I found two new recipes for Christmas treats this year. One is ridiculous and the other is sublime. *S*
The sublime cookie is a shortbread based treat. You make shortbread from scratch. The recipe makes 48 triangles of shortbread. We discussed it, and feel that we could actually get more cookies from the recipe because it makes such a big cookie.
When the shortbread has cooled, you finely chop pecans, melt 24 caramels, and in a separate bowl melt half a cup chocolate chips with two teaspoons shortening. For each cookie, you dip one side in the caramel, and then in the nuts. When you’ve finished that step, you drizzle the chocolate over the cookies, and chill to set the chocolate. It’s a lot of work, but it makes a lot of cookies. They look and taste wonderful. The hardest part is melting the caramel.
My family says they’ve heard the other recipe called “Haystacks.” You melt chocolate chips and mix them with chow mien noodles and peanuts. It sounds odd, but tastes great!
Chocolate and nuts, how can you go wrong??
Daily Archives: December 21, 2005
When You Can’t Make a Decision
Have you ever been at a point where you can’t make a decision?
I find that when I have a backlog in the office I have that problem. The solution is to sort through everything on my desk and organize it into levels of priority. I separate personal and business things. Then I take the business material and sort it into several stacks: things to be filed, bills, things which require my attention and things which can be thrown away. Once I get into that sorting mode everything falls into place. Occasionally I fill a box with things that don’t fit any of those categories and that’s a really bad move. That box will hang around waiting for my attention for a YEAR! Better to deal with things right away, than to let them build up.
I wonder if that’s a metaphor for life….
Wrapping Rooms, Revisited
(Raising my hand…) Ahem….I’d like to change my vote, if I might.
I come from a rather prolific family. My four siblings have thirteen children and eighteen grandchildren or so. And Dear Husband has four children and now two grandchildren, and the children and some of the grand children are married, so there are spouses to consider….and on and on and on….
Today, I realized that a wrapping room is not as bad an idea as I first thought. For the past two weeks both dining tables in my house have been covered with wrapping paper, tape, name tags, gift bags, ribbon of all texture and (taking a deep breath) gifts.
Someone else who has a large extended family must have decided that they would like to see their dinner table during December, or maybe they wanted a place to stash all the gifts until the big night….er…morning….ummmm DAY!
We have a stash of gifts to take with us on Christmas Eve that will fill the trunk and back seat and a couple of laps. Then there’s the stash that will go with us when we visit Dear Husband’s side of the family. And there’s a smaller stash for us to open Christmas morning. Sounds like overkill, doesn’t it.
If I had planned a wrapping room for this house, I would have added a freezer to store cookies and shelves to store Christmas cookie cans! My house has been disrupted for days between the cookies and gifts, and I’ll be very happy to get it back. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind giving my family gifts. I just need to be more organized about it.
So, maybe that wrapping room wasn’t such a bad idea after all.