over the apples because there wasn't that much of it.  So this thing ended up being mostly apples with a bit of biscuit/cake over it.  I didn't had a chance to flip it out of the pan; it was still a little too warm to chance it.  But as you can see from the photo, I did a poison check (there was even less of it left by the time I finished writing this).  Maybe this will make it easier to turn upside-down?

We did not get a chance to try the pie (it was late by the time it came out of the oven).  If the taste-test of the apple cake is any indication, I think pie will be a keeper.  But that awaits the final verdict of the Judge.