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The Power of Marketing and Advertising: Peach Muffins

8 Jun

We can thank a radio commercial for inspiring me to make homemade peach muffins!

Those of you who are friends of mine on Facebook, you may have followed this story last week through my status updates and I know you’ve been waiting for this recipe to post, but those who are not, it’ll be new to you. So if you’re aware of it, bear with me.

Last week I was running between stories for the newspaper, when I heard a commercial on the radio for Honeydew Donuts and their peach muffins. We have several Honeydew Donuts right in our area, and I love their peach muffins!

I was hungry. Starving, really.

I was going to get myself one of those peach muffins, ASAP.

I got out my gift card. I got ready to go to the next closest Honeydew. I could taste it.

But then, as I drove some more, I got to thinking, “I have frozen peaches in my freezer. I could just go home and MAKE peach muffins. Then, instead of having one, I’d have lots of them. Everyone could have one. They could be today’s after school snack and then tomorrow’s breakfast.”

I talked myself out of the Honeydew trip.

I put away my gift card and went home.

Only problem was, once I got home, it was now 1:30. I was of course, still starving and of course, I had no peach muffin and I had no recipe to make them either.

When one is starving, as I was, one chooses huge lunches. Well, at least I do. So rather than having a little peach muffin for lunch, I had Eggs Benedict, minus the ham/Canadian Bacon, since we had none.

As I sopped up my Hollandaise Sauce with my English Muffin, I browsed the internet for peach muffins. I came across this one on Allrecipes.com. When I read the summary from the original cook, it said, “just like peach cobbler in a muffin,” and I knew I’d found my recipe. I was sold.

These muffins were super-easy to make. My frozen peaches were already peeled and sliced. I get them for smoothies from the frozen food section at Aldi’s and I’d used half the bag for smoothies earlier in the week and had half the bag left. It was the perfect amount. All I had to do was chop them up.

My favorite thing though, about this recipe: it made 16 muffins. With a family of five, one dozen never seems to be enough. With 16 it was perfect. The girls and I all got to have one after school, and then we all had one or two for breakfast the next day, too. I even had enough left to give some to my friend Donna to try out.

I highly recommend this recipe. It got thumbs up from everyone, and I totally recommend using the Aldi’s frozen peaches if you don’t have fresh ones, (or try out whatever frozen peaches you have near you).

****OMG: Just as I’m about to post this recipe, I notice that it says you can also make this into a bread, two loaves!! I’m SO doing that next time! This is the best recipe EVER!!!!****

Enjoy!

Because this recipe yields so much, you need two good-sized bowls for mixing your ingredients.

INGREDIENTS

  • 3 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 1/4 cups vegetable oil
  • 3 eggs, lightly beaten
  • 2 cups white sugar
  • 2 cups peeled, pitted, and chopped peaches (or in my case, Aldi’s frozen peaches)

DIRECTIONS

  1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Lightly grease 16 muffin cups.
  2. In a large bowl, mix the flour, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt. In a separate bowl, mix the oil, eggs, and sugar. Stir the oil mixture into the flour mixture just until moist. Fold in the peaches. Spoon into the prepared muffin cups.
  3. Bake 25 minutes in the preheated oven, until a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes before turning out onto wire racks to cool completely.
    **For the two loaves of bread you can “increase the baking time to 1 hour at 350 degrees F and use 2 loaf pans.”***UPDATE: On June 17 I used this recipe to make one loaf bread and three mini loaves as end of year gifts. It worked out great!! I cooked the mini loaves until a knife inserted in the center came out clean, and then I continued on with the larger loaf until the same. The entire baking time was approximately one hour.***

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Balsamic & Parmesan Roasted Cauliflower

7 Jun

Besides the new recipe for cauliflower, this was also the first time I’d used Panko bread crumbs.

Veggies are great side dishes to your main meal, but finding new ways to cook them is always a challenge. A while back, I came across this recipe for Balsamic & Parmesan Roasted Cauliflower from the EatingWell website. Since I love both those ingredients, I thought I’d try out the recipe. I liked it, Don liked it, but the kids didn’t love it. They thought the balsamic was too strong, but did I mention that I liked it?? I’d make it again, but provide an alternate vegetable for the kids.

Additionally, Panko Bread Crumbs: am I the only person on the planet who had never used them before?? I love them!! They have so much more crunch to them than regular bread crumbs do.

