A Tale of Three Fudges

My mission for the past week was to find the best non-marshmallow fudge recipe on the net.  Until this week, I've only ever made fudge by the Marshmallow Fluff "Never Fail Fudge" recipe because, in short, it never fails.  As that gooey crap isn't easily available here, I had to branch out.

(During my quest, I learned that fudge was invented by women on college campus in the 1890s.  It was named "fudge" because that was one of the words women would use rather than cursing.)

Recipe number one was the simplest (http://uktv.co.uk/food/recipe/aid/609228).  It just involved melting chocolate, sweetened condensed milk, and butter on a double boiler (or two awkward sized pots in my case), adding vanilla, and letting it set.  I decided to add some confectioners sugar to help it set as well- big mistake!  Despite the little white powdery flakes in the fudge, it turned out well.  Nothing amazing, but not bad.

Fudge number two was a plain vanilla fudge (http://www.waitrose.com/recipe/Vanilla_Fudge.aspx).  I read a hilarious blog response from an American insisting that this recipe was wrong because it forgot to add chocolate.  I don't think s/he understood that fudge was originally made without chocolate.  This recipe was a real recipe in that in required me to kill my arms by stirring the mixture constantly until it reached soft-ball stage.  The flavor and texture were great, but not all of the sugar dissolved, leaving the fudge grainy.

I was out of condensed milk by this time, so I switched to evaporated milk for recipe three (http://busycooks.about.com/od/candyandsnackmixes/r/millionfudge.htm).  This time I added some water to the mixture to ensure the sugar was dissolved.  That resulted in my half-recipe boiling over my medium sized pot, and forced me to switch to a massive spaghetti pot half-way through.  It turned out to be the best tasting overall of the three.  The texture was (or "is", I haven't eaten it all yet) almost too hard to cut, but it becomes wonderfully smooth and creamy in your mouth... mmm...

Snow Stops London From Functioning

It really does.  Half of the trains are canceled, causing the remaining half to be so full that no one else can fit by the time it reaches Blackheath.  (Although they ran regularly in the other direction.  Perhaps it only snows on half of the tracks?)

These last two weeks I had financial audit secondment training (even worse than it sounds), went out for dinner with the girls work, had a pleasantly lazy weekend, started going to a gym almost regularly, went to a salsa dancing that lacked leads, met with Nic and Dan (from Lehigh) for drinks, and probably did a good bit more that I can't remember.  Tonight Tricia and I are pretending we're 20 and second-year students at KCL without cares or responsibilities, and hitting the clubs (although actual students know that student nights are Tue-Wed-Thur).

And yes, I'm in love with my new Canon XSi/450 D.

Love always,
Melanie

T-Shirt (or is it Tee-Shirt?) Blanket

A few people have commented on my tee-shirt quilt, asking how I made it.  There's plenty of crafty sites online that describe the process, but I thought I'd supplement them with the design I used.

I used a 14"x14" cardboard square as my base unit because I noticed that most of my full-front shirt designs fit into this size.  I used a half-size 7"x14" rectangle shirts that only had print across the top (for example, "Staff" or "Scuba Michigan").  Finally I made a quarter-sized 7"x7" square to be used on shirt with only an emblem or logo in the top corner.

The blanket is composed of five vertical strips that were each 14" wide and 14"*5... umm..  70" long.  As you can see, I offset the bigger 14"x14" blocks with the smaller sized pieces.  The other side of the blanket is a solid piece of dark blue flannel (because I love soft things) and one of my mom's old sheets is sewn into the middle of the blanket for added warmth.  It's amazing how many memories you can fit into a few feet of fabric.

New Year, Old Me

I considered writing over the holiday break (I was back in PA for two weeks), but I would have just said "food-family-more food".  It wasn't a bad break, although it would have been better if tiny-penised men with big trucks would learn to drive.  A chunk of my family, including my 91 year old grandmother, were driving to Pittsburgh in my Mom's van when a huge front-grilled Dodge Ram 2500 pushed a beautiful Lexus into the back of the van.  We had stopped fairly quickly, but the Lexus behind us had stopped as well (I know, because after being hit a few years ago I've developed a habit of looking behind me).  My seat didn't have head rest, so I ended up with minor whiplash and a sore neck and back for the holiday.  I also had daily trips to Greensburg to see a chiropractor, which allowed me wonderful opportunities to accumulate family errands as well.

We flew back to London on the last days of 2009 and had a nice peaceful New Year's day with James's family.  Returning to our flat was one of the best parts of the holidays.  It was hold, but felt so peaceful and homey.  :-)

I'm so bad at blogging.  Since starting this post, I've stopped to grab white chocolate mints, experiment with Windows 7 GodMode, play with #uksnow, watch bits of Narnia, IMDB Tilda Swinton...

Love always,
Melanie