Millionaire Rocks

I’ve had a craving for millionaire bars (caramel shortbread) for the last several weeks. When we lived in London, I used to visit Konditor & Cook as often as possible for one of theirs.

On Saturday I decided to ‘carpe diem’ and set to work making the little nuggets of goodness. Was I a little bothered by the 4 sticks of butter, the 1 1/2 cups of sugar PLUS condensed milk and corn syrup that the recipe called for? Sure. But, I muzzled my practical self and let my sugar-monger self take over.

If only I’d listened to practical Nicola. She knew something was awry.

Problem number one: The baking time for the shortbread base was off. Now I know baking times are estimates, but in my experience they’re normally fairly accurate, give or take 5 minutes. But I get nervous when I have to double the suggested baking time. And let me tell you, after 20 minutes of baking, this crust was nowhere near golden brown. Ditto for after 30 minutes. As I had other stuff to do, I gave up around the 35 minute mark and hoped for the best.

Problem number two: I started making the caramel filling, fully prepared for the suggested 40-50 minutes of continuous stirring. Around the fifteen minute mark, I started ‘testing’ the caramel to see if it was pliable. It sure seemed like it was. But the recipe said stir for 40-50 minutes. How could fifteen minutes be sufficient? So I stirred and stirred. Got a little nervous when the stuff started gathering into a ball in the pan around the 28 minute mark. So I quit and poured the caramel over the shortbread base. When it separated from the shortbread en masse, I knew it was trouble.

Well, since I’d already put so much time into it, I figured I might as well make the chocolate topping. So I did, and I poured it over the caramel. And the chocolate refused to ‘harden’ – just sat on top of the caramel, a dark, molten mess. Out of time, I abandoned my project so we could go to a banquet.

This morning, when I inspected my handiwork, I found it had gotten worse. Whereas the caramel might have been a tad ‘chewy’ and ’sticky’ yesterday, today, it resembled a slab of granite in a 13×9 pan.

Nonetheless, I inserted a knife, hopeful I’d be able to chisel off a tiny sliver. I had to exert such force upon that knife that the little sliver flew across the kitchen. I stuck it in my mouth, anyway. And ignored the pain upon my molars as I tried to gnaw it into submission.

Now, this is the point in time when rational people would cut their losses, throw the pan and its contents away, take out some brownie mix and call it good.

But I’m not particularly rational when it comes to baking, or money, or many other things….So I continued to chisel off little tiny morsels of millionaire bar and called it breakfast.

After lunch, when I realized I was in danger of losing some dental work, I decided to toss the treats in the garbage. But I decided to make one last effort to ’save the bars’.

I excised a sliver and microwaved it for 15 seconds.

The result: The caramel became more malleable, if a tad chewy. I’m pretty sure ‘regular’ people would still throw away the ruined dessert, but here chez Johnson, we (mostly me) have made our way through half the pan.

Millionaire Rocks 2

In case you want to try it too…the recipe….

Caramel Shortbread (recipe from canelaycomino.blogspot.com)

Base:
3 cups of flour
1 cup of butter
1/2 cup of sugar

Filling:
1 cup of sugar
1 cup of butter
5 tablespoons of corn syrup
1 can (395g) of sweetened condensed milk

Topping:
400 g of dark chocolate
2 tablespoons of butter

Preheat the oven to 350F.

To make the base, combine flour, butter and sugar together until it resembles breadcrumbs. Press flour mixture into a 9×13 glass baking dish, sprayed with cooking spray. Bake at 350F for 20 minutes or until golden brown. (***This may take up to 40 minutes or more!!!!!)

To make filling, melt butter in a saucepan over low heat; add sugar, corn syrup and condensed milk. Stir continuously for 40-50 minutes (***or maybe for 15 minutes!!!) until it becomes golden brown in color. Test filling by dropping a little blob into a bowl of cold water; it should firm up, but still be a bit pliable. Pour the filling over the base and allow to cool. For topping, chop chocolate into small pieces and add to a saucepan along with butter. Again, stir continuously over low heat until chocolate is melted then pour over the filling. Allow chocolate to set; scoring chocolate before completely hardened. Makes 24 bars.