This meal was a meal of chicken thighs, which I don’t buy often because they’re fattier than some of the other kinds of chicken parts I buy, but every once in a while I just want a change so I buy them.

Anyway….here is the recipe for the cauliflower. If you try it, let me know what you think!

INGREDIENTS

  • 8 cups 1-inch-thick slices cauliflower florets, (about 1 large head; see Tip)
  • 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1 teaspoon dried marjoram
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • Freshly ground pepper to taste
  • 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
  • 1/2 cup finely shredded Parmesan cheese

DIRECTIONS

  1. Preheat oven to 450°F.
  2. Toss cauliflower, oil, marjoram, salt and pepper in a large bowl. Spread on a large rimmed baking sheet and roast until starting to soften and brown on the bottom, 15 to 20 minutes. Toss the cauliflower with vinegar and sprinkle with cheese. Return to the oven and roast until the cheese is melted and any moisture has evaporated, 5 to 10 minutes more.

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Experiences like no other

4 Jun

Girl Scouting has provided our girls with experiences they might not be able to get anywhere else.

I’ve just returned from a Girl Scout camping weekend. Not quite a whole weekend, but about 36 hours.

Long enough.

It was not my first time going to, participating at or working for a Girl Scout Camp. I’ve been a leader for five full years now, and as a kid I was a Girl Scout for many years. I went to camp then, I’ve worked there as an adult so my kids could go, and I’ve chaperoned camping trips for all my daughters with this weekend being the most recent one.

Of course it rained like crazy yesterday, poured actually. Again.

And in my head through much of the trip I was thinking, “I’m getting too old for this ‘job.'” I thought it as I drove half the troop down there in the rain yesterday with my co-leader driving the other half down right behind me, and I thought it as I traipsed all through the camp in the rain, and I thought it as I laid awake in our leader “cabin” until 4am listening to them laugh and giggle and tell stories.

Four A.M.

But, throughout the whirlwind weekend I also watched them in amazement, thinking and talking with my co-leader (who was a saint to spend her wedding anniversary at a rainy camp in a cabin with me rather than at home with her husband of 16 years) about how much these girls have grown and matured and changed from when we first started this troop together as Brownies, second graders, five years ago. We looked at them all, not even believing it.

We had eight really great stations to rotate through at camp yesterday which took us from first thing in the morning until the movie and campfire at the end of the night. We watched them create beautiful beaded jewelry at the jewelry-making station, being instructed in the craft by some of the leading women in the jewelry industry here in our state. We listened along with them as they learned about how to write a check and a deposit slip at the financial literacy class, from an instructor at one of the local universities. We cheered and encouraged them as they shot their bow and arrow during archery class, knowing full well that some of them were doing it for the first time. There was a science class, a tie-dye station, a dance class where they learned the moves to an upcoming flash mob taking place this summer, S’Mores, and they were laughing and smiling, and hugging, and chatting, and laughing some more, the entire day.

And night.

Did I mention they were awake in their tent til 4am?

Many of them haven’t slept too far away from home before. Many of them have never slept in a tent or cleaned a latrine (there are some benefits to being a leader and not having to do the camp “kapers” is one of them) many of them have never shot a bow and arrow or a bottle rocket or been in a flash mob before.

Being a Girl Scout has allowed our own daughters and the scouts we lead, to experience things they couldn’t experience in the normal course of their days. With us as leaders, our troop has taken field trips, had a scholarship named after our troop, done community service projects, slept inside an aquarium near the shark tank, gone behind the scenes on movie sets, at radio stations, TV shows, movie theaters, stage theaters, been on the news, in the newspaper, met the mayor, a city councilwoman, a comic book designer, learned how to collect, categorize and display postage stamps, sold cookies, cookies and more cookies-showing a business sense and dedication like you wouldn’t believe- and they’ve loved every minute of it.

And now, they’ve gone camping. Overnight.

All because I chose to be a Girl Scout leader five years ago so that my daughter could be a Girl Scout.

So as I laid in my cabin last night, chatting with my co-leader til I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer, someone I hardly knew before scouting, as we were listening to them laugh and giggle and shriek, I knew that this was the reason I was there at that moment.

Thank you Girl Scouts!

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Cookies for a Cause: The Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookie that started it all

1 Jun

Baking cookies to help fight kids’ cancer might be the most worthy cause I’ve ever baked for.

