Everyone needs an Uncle Nate

Christmas magic this year was courtesy of Uncle Nate, Tadd's youngest brother. Nate wanted to play santa and really spoil the kids, and spoil them, he did... He got them everything they wanted, not what boring old mom wanted them to have...

See? A gun, people. A GUN. For my 3 year old. He's totally thrilled.

A ridiculously oversized remote control car, again, he's thrilled.

A barbie computer. Barbie.... did I say that? Didn't come from me. Oh, and Polly Pockets, have you ever heard of those? Let me just say a million bazillion miniscule pieces, with a crawling(ish) 8 month old that loves to eat things off the floor, my idea of a fun time.

Really though, who wants boring old Montessori toys from mom, when you've got an Uncle Nate to supply the best, most battery eating, loud and dangerous toys available?!!

We love you Nate, thanks for bringing Christmas Magic to my otherwise unfulfilled kids.

Because I was a good girl this year....

Santa brought me a new 50 mm portrait lens for my camera.

Henry Approves...

Merry Christmas indeed!!

Caramel pretzel tutorial

Finally! I've promised a few people a tutorial of the famous caramel pretzels we give out at Christmas, so here it is!

 The cast...

I like using the shorter pretzel rods, yes, they are less dramatic looking, but they are far less likely to break, and when you're working with sticky caramel, that's a bonus. I got my pretzel rods at Sams Club. I like to use 3 different kinds of chocolate, white, dark and milk. Do you have an Aldi where you live? Check and see... I buy my European dark chocolate there, and it's pretty cheap, plus it's delicious! I always use Peter's Caramel, you can get it a cake/baking supply stores, but since I don't have one nearby, I ordered mine from Amazon. I think it's a bit more expensive, but it came right to my door, so it was the lesser of two evils for me. I buy the 5 pound block, trust me, you'll use it. 

You'll want to make sure you have plenty of cookie sheets (I have 4 and they were all used), waxed paper, microwave safe bowl for melting the caramel, and a skillet with sides for melting the chocolate, you could also use a microwave safe bowl for that too.

OK let's get started....

First cut a softball sized chunk of caramel off the big brick... melt in a microwave safe bowl for 1 minute on high, then at 30 second intervals until melted. It took me 1 and a half minutes. Don't get it too warm, you want it thick, but manageable. Here is an illustration of how Tadd does the caramel. It turns out looking so nice, we get so many questions about how we make the caramel all twisty like... Tadd really is the caramel master, he does every single one!

Here is an important note... don't line your pan with waxed paper yet! The caramel will stick to the waxed paper and you will scream and curse because all your hard work was in vain. I'm serious. Just prop the little beauties up on the side of the cookie sheet like so. This is why you don't want the caramel too hot, or it will drip down and make them all funky and misshapen.

Now, if you want some to have nuts, before you prop them up to dry, take the caramel pretzels right from the hands of the twister, and roll it in chopped, toasted nuts (I like almonds, peanuts and pecans) you'll end up grabbing a handful of nuts and squeezing them around the pretzel stick before too long, it's easier that way, and the nuts stick better.

Now these babies have cooled long enough to make the caramel hard-ish. Plus I run the pan out to my garage when it's done. Did I mention it was -33 here yesterday? Yes, you read that right, it was negative 33 degrees.  That means my garage was a balmy 11 degrees, and those pretzel sticks firmed up real fast.  

While the pretzel sticks are firming up, you'll want to melt the chocolate. I have a cuisinart  electric frying pan that works perfectly for this. You'll want to break your chocolate up into pieces and put in the frying pan, and turn it on the WARM function. Put on the lid and let it sit for a few minutes, grab a spatula and give it a stir, you'll be surprised how quickly it melts. Now my Grammy taught me that the trick to avoiding "blooms" or white powdery looking chocolate is to keep it moving while you're dipping, or in our case, drizzling, since it wasn't deep enough to dip. Once the chocolate is melted, turn the pan OFF, if the chocolate starts to get too firm, just turn it back to the warm function for 5 seconds, then turn it back off, this will be enough heat to re-melt it. Don't forget to keep stirring while you dip. You don't want too thick of a chocolate layer, or it will tend to pool, once I get a layer of chocolate on my pretzel stick, I turn it upside down and really give it a good shake, get all that extra chocolate off, or it will pool. You can go ahead and prop your pretzel sticks up again, or you can lay them flat, we did both and I prefer propping them up.

When the chocolate isn't set yet, don't forget to use sprinkles if you want. I found these cute snowflake sprinkles at Crate & Barrel.

Now it's time to dip some white chocolate pretzels. I actually did buy white chocolate this year instead of just the "dipping dots" or whatever they sell at michaels,  and to tell you the truth? I don't prefer one over another, so if you're like me, you can save yourself some money and buy the Michaels stuff! Anyway, the white chocolate is the easiest, my best advice is to not make it too warm, you want it barely thick enough to pour. It helps to have a cold cookie tray too.

I used sparkling sugar because I ran out of the edible glitter, which I like much better, but the sparkling sugar worked just fine.


I found this at walmart for cheap, cheap cheap...

Mmmm....

After these were firmed up, I stacked them up in preparation for bagging.

I drizzled a bunch of them, don't look too close, I did a horrible job!

The finished product, all bagged and ready for Tadd to give his coworkers. The big container of pretzels made enough for 35 bags, 6 in each bag. This was not counting all the ones Harrison snagged. Kudos to all the people that have cooking blogs, this post took me a loooong time to do!! I'm not sure when I'll do another tutorial! Merry Christmas everyone!

In case you were feeling sorry for my kids....

