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Showing posts with label fondue. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fondue. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Happy 2011 - Our Traditional New Year's Chocolate Fondue

Happy 2011 To All...


Another year has come and gone in the blink of an eye.  Time goes so fast. I think the clock actually speeds up when you have kids...or maybe you just notice the time going by way too fast more often?  Ugh.

New Year's just makes me wish my girls were still little.

We are strict stay-at-home New Year's Eve people. I like to know that my family is safe and nowhere near a road or highway from sundown to sun up.  I simply don't trust people behind the wheel the other 364 days out of the year, and I fear them on New Year's Eve.  People get stupid when they drink...I know.

So we have had a tradition from day one when we had kids. Because we stay in and don't go out and party like it's 1999, we stay home and party...

When they were little, we used to spend the evening playing board games, watching movies and just having fun.  As they grew, we added video and computer games to the mix.  Now? We pretty much do whatever.  We make dinner, we have snacks, we make chocolate fondue.  And of course there are the random neighborhood fireworks. We used to make sure to watch the ball drop in Times Square with good old Dick Clark every year, but this year we don't have cable and for some reason we couldn't find it streaming live on the internet anywhere.

It was kind of lame to have to watch the clock on my laptop....

The one thing that everyone associates our New Year's with is Chocolate Fondue.  It's as easy as pouring a bag or two of semi-sweet chips into a pot and melting it. Literally.

See? Really...it's THAT easy.

Then you chunk up a banana or three...

Some pineapple...

Strawberries, of course....

And my personal favorite...marshmallows. These are caramel swirled and chocolate swirled marshmallows I found.

You call a bunch of hungry people to the table...and dig in!

You eat...

And eat...

And eat...

And eventually drip some on your shirt...

You feed each other...

And make faces. Really silly ones.
Here's hoping that 2011 is a better year than 2010. Now go make some fondue!

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

September is for Zombies

Ah, September...

...30 days hath!
...Best Earth, Wind and Fire song ever!
...Labor Day three day weekend!
...School is in full swing.
...It's almost fall, my second favorite season.
...International Day of Peace on the 21st.
...Who doesn't love International Talk Like A Pirate Day on the 19th?
...My birthday (which means....Pirogi!!! Always legendary...)
...It's just that much closer to winter!
...Little Lawyer's birthday!

And there are quite a few more legendary thing to look forward to this September!

We will be in the Splatter Zone for Evil Dead: The Musical on September 3rd at the Venice Pinkerton Theatre! We are really excited about that...especially the kids! And, yes...we let our nine year old watch Evil Dead, Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness. Bash if you must, but she likes....nay, loves...campy horror movies. She doesn't care for the scare-you-so-you-can't-fall-asleep stuff, but loves stuff like Evil Dead, Jaws, Lost Boys, and the like.  She knows it's all fake fun. You should see her do the Necronomicon! (Think along the lines of the Time Warp in Rocky Horror Picture Show...which, by the way, she does fantastically as well!)

As long as we are talking about Little Lawyer, I will bring up her birthday again.  Birthday traditions in our house include picking whatever you want for dinner and what kind of cake you want. She wants a full Fondue dinner, starting with cheese and bread, meat, seafood, and of course chocolate. Then she wants to do karaoke with a few friends.  She drew out the design she wants for her birthday cake:



So we will have our hands full with that.  Papa Bear does a great job with decorating a cake! We are still debating making the eyeball out of cake so we can eat it, or making it non-edible for a cake topper she can keep and scare people with later. Decisions, decisions.... I will, of course, post all about her birthday when it happens.

Full steam ahead planning begins for The Sarasota Zombie Pub Crawl - an event we started last year that went over really well.  It's zombies, beer, friends and fun - what more could one ask for? It's a lot of hard work, but it's so worth it. We made some really great friends last year, and can't wait to do it all again.

Our friends, Renee and Eric, are launching Shriekfreak Online - an interactive online indie horror community with tons of user submitted articles, reviews, interviews, news, art, merchandise and more. Seriously, check 'em out - It's going to be legendary! Eric asked if I would like to submit some articles and recipes for a kind of 'gruesome gastronomy' type feature. Not only am I honored that he would think to ask me, but I love a challenge, so I'm already thinking up some cool ideas! Little Lawyer's birthday cake might be my very first submission...

Speaking of Eric, I made these for his birthday last week:




These are Guinness Chocolate Cupcakes with Extra Stout Beer Foam and Chocolate Stout Icing. Yum. I found this recipe for the cupcakes and this recipe for the frosting, which I ended up tweaking. I followed the recipe for the glaze, but it made a ton of it, so instead of following the recipe for the icing, I used the remaining glaze as the base to make the frosting by adding the unsweetened chocolate and adding more powdered sugar until I got the consistency of icing I wanted. Eric loves him some Guinness and I figured that his birthday was the perfect excuse to make these! Although, I have been know to just show up at their door with food before for no apparent reason...but I digress. They don't seem to mind too much (they aren't chasing me away with a pitchfork or torch or anything like that...well, yet anyway). Renee, whose birthday is in September also, might end up with Irish Car Bomb cupcakes....


And look forward to my upcoming post on my birthday dinner - heaven floating in a plate of butter - Pirogi. Legendary.