Have you ever heard of Cookies for Kids’ Cancer? If you haven’t, you should check out the link and read more about it. It’s a very worthy cause: bake sales to help find a cure for kids’ cancer.

Earlier this year I did a story about a local bake sale event hosted by Heather Wirtz, the editor of the Macaroni Kids newsletter for the Cranston/Kent area. The sale raised money for the Cookies for Kids’ Cancer non-profit organization and it was hugely successful. I baked one of my favorite Christmas Cookie recipes, Brown Eyed Susans, for the bake sale.

At the event itself I was given several handouts to help me in writing my article and I met one of the family members, Bonnie Soper, who told me how her cousin Gretchen lost her son to childhood cancer several years ago. Gretchen and her husband founded Cookies for Kids Cancer as a way to fight back, and they started with a simple bake sale.

One of the handouts that was given to me was for the “Cookies for Kids’ Cancer Best Bake Sale Cookbook” and on the flip side was a recipe for Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies and it was entitled, “The Cookie That Started It All.”

Other than the baking time, which was cut off, the full recipe was there, and I decided that I wanted to try out the recipe some day, in honor of Cookies for Kids’ Cancer. I wrote the news story about Heather’s bake sale in January and it was almost June before I had the chance to try out the cookie recipe.

They were delicious and with every bite I thought of this important cause, and I knew I had to write about it. I’m so grateful and thankful every day that my family has its health. Those who know me well, know my kids are sick constantly, weekly, and it’s exhausting keeping up with it all. But they’re not terminally ill, and I keep that in mind daily as well as every week when I’m running someone to a doctor for one ailment or other. We are very, very lucky. In the big picture, they are healthy.

Caroline was a big help with these cookies, scooping and pressing the batter for each and every one.

Speaking of my kids, my daughter Caroline was a big help to me this past weekend as I made these cookies to take with us to a Memorial Day cookout. The recipe yields quite a few cookies and that’s one reason I made it. There were enough to bring and enough to leave some home as well. I made all the batter and she scooped it onto the tray and flattened them to go into the oven.

The recipe, as I said above, did not have the bake time on the card, which was an advertisement for the cookbook. But, I looked up a similar recipe in one of my cookbooks here and found that 10-12 minutes on a cookie sheet was the perfect time. The only time I went over that time was when I used a baking stone. I find that those take longer for cookies to bake than the metal trays.

I hope you’ll consider doing a Cookies for Kids’ Cancer bake sale for your organization’s next fundraiser, or that the next time you’re looking for a unique gift, you go to their site and order some Cookies for Kids’ Cancer cookies to be sent to that special someone.

And now, here is the recipe, the Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookie that started it all.

This recipe makes a lot of batter so you need a good, strong mixer to mix it up.

CHOCOLATE CHIP OATMEAL COOKIES

Yield: 3-4 dozen cookies
INGREDIENTS

2 sticks unsalted butter at room temperature

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 cup light brown sugar

1 large egg at room temperature

1 large egg yolk, at room temperature

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

2 cups all purpose flour

1 cup quick cooking oats or old fashioned rolled oats

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. kosher salt (I didn’t have kosher)

3 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

Cookies bake until lightly browned around the edges.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Place butter and sugars in the bowl of a mixer fitted with a paddle and beat until smooth and creamy.

Add egg, egg yolk, and vanilla, one at a time, beating well between additions.

Place the flour, oats, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a separate bowl; mix well and add to the butter mixture.

Beat until everything is well incorporated. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, add the chocolate chips and beat again.

(You can cover this and refrigerated up to one week.)

Form the dough into heaping teaspoon sized-balls and place them about two inches apart on the prepared cookie sheet. I used the smaller Pampered Chef scoop to scoop out my balls of dough.

Using your palm, gently press down.

*At this point the recipe begins to say how you can alternately roll the dough into a log, and it gets cut off here. I assume it says you can slice and bake them. The baking time is cut off as well, since this was an advertisement for the cookbook. However, I can take it from here.*

Bake 10-12 minutes on a cookie sheet, slightly longer on the baking stones, until lightly browned around the edges.

Let sit 1-2 minutes on cookie sheet to cool before removing to cool completely on wire racks.

Consider hosting a Cookies for Kids’ Cancer bake sale for your organization’s next fundraiser.

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The Big Salad

31 May

You can load almost anything into a salad.

Anyone out there a Seinfeld fan?

