Homemade Christmas presents

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caramels, Christmas, gift giving, homemade, postaday2012, presents, sea salt

I ended up making three batches of caramels au Fleur de sel or caramels with sea salt. Why? I’ll tell you; the first batch came out fine, or so I thought, the color was good and the candy thermometer registered around 148 but when I took them out of the refrigerator they weren’t the soft, creamy consistency I was looking for; they had gone to the hard ball stage, which meant I let them get one or two degree’s too hot. The baby girl tried them and let me know that they tasted excellent but since they were destined for my hubby’s Christmas office presents, this was not acceptable.

Back to the drawing board I went. We had to go out shopping to replenish my heavy cream and sugar reserves and we went into T.J. Maxx before getting the cream and sugar because there were five things that we wanted to pick up for Christmas presents. Do you think that we emerged from T.J Maxx with just five items? No, we didn’t, it’s hard to go through a T.J. Maxx without saying ” oh, this is nice, oh this would be a good stocking stuffer, oh my sister would like this” you say that often enough your shopping cart gets full quickly and before you know it, you are spending far more than you had intended. No matter, more Christmas shopping was taken care of today so that is less shopping that would have been done closer to Christmas.

When we got back home, I made two new batches and hooray! They both came out the right color; the light golden caramel color and the right creamy consistency. The baby girl had to do her duty and taste this latest batch and it passed her high standards. My hubby and I spent quite some time together wrapping the caramels in parchment paper after I had cut them up into bite sized pieces and sprinkled them with Himalayan sea salt as a garnish. It took some time because there were so many. I hope that they will be a hit with his colleagues and their wives.

I’ll give away the hard candy caramels as gifts for the holidays as well, to my friends because they are really good with that salty hint that gets your taste buds toward the end, when the candy melts in your mouth. They have had the soft, creamy caramels before, so I’m sure that they won’t mind a change of pace in the consistency, they are still caramely good.

How it should have ended

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characters, endings, novels, postaday2012, re-writing, stories, writers

There was a story you once read (or saw, or heard) – and it didn’t end the way it should have ended. And that really annoyed you, right? So how *should* it have ended?

When I was in high school I didn’t appreciate the tragic romanticism of certain writers such as Tolstoy, Flaubert and Bronte. When I read Anna Karenina, I identified with the confusion and the desire for the seemingly unobtainable and forbidden passions, after all I was a teenage girl, if it is unobtainable and forbidden, it is automatically more desirable. While reading Madame Bovary, I remember getting so exasperated with her, understanding her willingness to risk everything for love but not understanding her concurrent obsession with all things materialistic. Similarly with Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff would drive me mad with his arrogance and refusal to allow anyone in: Catherine herself wasn’t off the hook from my frustration. Her similar arrogance and immaturity vis a vis her true feelings towards Heathcliff made for painful reading at times. All I wanted for these tragic characters was a little happiness and tranquility. Now as an older reader, I appreciate the masterpieces for what they are, brilliant insights into the frailty of human nature and its inner demons.