Bananas are still cheap, right?

Oh, right, but eggs aren’t.

I made these last night and they were pretty delicious – though I wouldn’t necessarily call them ‘quick.’ I can’t imagine it was much faster than other bread pudding recipes in terms of assembly. (FYI: I used Bonne Maman’s Caramel Spread.)

The taste reminded me of this recipe, which I’ve simplified into french toast served with bananas sauteed in brown sugar and a little butter. (So much tastier than boring old maple syrup, in my opinion.)

So, since this bread pudding basically tastes the same as my french toast, I figure I could make the bread pudding recipe for a brunch sometime, using a muffin pan instead of the ramekins (since I only have 6 ramekins).

But then I’d have to listen to J making threatening comments under his breath while cleaning the dirty pan…..

Sore Feet

We were reading with G tonight out of his children’s Bible, about the woman who poured ointment on Jesus’ feet. Ostensibly, she did this because she loved him, or so the text would lead one to believe.  But G’s recollection of the ‘details’ is fairly limited, sometimes.

‘Why did the woman pour lotion [ointment] on Jesus’ feet’, I asked him.    

‘Because his feet were sore – right here,’ he replied, pointing to the bottom of his right foot for emphasis.  

Instead of trying to steer him to the more correct answer, I just burst out laughing.  And, unfortunately, it wasn’t the first time….I did the same when we were talking about Hannah asking God to give her a baby – Samuel.

‘What did Hannah ask God to give her,’ I asked him.

‘A dog,’ he answered, matter-of-factly.  

YOU try to keep a straight face.  

Fabricated Photographs

As I was doing some ‘research’ while the kids napped (I think flipping through Elle Decor IS research), I saw an article about French photographer Didier Massard.

On the one hand, I am surprised by how much I like his work – in some ways it reminds me of ‘Lord of the Rings’ or ‘Mary Poppins’ (and I don’t consider myself a fan of LOTR).

But I guess I am a sucker for a landscape – real or artificial. Check out ‘Mangrove’, ‘Rhinoceros’ and ‘Carousel.’

File Under Amazing

Sometimes you hear about these amazing love stories, eyes meet across a room, being in the beatles not enough to prevent the hookup, $80,000 in 3 star call girls not enough to break us apart type stories and you just stop and think wow, that’s amazing (or maybe absurd).  But it all pales to the lady you have before you. The one who has moved across oceans, pulled all nighters building models, listened to copius quantities of absurdist conversations. She has lived in collapsing houses, driven collapsing cars, and always (well ok mostly) kept about her a certain calmness and perspective that never ceases to inspire me.  Of course we can all assume its because of the fat paycheck and easygoing nature of yours truly.  We can assume the lavish gifts and hopeless romanticism I dispense daily is the basis for this wonder of wifedom. 

We could assume this of course if we assumed a lot of other things, like cheesecake is a health food, that guy interviewing you really DOES want to be your new best friend, boys are low maintenence, George Bush is really very smart and articulate, Dick Cheney shot that guy accidentally, Dentists aren’t sadists, and Hillary has forgiven Bill.

Absent these truths I have to say that I am the undeserved recipient of a pretty amazing wife, who tracked me down in the hospital of a foreign country, arranged for the only person I know there to come find me in the hospital and then drove 9 hours with a messed up foot to come get me from the airport and take care of me. I love this woman and continue to be amazed by her ability to handle the barrage of “situations” I throw her way.

Mouse droppings

Let’s say you woke up with excruciating back pain.  As you try to move around, the pain intensifies and after a while you find it difficult to breathe.  An ambulance ride, and a morphine drip follow and then a CT scan reveals you have: kidney stones.

The way to get them out: ureteroscopy  or what we like to call ‘the claw.’

After a twelve hour ordeal of pain and waiting and wondering, you leave the hospital with your little bag of mouse droppings in hand.