Anyone remember the episode with “The Big Salad?” According to The Big Salad’s very own Wikapedia page, “”The Big Salad” is the 88th episode of the NBC sitcom Seinfeld. This was the second episode for the sixth season. It aired on September 29, 1994.”

So there you go. More information than we needed to know about that episode, and there’s even more if you click on the link to the page itself if you so desire, but that’s not crucial today’s post.

I recently got one of those AllRecipe.com emails for a Wonderful Berry Salad and when I clicked on it to see, it was a Raspberry Walnut Dinner Salad which looked so good and reminded me of my Strawberry Salad from a few weeks back. But it also reminded me of The Big Salad episode on Seinfeld and the fact that we often will make a Big Salad ourselves either as the dinner or to go alongside the dinner.

The one shown here is one we made a few weeks back. The thing I like about salads is 1) you can put just about anything you want in them and 2) people can eat what they want to and skip the rest that they don’t like, so basically it’s something everyone likes. I often get tired of the traditional lettuce/tomato/cucumber salad, and throwing in random “stuff” makes it more fun to serve and eat. I like hearing my family say that the love this part or that part of the salad. The salad above has lettuce, olives, craisins, cheddar cheese, strawberries and grape tomatoes.

So the next time you’re at a loss for what to make, consider The Big Salad. See what you have in your house and throw it all in there!

Enjoy!

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What’s For Dinner Wednesday: Chicken and Veggies with Rice

30 May

This may not have been on Alex’s Like List, but it sure was on mine!

If you’re a regular reader, you know I’ve been going through my friend Karen’s cookbook from college almost page by page, making all my old favorites again. Last week I made one that was a big hit with everyone, except Alex, who took one look and said, “THIS is NOT on the Like List.”

But for the rest of us it was. Don even had it leftover a day or so later for dinner and said it was just as good leftover as the first day.

Like List or not, I’d make it again. According to Karen, she still makes this at her house too, and she sometimes adds shrimp, which does happen to be on Alex’s Like List, so maybe next time I’d throw some in. It’s the kind of thing you can put in whatever you want, as you’ll see from the recipe.

Super easy, super delicious, super good.

CHICKEN AND VEGGIES WITH RICE

I put all my fresh cut veggies into one bowl and threw the whole thing in at once when it was time. Saves on cleanup.

INGREDIENTS

1 lb. chicken (I used tenders)

2 cups fresh veggies, cubed (she suggested broccoli, carrots, mushrooms, peppers, squash etc. I used broccoli, peppers, mushrooms and carrots. I almost did onion too, but quit while I was ahead.)

1pkg. rice pilaf (I might double it next time, I felt like we needed more rice for all the other stuff we had in there.)

1/4 cup parm. cheese

Italian Dressing

DIRECTIONS

Marinate chicken in the dressing.

Cube and cook in large skillet on stove.

Remove.

Prepare rice according to stove top directions in the same skillet.

Halfway through the cooking, add veggies. Cover and cook until rice is done. (This steams the veggies right in the rice.)

Add chicken and parm cheese, toss and simmer 5 more minutes and serve.

Quick, easy and delicious!

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Top 10 Worst Foods for Kids to Eat

29 May

Do we cut them out altogether or just keep eating them once in a while?

It’s been a while since I’ve seen one of these lists and shared it with you, but since we’re just coming off a holiday weekend, I thought it’d be a good time to post this.

The list came from the Livestrong website. I see several foods we eat on this list. Do you?

I wonder to myself: do I stop feeding my kids these foods or do I continue to do so in moderation?

What do you think? No more hot dogs and mac & cheese???

********************************************************************************************

TOP TEN WORST FOODS FOR KIDS TO EAT

Hot Dogs

Soda

Sticky Candy

Doughnuts

Prepacked lunch kits

Sugary breakfast cereals

Microwavable prepackaged dinners

Juice Drinks

French Fries

Toaster Pastries

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Grandma Grello’s Green Bean Marinade

22 May

Marinated green beans are great for cookouts and great to bring to a party. This is one of our favorite summer “regulars.”

Grandma Grello’s birthday is this week. There’s a story surrounding her birthday where she was born on one day but it didn’t get recorded for a few days, making the date on her birth certificate different than the date that she was actually born. This makes her birthday date a little sketchy, but we always celebrate it some time this week. In honor of that, I thought I’d share her Green Bean Marinade recipe with you today. Summer is here and we’ve already made this once, one time of many over the upcoming months.

