My apologies; I promise to get that fixed A.S.A.P. And thanks to Jeff for bringing up the problem, though I didn't figure it out until two days later. (I don't condone posting something that hasn't been checked in both IE and Netscape. I don't know what happened. I could've sworn I'd checked everything with both browsers...) The advent calendar is working fine, though.
The circular street on which my office is located has a couple of quirks. One of them is an intersection at which people turning left have precedence over people going straight from the other direction. (That is, so the left-turners drive across the path of the straight-goers.) I know this defies all logic, but if you obey even the simplest traffic laws, it's easy: the people going straight have a stop sign as they come up on the intersection, while there isn't one for those turning left. (There's a reason for it, but I don't feel like drawing a map to explain.)
Anyway, because it defies the usual traffic logic, I've always approached the left turn with some trepidation, even going so far as to slow down more than necessary in case someone going straight misses the stop sign or just decides it's not important. This morning, despite the car pulling toward the stop sign, for whatever reason, I decided I was just going to go. Naturally, this morning is the first time I've actually seen someone go through the stop sign without even slowing down.
Luckily, we didn't cause an accident, but I muttered imprecations under my breath as I drove on.
We got the tree up and the house decorated this weekend. I'm very happy we made the decision to go with the pre-lighted tree. It made things so much easier. The only problem with it is that one of the sections of lights isn't working, and we couldn't find the bulb that was burnt out to replace it, so there's a dark section that goes about 2/3 of the way around the tree. We've got most of the dark spot turned toward the wall, though, and if it really bothers me, I can always put more lights on it.
I want to get a floodlight for the front yard so the house doesn't look quite so dismal, though. Our friends have all told us that they think our decoration is much more tasteful than our neighbors' (though that's not really saying much) but they do outshine us by quite a lot.
I made four batches of fudge this weekend - two chocolate and two peanut butter. For the peanut butter, I used K.T.'s recipe, which is fast and easy and almost always works. For the chocolate, I used my recipe, which is slow and time consuming and frequently screws up, but which when it works creates the best fudge in the world.
In the process of making "my" fudge, I discovered that both of my candy thermometers have become misaligned. I don't know if the little piece of cardboard in them slipped, or what, but one of them told me that the fudge started boiling at 205 degrees, and the other said it was 195. (In case you're curious about fudge or aren't used to the Fahrenheit system, fudge boils at the same temperature as water - that is, 212.) I tried to adjust for the thermometers being off, but it didn't work. The first batch turned out sortof grainy (which can be caused by boiling too long, not boiling long enough, humidity, driness, or someone coughing while it's cooking. I think I'm joking about that last one.) and the second batch never hardened.
On the bright side, grainy fudge isn't fit to give out as gifts, so Matt and I have some fudge for ourselves; and the batch that didn't harden at all at least had the decency to stay soupy enough to pass as the sort of fudge sauce you heat up and pour on your ice cream.
While I was making the peanut butter fudge, I mentally analyzed the recipe. (There's about fifteen minutes where all you have to do is stand there and stir. It allows for a lot of thinking.) See, K.T.'s recipe actually calls for chocolate chips, with substitutions of butterscotch or peanut butter chips for different flavors of fudge. The reason I wasn't using K.T.'s much easier recipe for my chocolate fudge is that I like the way mine tastes much better - but I wasn't really sure why.
It occurred to me that probably part of the reason is that K.T.'s recipe uses the same amount of sugar as mine, plus some marshmallows, plus the sugar in the chocolate chips, resulting in fudge that's more sweet than rich. (In case you're wondering, no, K.T. isn't reading this and being indignant that I'm maligning her fudge. We've talked about this on multiple occasions; it's a matter of personal taste and priorities.) Anyway, I thought perhaps that if I substituted baker's chocolate for the chocolate chips, it would reduce the amount of sugar by a significant amount.
So sometime this week I'll attempt to make chocolate fudge using K.T.'s recipe with unsweetened baker's chocolate instead of chocolate chips. If it works, I may throw out my old recipe for good. I'll be sure to let you all know... (But in the meantime, a really good candy thermometer is something I wouldn't mind for Christmas.)
Word of the Day: condone - to pardon or overlook; to treat as trivial or unimportant
- A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin
Current Projects:
- ornaments and snowflakes
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