Treats

Yesterday I spent some time making nuts, garbanzo beans and black-eye pea salad. The salad is for Christmas Eve and the others are for gift giving. The garbanzo beans have a blend of spices that could be considered Moroccan. The batch from yesterday was bland and more chewy than crunchy so I tried again today. I don’t know if they’re quite right yet but my taste tester will be home later today to let me know. Yes, I’ve tasted them but I’m still not sure. If these aren’t great I’m pitching them and deleting the recipe.

The nuts are ones I’ve mentioned here before–spicy, salty and delicious. The initial batch back in November was way too salty but yesterday’s batch was just right and today I made more with thyme instead of rosemary. I don’t need my taste tester to tell me these work.

I also made some candy and we’ll see how it turns out. The leftover bits that I swirled together in the bowl tasted pretty good to me but we’ll see. I’ve been trying to figure out how to duplicate Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Pistachio Toffee without having to actually work too hard at it. I saw Ina Garten make a batch of French bark the other day and, by Jove, a plot was hatched. I beat up some chocolate bars, poured in some chips and then whacked the nuts. I used a bag of toffee bits. I poured the melted chocolate out and swirled it about on my parchment paper and then I layered the bashed nuts and toffee bits into the top. It’s firming up on the kitchen table.

When it came time to wash the chocolate bowl, I realized that I’d also gotten chocolate on the oven mitts and the burner knob. All of that seemed so familiar to me and so I traveled down memory lane a bit to my time as a candy foreman at the local amusement park’s candy store. I remembered how we’d go after the huge blocks of chocolate with an ice pick and then melt everything in the microwave. I’m sure the chocolate quality was whatever the step above worst is but we more than made up for it in sugar.

We’d spend our days making fudge, washing dishes, getting supplies, making fudge, washing dishes, making candy apples, burning ourselves, washing dishes and sitting around in the back room making fun of the customers. I really haven’t eaten fudge since I worked there about 20 years ago (eep!). I guess after making 25lbs of it at a time all summer long you get over wanting it. Today while I was washing dishes, I made sure I didn’t smear chocolate all over my polyester, faux old-world costume.