One thing we’ve discovered, is that if you want to, when you’re done marinating the green beans, you can re-use the marinade to marinate broccoli, which is also very good.

Last time I made this, Caroline picked the beans, minced the garlic and pretty much did the entire recipe herself with my supervision, so it’s a good recipe for kids who like to help in the kitchen, as mine do, and I love the idea of passing along family recipes to my kids at a young age, so that when they’re old enough to do their own cooking, they’ll have all their favorite recipes on hand and they will have made them, too.

GRAM GRELLO’S GREEN BEAN MARINADE

Caroline made most of this recipe by herself last time around. Her garlic was so perfectly minced, I thought Grandpa Grello had come back and done it himself, as he was always known for the most perfectly cut ingredients when he cooked.

INGREDIENTS

1 pound clean, snapped fresh green beans, the ends picked

1/3 cup blend of olive oil and vegetable (or canola) oil

1/4 cup white vinegar or cider vinegar (we use white mostly)

salt

pepper

parsley

garlic

Caroline has the marinade ready and awaiting the cooked beans.

DIRECTIONS

Bring salted water to a boil in 2 qt. sauce pan.

Drop in beans.

Bring to a boil and cook for 10-15 minutes uncovered.

Remove with a slotted spoon (apparently this step is the most important. Spoon must be slotted.)

Don’t drain or rinse and place beans into the bowl that has the marinade.

Marinate in the fridge for several hours.

Remove garlic and serve. (We never remove the garlic.)

Wings, roasted potatoes and marinated green beans; a simple summertime meal.

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Thinking outside the birthday party box

21 May

Birthday parties for kids can have a tendency to take on a life of their own.

Our family is full of rules.

We more often say no than yes, it seems, and we have a rule for everything.

We can’t help it, that’s just how we are and it works for us, at least for now. That being said, we have birthday party rules at our house. I know I’ve talked about it before, but I’ll tell again just so I can get on with my story for today.

Our rules are as follows: You can’t have a “friend party” until you are five and when you do, you can have it at the house with five kids. At six, seven, eight and nine, you can have your birthday party out of the house, with more people (within reason, and we never invite the entire class or grade, or even “all the girls”).

At ten you’re back to having it at the house with just a few people. We like the “Almost Sleepover” or “Mock Sleepover” (come in pj’s stay late, go home to bed) at ten because many people (ourselves included) do not allow their kids to sleep at someone else’s house and our kids tend to turn ten before other people’s kids are ten. At 11 and beyond they can have a sleepover if they want, with a few kids (our house is not huge and there are already five of us in it at all times, so space constraints are an issue) or we can discuss another inexpensive, small outing option if desired.

Now that you have the back story on our birthday party rules, here’s where I was going with all of that.

We have to give Alex all the credit for thinking out of the box for this party.

Our youngest daughter turned seven at the end of the month a couple of months ago. We opted to hold off on the friend party until after the Easter holidays and after school vacation, which led us to the end of April. However, way back in October, she already knew what kind of party she wanted: a cooking party and she wanted it to be at home. She planned the entire thing out herself. It would be a Hello Kitty theme. They would make homemade pizza (we do that a lot here) and decorate cupcakes (which turned into decorating donuts when we got the Babycakes Donut Maker as a Christmas gift) and decorate aprons.

We were thrilled. Birthday parties out of the house tend to be expensive: $10 per kid on the low end and as much as $17 per kid or more on the higher end, with some having a minimum of paying for ten kids whether they are there or not. Some include food, some do not. Some include invitations, some do not. However, “everyone does it” so we have tried to keep up while establishing what we feel are fair rules and reasonable budgets for our parties, and having had to say no to some party options our kids have thrown out at us as suggestions in the past.

But I can’t lie: we were jumping for joy in our heads when she explained what she wanted for her party.

The day of the party came, and she had invited seven kids to come. They all were able to come except one, so there were seven little girls plus my two older daughters who served as the helpers.

First activity: making a variety of homemade pizzas.

We bought enough dough that every pair could make one pizza (and Elizabeth helped out when the seventh friend didn’t arrive). We had two cheese and sauce pizzas, one mushroom, olive and cheese pizza, and one cheese and pepperoni pizza.

That week, I found a “20% off your whole purchase” coupon for Michael’s Crafts, so I went and got 8 aprons. I already had fabric markers here, but I bought a set just in case mine were dried out, but I didn’t need them so I returned them along with an extra apron.