In case you were feeling sorry for my kids, being forced to eat plain old boring sugar cookies, without any frosting or sprinkles, let me put your mind at ease.  No one, and I repeat NO ONE goes without their holiday allotment of sugar cookies and sprinkles around here. No sir.. 

OK, except maybe Henry, he's still eating pureed green beans, sweet potato, brown rice and banana.... and yes, mixed together.

He looks pretty happy about it, no?  Also, yet again, all 3 kids are in their PJ's. Not like anyone's keeping track, right? RIGHT?

Next time I'll be more specific...

Next time I'll ask Harrison to please just give Henry "two or three" puffs  instead of "a few." Apparently, my three year old needs clarification.... If you click on the picture to make it larger, you can see just how many puffs are on Henry's tray, even  more are down by his feet. When I picked him up, his breath smelled like mangos, the look on his face says "it wasn't me, mom." Somehow I think that's going to be the pattern around here....

It's that time again....

I've been working on these babies for the past few weeks and now It's time they left home for greener pastures. I would have sent them yesterday, but Tadd picked one up and commented that it felt a little heavy, and maybe I should weigh one.... drats. It was .15 oz over the limit for a .42 cent stamp. Gah, I have to go back and get all .60 cent stamps. Not so bad if I weren't mailing out 100 of these bad boys! Wish me luck at the post office with 3 kids this morning.... I'll surely need it.

** Update.... the post office was horrible!! I stood in line for 30 minutes only to be told they didn't have any .17 cent stamps in stock... I must have given them the look of death, (holding a crying baby helps) because they said they would check in back - 25 more minutes and they "found" them. My kids though? They were troopers, and actually very well behaved. The good news? The cards are officially in the mail. If I have your address, chances are you are getting one.

Sugar Cookies.... how I love thee

Now, my heart really does belong to chocolate, but a good buttery sugar cookie ranks right at the top of my list. That being said..... if you know me at all, you know how freaky I am about feeding my family organic whole foods, including organic fresh ground whole grains. I use whole wheat in just about every recipe that calls for flour, though in years past I have caved and used white flour for my cookie baking. Well, this summer I got some "pastry" or soft wheat when I was ordering my grain from Walton feed, so my white flour days are long gone. I grind my pastry wheat fresh and use it in everything that doesn't need too much gluten (once I accidentally used my pastry wheat to make bread with.... not good) I use it for pancakes, crepes, cookies, brownies.... etc. So when my peeps over at Our Best Bites posted a recipe for sugar cookies, I knew I had to try out my pastry wheat.  I can't tell you how delicious these cookies are, they truly melt in your mouth..... and yes, they are made with whole wheat, so instead of eating 2 I can eat 9, right?

 A girl can dream anyway.... 

And while I was thinking how lame I was for not having any cookie cutters and cutting all my sugar cookies out with the mouth of a drinking glass, all I had to do was open the package that Grandma sent, waiting patiently under the tree.... behold, it was filled with cookie cutters! Oh well, even if it was too late for the cookies, the kids were kept busy with playdough for a minute while I fixed dinner.

What's that? Why yes, my children ARE in fact in their pajamas at 5pm. I promise, they did get dressed at one point today. At least Harrison matches!

It's pretzel time again.

Tadd & I have had a tradition for the past 3 or 4 years wherein we stay up late one night and make literally hundreds of chocolate dipped pretzel rods. It's quite the process really, it takes loads of chocolate, caramel, pretzels, cookie trays and time. Every year we say "we are not doing this next year" but at the beginning of December I'll go ahead and order the caramel and shop around for sprinkles and new decorating ideas.... 2 years back we had a "snowflake" theme. Here is a bag of the finished product. We probably made 40 bags of pretzels, about 5 or 6 in each bag.

We used white chocolate, dark chocolate, and milk chocolate. I also used the edible glitter on the white chocolate pretzels, they looked like snow- it really tuned out cute. Harrison helped out a bit before going to bed. Well..... maybe helped is the wrong term.

Pretzelfest 2008 starts this week, heaven help me.... Oh, and the hardest part? Not eating 1/3 of them before they are bagged and given away.

The Star

Harrison was featured as the "star student" at preschool this week. He was able to bring a bag full of his loot to show off to his friends and teachers. He was so excited, I think it was the first time we were early to preschool and all because Harrison was so excited to be star student! He dressed himself, put his shoes, coat and hat on and was standing by the door long before anyone else was ready. He chose what he wanted to go in his show and tell bag all by himself, it included:

A teddy bear he's been sleeping with since his 1st birthday

A john deere tractor replica

A monster truck (much to my chagrin)

A snapshot of Henry - how cute is that?

Does this list not say it all about Harrison? What a guy.

Big boy

Harrison age 14 months...

I loved this outfit on Harrison, he wore it all the time, in fact I loved it so much I saved it for Henry....

I just never suspected he would fit in it when he was barely 7 months old (it's size 12-18 months). Maybe it shrunk? Or maybe he's just going to be a big boy, he did recently grow out of his infant carseat, we had to move him to a big boy carseat (rear facing still, of course). Harrison better watch out, maybe he won't be able to tackle Henry for much longer!

A first...

Poor Henry has been suffering through a nasty cold the past few days, so imagine my surprise this morning when amidst his whining and nose wiping, he waved bye bye for the first time.... it's funny, you would think after three kids little milestones like this wouldn't mean as much, but I was practically bursting with pride at little Henry, way to go little man!!

Just today...

I was proofing some photos from our Christmas card shoot last night and had to do a double take when I looked at these photos of Maya. Is it just me, or did she grow up overnight? She somehow looks older, I guess she IS five, but still, wasn't she just born??

I don't know.... is it just me? Or did she really grow up overnight.....