Why Do I Never Sleep Well Before a Travel Day?

    (These pans are 5" square. Use just one for thicker fudge.)

Just tired enough. Nope. Not gonna happen. My mind begins a slow spin. I'd considered baking cookies to take to my MIL (86) and my 93-year old Dad, but between the soup making and the spaghetti sauce prep I lost the thread

So... At 12:20am I start thinking about my Mom's fudge. Actually, it's called Mrs Bates' fudge as my Mom learned the recipe in her junior high Home Ec class. (Mrs. Bates' actually showed up across town at our elementary school and taught all my sisters (4) and I  7th grade science.)

We didn't have any exotic ingredients in our home growing up, but we always had Hershey's cocoa, Karo syrup, milk, and vanilla. So, we often whipped up this recipe. And, whipped we did because once the mixture reaches soft-ball stage you must quickly add 3 T. of butter and the teaspoon of vanilla. Then, you stir and stir and stir, until the shine is JUST off the gooey chocolate and you can tell the spoonfuls are slightly mounding. You have to hurry like the dickens to get it poured and smoothed. If you've neglected to butter your dish or pan, you're probably going to end up with a sugary mess. Still edible, I can attest.

Smarty pants me thought I'd judge soft-ball stage with a candy thermometer, but I had a small glass of cold water at the ready. Good thing. Soft-ball arrived a good 15º before the candy thermometer registered it was near. And, I got to retrieve the chocolatey glop out of the water and eat it. Blast from the past!

Let me just say that it was a rare occasion indeed when the Jacobs' family had nuts available. These were toasted at 350º for about 7 minutes before I roughly chopped them.

I sure hope my Dad appreciates this tin of Mom's fudge. He's not the most sentimental of guys, and he's a world class bad and sometimes inappreciative gift receiver. World class. At one point in the past I digressed into giving him a pair of socks with some cash inside. The socks were a part of an old family story he loves to tell. An eccentric shirt-tail relative was known to bark at Christmas or birthdays, "And, don't give me any more damn! socks." The 20s were so that he could choose his own gift. He'd always return anything else he was given. Cash worked.


MRS. BATES' FUDGE

• 2 cups sugar
• 3 T. Hershey's cocoa
• 2 T. Karo syrup
• 1 cup Milk

Butter the serving pan or plate. Set aside. Waxed paper works, too.
Mix the first four ingredients and stir over medium-high heat
Continue cooking until mixture thickens and reaches the soft-ball stage. (When chocolate liquid is dropped into a small glass of cold water, you can easily form a ball using your fingers.)
Now, you must work quickly. Remove from heat.
Have ready:

• 3 T. Butter
• 1tsp. Vanilla

Add the butter and vanilla.
Stir the chocolate mixture rapidly until butter is blended in.
Continue whipping lightly until it begins to thicken. You should notice the sheen is dimming and the spoonfuls begin stacking up.
Pour quickly into prepared pan or plate.
Smooth quickly with a knife or spatula.
Nuts are optional. Today, I sprinkled them into the buttered pan before pouring the fudge over.
Cut squares before fudge hardens too much.
Enjoy!

Eataly

 

I love kitchen gadgets!

All chocolate from Italy!

Today we traveled to Eataly. Not the country but to Eataly, which is fairly new to Chicago. We ended here by default; happily so. Crazy mis-communication took 30 minutes of drive time, so we missed church at 4th Presbyterian.

The plan was to attend church with RvH and CA and then celebrate their birthdays (4/1 and 4/2, respectively) at brunch. Instead we checked-out Eataly, enjoyed croissants and Lavazza coffee, shopped, and bought to-go Paninis--two Figuolas (or something close to that spelling) and a Caprese. They obviously change-up the names as their on-line menu referred to the Caprese as Giulietta.

We loved our experience and brought home some treats (including brown tomatoes!) CA and I later shared the Caprese and fig-gorgonzola-prosciutto Paninis. (RvH chose the fig Panini). Delicioso!

 

 

First photo and the following are not mine. Google "Eataly Chicago Images" for attributions.

Lidia Bastianich, Joe Bastianich, Mario Batali

 

 

ChocolateTrouble

CA and I were reminiscing last weekend about PayDay candy bars. Cannot remember the context, but I was motivated to buy two with plans to chocolate coat them. That's just how my brain works, sometimes.
When I reached into the pantry for the chocolate chips, we had only butterscotch--having tossed the remainders of three degrees of Ghiradelli chocolate chips (milk-semi-sweet-dark) into the recent batch of chocolate chip-pecan-dried cranberry cookies. Just the Tollhouse recipe, but increasing the brown sugar to 1 Cup, and decreasing the white sugar to 1/2 Cup.
I digress...
I proceded to attempt to melt the butterscotch chips. I should have known better. I do know better. By design, baking chips don't melt; they just soften. Not to fear, I had some semi-sweet Baker's chocolate on-hand.

I cut the PayDay into quarters, arranged on waxed paper (a cooling rack would have been better--drips), globbed some softened butterscotch chips on top of each piece, drizzled with microwave-melted Baker's chocolate. Voilà!

They went down easily... There were only 4. YUM. CA ate 2 1.

PEANUT BUTTER CHOCOLATE

I love Reese's Big Cup. It's one of my go-to's when I crave PBC. That, or Haagen Das PBC ice cream, or Ben and Jerry's PB Cup. It's a lethal combination--PBC that is.

So, while grocery shopping I'm tempted by the new Reese's Giant Bar. The verdict? Too much chocolate and not enough peanut butter. As I'm a recent convert to milk chocolate, I'm still sensitive to overly-sweet milk chocolate, and this is...