I made the donuts from scratch with Caroline ahead of time, along with the chocolate frosting with Elizabeth while the kids were making their aprons, and each child was able to decorate and eat four donuts. I had purchased one Hello Kitty cake decorating kit which contained sprinkles, cupcake wrappers, candies and tooth pick decorations, and I split it for use between the family party and the friend party. I bought all my paper goods at the dollar store in time for the family party and used what was left for the friend party.

And no, I didn’t care that the paper goods weren’t Hello Kitty. Apparently no one else cared either.

Second activity: decorating aprons.

The kids had a blast.

Alex had a blast.

The moms that stayed, loved it.

We had fun, and it was an easy party. I was relaxed at the end, not exhausted and not broke. It was as much fun (maybe more so) than any party we’ve had out of the house, and best of all, she was happy.

The entire party cost us $32.

We didn’t figure that part out until the end, as we weren’t trying to keep it that low on purpose, but when the party was over and we sat back and realized all we’d been able to do at such a low price, we were amazed.

It just goes to show that even though we sometimes live in a “top this” kind of world and there’s lots of keeping up to be done, that it doesn’t always have to be that way. You can think out of the box, as Alex did back in October, and do something different and still have fun.

It may not always be this way. She may want to have her next party somewhere else, and we’re more than willing to oblige, as long as it stays within the parameters we’ve set, but for now, we’re celebrating the success of this year’s party and remembering more often than not, that it can be done.

PRICELESS.

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Speaking of hot fudge…

18 May

Homemade hot fudge. I like it hot, or cold, believe it or not.

I’m sure someone was, somewhere, right?

No seriously, I actually was speaking of hot fudge. Remember? On Monday?

No? Okay look here. Now do you remember?

So yes, when I was typing Monday’s post and talking all about ice cream and hot fudge, it reminded me that I bought the evaporated milk that I needed for my homemade hot fudge recipe the last time I was at the store, and that I did not in fact, buy any more hot fudge for the fridge because I intended to make some.

That post was just enough to inspire me (again) to get right on that and make the hot fudge. So the other night I had a meeting but while I was gone the kids were going to get to have ice cream as a special treat. The fudge is quick and easy to make so I made up a batch before I left for my meeting. The funny thing was though, when I went to actually make the fudge, we were completely out of chocolate chips.

I kid you not.

And it wasn’t me. I didn’t eat them. Well, at least I didn’t eat ALL of them.

The guilty part(ies) jumped into the car though and ran to TWO stores (the first one was out, how does that happen??) and finally came back with not one, but two bags of chocolate chips, just to be safe.

Crisis averted.

The cool thing (no pun intended here) about this hot fudge is that you can use it on ice cream or on fruit, or as a dip, or however you’d like to. But my all-time favorite thing to do with this fudge is to have it cold, one spoonful a day after my lunch. It’s just enough to give me that little bit of chocolate I crave. Every day.

Mmmm….a hot fudge sundae on a Monday night. Perfect for any night of the week!

When I came home the night of the meeting Don told me that the fudge had gotten thumbs up from everyone, so that was good. And the kids took pictures of their sundaes in my absence as well, also good so that we have some photos for this post. But the best news of all: there was plenty of fudge left for me. I had some right then and there with a banana (no ice cream, thanks) and then each day after my lunch, well, you know.

Even though I haven’t made this hot fudge in years and years, I’ve been making this same recipe since I was a kid living at home with my parents and I still have it on the exact same little square of paper from the Carnation Evaporated Milk can that it came off of that day. I wish it had a date on it, but it does not. It’s just old, that’s all I can tell you.

This recipe has been stuck to many a kitchen cabinet over the years. I believe all kitchen cabinets should be cork boards. I stick all kinds of things in them.

Well, enough talk about the recipe. Here IS the recipe:

CARNATION CHOCOLATE FUDGE SAUCE
INGREDIENTS

1 1/2 cups (12 ounce can) undiluted Carnation Evaporated Milk

2 cups (12 ounce package) semisweet chocolate chips

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

dash salt

DIRECTIONS

In a medium saucepan, bring evaporated milk to just a boil.

Add chocolate chips, return to a boil over medium heat stirring constantly until chocolate is melted, slightly thickened and smooth.

Remove from heat; stir in vanilla and salt.

Serve warm as dipping sauce for fresh fruit or spoon over cake or ice cream.

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