Salted Dark Chocolate Figs

Serendipity is finding the right Pinterest inspiration on a day when you can actually use it.

Every year, instead of Christmas cookies, my family has the tradition of making chocolate-covered candies.

While gathering ingredients and preparing a batch for dipping (read as: procrastinating on Pinterest), I stumbled across a picture of gourmet figs covered in salted dark chocolate. 

Why order a box, when I already had chocolate ready for dipping! 

DIY Our First Christmas Tree Ornament

In a budding relationship, there are so many important little moments to remember: the first date, the first dance, the first holiday. In all the hustle and bustle of such life-changing events, I love finding little momentos to cherish and save the story behind the memories.

On our first Christmas as a married couple, my husband and I joined my parents and my brother's family for a tractor ride out to Strathmeyer farms, braced against the cold with the comfort of free apples, to search for our first Christmas tree. We made our cuts and waited for the tractor's return to carry our trees back, as my little nephew helped by carrying his own little evergreen branch. My husband marked the trunk with his initials, now a part of my initials, so that our tree would not be lost among the others on the back of the wagon. When my husband trimmed off the bottom of the trunk, I saved the little disc with his initials and turned it into a Christmas tree ornament to commemorate our first tree.

DIY Stuffed Hobbes: The Rebirth of A Childhood Friend

How ever were children of the 80's and 90's to learn a good dose of fantasy, sarcasm, and an impressive vocabulary without the stories of Calvin and Hobbes?

Hobbes was a part of so many of our lives growing up, and that homocidal psycho jungle cat is just as cool now as he ever was.

As children, my brother collected all of the books, and together we mourned the tragedy of the comic's discontinuation from the local funny papers.

Now that my brother has little sons of his own, I felt the time had come for them to have their own adventures with dinosaur-flying spaceships and suicidal snowman while accompanied by their new best friend Hobbes.

However Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, chose not to license his characters for distribution, so you won't find a Hobbes doll sitting on the shelf at your local toy store. So the best option is to make your own*.

Harvest Apple Cranberry Slaw Recipe Review

As a long time proponent of the carnivore lifestyle, Thanksgiving has always been a favorite holiday of mine, in all of its meaty goodness.

There's the meat, the gravy (made of meat juice), the stuffing (pulled from inside the meat) -- really the meat is the star attraction!

It wasn't until much later in my life that I realized that vegetation can be pretty tasty too when it's not unflavored or boiled beyond recognition.

This harvest slaw recipe, with the great pops of color, is one of those good looks for vegetables. Like putting your cat in a really spiffy tuxedo suit; it looks fancy and tastes great too! Wait...maybe that cat analogy wasn't so great after all.

Geronimo! Or Should I Say GeroNaNoWriMo!

November means a lot of things to different people.

For some, it is No-Shave November. For others, it is all about Christmas: the Prequel. But for the writing community, it is all about NaNoWriMo.

 National Novel Writing Month exists as a month-long pledge for aspiring novelists around the world that for once, they won't get distracted, they won't procrastinate, they won't stop. They'll keep going until they have a full 50,000 word novel saved to their harddrive. Or notebook. Or roll of toilet paper...whatever your medium.

The combined encouragement and peer pressure from friends, chat forums, and famous writers alike pushes writers beyond the wall of writer's block. Rather than worrying about writing the best novel ever, the experiment of NaNoWriMo is to just write. It is daunting, but liberating to just get the words down on paper and edit later.

For years, I've watched while my fabulously talented writing friends completed one novel after another. I'd contemplate joining, but could never quite commit out of fear of failing to reach 50,000 words. Let's face it, that's a lot of words.

Then consider that out of all of the months of the year, NaNoWriMo happens in November, which is one of my busiest months as I buy gifts, make stocking stuffers, plan parties. It always seemed like way too much to take on in one month.

But then I had an epiphany.

I started this blog as a sort of New Year's resolution dare to myself. I wasn't doing nearly as much writing as I used to, and I wanted to challenge myself to get back into the narrative habit, to keep those writer's muscles flexing.

While it started as a resolution, it has really developed into a fun challenge for me. Do I succeed in publishing a post once a week? Not always. Do I always polish up my photos to that high-gloss magazine finish? No.

But you know what, I am writing. And that alone is the victory.

With resolutions, we so often get blinded by our high goals that anything less is tempting to call a failure. But just like with learning a new skill or eating properly or going to the gym, every day that I try is a victory.

Every day that you're not wasting on the couch is a victory, even if you're not finishing first for that 10-mile run yet. To try is still a victory.

Have I reached 26,000 words yet in my first year of NaNoWriMo? Not quite. But I am writing a novel that I have neglected for the last eight years, and that alone is cause for celebration.

So with all due respect to Yoda, there is a try, and it is the first step to doing.

What to Do with a Failed Carrot Crop

Gardening is a lot like gambling. Even when you know the rules, you don't have any guarantee that you'll actually win a salad bowl filled with fresh healthy greens.

I've dabbled in gardening now for two years and I just now think that I might know what I'm doing enough to know that knowing what I'm doing doesn't always help.

Take carrots for instance. They are a cooler season crop that are supposed to be pretty hardy. So I first planted them two years ago. Sad little crop. I researched and found they like sandy soil, so I worked in some organic matter into our clay soil and waited for a better harvest this year.

Inverted Reese's Peanut Butter Macaron

Well...that was the idea for today's post anyway. Conceptually, I loved the idea of flipping a Reese's peanut butter cup inside out in macaron form -- chocolate on the inside and crispy peanut macaron shell on the outside. Then for a final touch, dip the macaron sandwich in smooth chocolate.

While the final result was absolutely delicious, if I do say so myself, I don't think it completely captured the peanut butter cup flavor. The chocolate ganache recipe that I chose had a fudgey consistency and sweetly dark flavor, and while that is delish, it's not quite the smooth milky chocolate used by Reese's.

So the search continues. I'll just have to try the inverted Reese's another time...oh how will I ever eat all of the rejects?  

So for today's post, I give you...Peanut Macaron & Chocolate Ganache!