Lately, my go-to lunch favorite is PB and butter on Oat Nut bread with a side of salty potato chips. Preferably Ruffles, not Lay's. Ruffles are just the right combination of salt and crunch. Oh, and not just butter, but Plugra--French butter. Not as contradictory as it seems, at least in my opinion. Skippy Natural Super Chunk, to be specific. Others prefer Jif, but I've always been a Skippy girl. 1/2 a sandwich works, as the Oat Nut bread is rather large. Yum!

MY FAVORITE CHOCOLATE

The winner has its own website!

CA was clever and filled my Christmas stocking with milk chocolate bars--Perugia, Giradelli, Dove, Hershey's, Lindt, Cadbury...

You see, just a few weeks before Christmas I confessed that I had converted from perferring dark chocolate to loving milk chocolate. CA was doubtful, so he created this test.

Lindt Excellence Extra Creamy Milk Chocolate won my test, hands down! I would have had to re-buy all the chocolate bars to get a photo of the complete array, but since I'm a good Weight Watcher I'm only picturing the winner.

This chocolate is the creamiest, mellowest, flavor-filled, yummo best.

FRANCE: Day 3 - Gourdon y Gorges du Loup

Our favorite French grocery store chocolates.

After café crème at tout le monde en parle—the café in the small shopping center just down the hill from Club Mougins--we drive up to Gourdon, a gorgeous medieval village, and are enrapture by the panoramic view. From Place Victoria there’s a sweeping 80km of coastline from Nice to Théoule-sur-Mer. The day is perfect after a night of rain; we have temperatures exceeding 60˚ and sunshine. The Loup (river) is miles below us, yet we hear its rushing currents.

We make an obvious choice and have lunch at Auberge de Gourdon. No disappointment here—we quickly decide this is our best meal so far. (Laughing as we say it since our only other meal so far was pizza yesterday in Cannes.) Coq au Vin with potatoes dauphinoise, and courgettes. Superb! And, this Coq au Vin includes beef, as well as the traditional chicken, braised in wine. The sauce is divine, and every drop is captured via the Poulaine-like bread.

After lunch, we drive s-curves and switchbacks up and down, around, and along the Loup River to Gorges du Loup, Tourretes-sur-Loup, Vence, Saint Paul-de-Vence, ending in Cagnes-sur-Mer. Absolutely stunning vistas, ravines, gorges, waterfalls, architecture, tunnels… We continuously gasp with delight over the beauty of this region and look forward to sharing this drive with LFW when she joins us at the end of next week.

Our Internet connection at Club Mougins is total crap, so we head to La Terrazza, our local Italian café for free WiFi and dinner. Whoops! They’re open only until 7:00pm—lunch service only and bar service in the early evening. We order some Beaujolais and carafe d’eau and boot up without much difficulty. After a few minutes online, we discuss dinner plans and then I walk to Carrefour for ingredients for pasta.

I dither a bit, and finally decide on tomato and basil sauce, with ground beef, garlic, and Beaujolais over mini fusilli. I settle for the inferior Carrefour baguette because I’m not sure the bolangerie is still open, knowing we can lightly toast it to improve its flavor.

Without an oven, we’re limited on culinary selections. We do have two burners, a microwave, and toaster. I don’t plan to cook much, but after a day out-and-about it’s sometimes attractive to stay in with the BBC or a good book. We drove past a promising traiteur (prepared foods, artfully and appetizingly arranged) in Mougins yesterday which we plan to check out later this week.

I’m reading The Girl who Played with Fire, the second in Karl Larsson’s series of three. He was a good writer who died soon after delivering the three novels for publication.

Carrefour carries the delicious Révillon chocolates we discovered two years ago at the Renaissance Place Vendome. I resisted them morning, but made a special trip into Carrefour this afternoon to rectify that mistake.

LOVING AUSTIN: part 2

Our friends in Austin and their rooftop view from the Ashton

Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center

From the moment we left the plane I knew I loved Austin. The airport is so cool and so Texan and so music-oriented. TL's house is very nice and he is a great host.

CA and I sleep in until noon! Yep, that's right. We did not get out of bed until 12:00. The 5 hour time difference between CST and Hawaii blindsided us. TL had left us coffee in the insulated carafe, so we finally get our eyes open. We do a quick review of the visitor's/siteseeing brochures TL has graciously left on the counter for us, and decide to head to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center south of the downtown area.

CRAVINGS...

Weight Watchers taught me that certain foods for certain people are red-light foods. Be safe; obey the dietary rules. Red means stop, yellow means wait even if you're late, and green means go (or more contemporarily eco-friendly).

My A #1 red-light food would contain peanutbutter and chocolate. I cannot stop once I start whether it is Reese's Big Cups, Haagen Daz peanutbutter-chocolate, Ben & Jerry's peanutbutter cup... You get the picture.

These bars are so frightenly simple using ingredients I always have in my pantry. Only make them when you can share them. Or conversely, only make them when no one is home and you don't have to share. The recipe was passed to me by long-time friend and co-worker Sue Krause.

PEANUT BUTTER CUPS/BARS
1-1/3 Cups Graham cracker crumbs, fine
8 oz. Butter, melted
1 lb. Powdered sugar
1 Cup Peanut butter
16 oz. Hershey's chocolate bar, melted - or chocolate chips

2 tsp. Butter

1. Mix together butter, powdered sugar, peanut butter, and
graham cracker crumbs.
2. Press into a 9 x 12 inch baking pan.
3. Melt chocolate with butter in microwave or in a double boiler, taking care to not let any moisture get into chocolate, or the mixture with congeal.
4. Refrigerate until set; cut into small squares.
5. Keep covered in refrigerator until serving.

I sometimes use an 8x8 or 9x9 pan to make thicker bars.