A Christmas Miracle -- A Couple Weeks Early

I've experienced the impossible. Or at the very least, the impossible based on what I learned from my mother. Today, E and I rolled up our sleeves and launched into a furious bout of making/baking holiday treats. This year, I wanted to give what we call old fashioned fudge a try. It's long been one of my very favorites. It's also a candy which my mother, who truly is a wonderful baker/candy maker, never quite mastered. I have a catalogue of memories of fudge that didn't set, that was too crumbly -- that just didn't work.

So, in my mind, over the years it's been morphed into the Mount Everest of Christmas goodies. When I began preparing to make the fudge this morning, I did much more to prep than I usually do in the kitchen. I checked and double checked that I had my candy thermometer, all my ingredients, everything I could POSSIBLY need, all lined up and arranged in a logical order on the counter top. I studied the thermometer closely, watching as the temperature rose, determined to follow my recipe to the absolute letter and degree.

The result? Fudge that truly deserves the adjective perfect.

OK. With three paragraphs devoted to my fudge, I think I should also mention that E made sugar cookies and ginger bread cookies. He approached the project with focus and precision -- just as if he were in the lab. He did make a few funny comments about how the "baking phase" was what they called "incubation" in the lab. Something tells me he's really focused at work these days...

Lastly, I made white-chocolate covered pretzels. Yum!

A Continued Swelling

So, here's this week's posting of my ever-growing belly. I don't realize how large it looks until I see these photos.

Let's all have a moment of silence for my flat stomach that was. (Maybe if I wear yellow undies, it will be like wearing a yellow ribbon, and my tiny tummy will return...) As my father-in-law says, we live in hope!