Note to Canadian paramedics: Just because a guy is lying facedown on a hotel room floor, vomiting, does not mean he was out drinking the night before. So it’s perhaps not appropriate to tell him to get up.

And, perhaps, if the guy chooses to utter a little swear word because he’s in a lot of pain, you don’t need to remind him that it’s Easter and Sweet Baby Jesus doesn’t want to hear such language. Also, Easter has very little to do with BABY Jesus. That’s Christmas.

Rental Car Hall of Shame

As I was dropping off my rental car last night, sore from head to toe after driving in cramped, un-ergonomic conditions, I thought about all of my doozy car rental experiences. The cars that smelled; the ones that made you regret choosing to drive…

Chrysler PT Cruiser.
Why does anyone drive this car? My version had no cruise control, uncomfortable seats and the passengers in the back complained of feeling every little bump in the road. The interesting thing was – every day I was in it, the smoke smell intensified.

Ford 150 Truck.
Sure, it rides fine, but when gas costs $3.20 something a gallon, and it gets about 9mpg in town, just driving to and from Lowe’s can break the bank. The lingering smoky vomit smell did nothing to improve my opinion of it.

Chevy Tahoe
Perhaps the largest car I’ve ever driven. I wanted to stick my head out the car window to let everyone know that this was not my car. It was disastrous trying to park this sucker. My sister had to get out of the car in Chicago in an effort to direct me. A supreme gas guzzler as well. Though I did have the feeling I could crush any other car on the road.

Kia Rio.
Possibly the worst car ever made. The one I drove had no cruise, terrible seats, a broken stereo and felt like the smallest car on the road.

Fiat Punto
Not as small as the Ford Ka – (now THAT was a seriously small car.) But also not the car you want when driving around the winding roads of Tuscany and have a tendency towards motion sickness.

Dodge Neon.
It’s not a good feeling, wondering if your car will ‘make it’ as you’re driving in the Rocky Mountains.

Best Car Rentals….

Renault Espace
Believe it or not, this car was the best part of our trip to Germany. Not the prettiest car you’ve ever seen and I certainly felt conspicuously American driving this enormous car on the autobahn. But the fact that I had a seat of my own – and my hip bones weren’t sandwiched between two carseats – nullified any guilt I may have felt otherwise. That, and having GPS.

Nissan Maxima
J and I fought over who got to drive this car. ‘It’s real fast.’

Phone etiquette

There are two kinds of people in this world: People who go the extra mile and people who do the bare minimum.

Let’s say your husband is taken to hospital in another state/country. You don’t know which hospital and you don’t quite know what’s wrong. (Though the credit card company helpfully calls you to ask whether you authorized a $370 transaction at the unnamed hospital.)

So you go on the internet and get the phone number of a hospital and call.

The person who goes the extra mile answers and says – ‘I’m sorry, there’s no one here by that name. Let me connect you to this other hospital – maybe he’s there.’

The person who does the bare minimum says – ‘I’m sorry, there’s no one here by that name. Goodbye.’

Note to self: Be the person who goes the extra mile.

Oh where is my toothbrush

Let’s say, hypothetically, that due to some bathroom remodeling you misplaced your son’s toothbrush and he hadn’t brushed his teeth for a number of days. Perhaps six days. Hypothetically.

So, while you’re at the grocery store, you decide enough is enough and let him pick out a new toothbrush. He selects a ‘Hotwheels’ toothbrush: a toothbrush with a small scale car attached at the end. As we finish up the shopping, he sits very quietly in the cart, clutching the toothbrush, continually reminding me that he is allowed to open it in the car.

We get to the car, and he opens it and it’s glorious. Who knew a toothbrush could make anyone so happy? And we get home and the toothbrush becomes a toy rather than the intended cleaning instrument for teeth. It pushes our lawn sprinkler (?!) around the kitchen island. We go on a walk and the toothbrush comes along. We frolic in the park, chase each other around, and begin the walk home.

We arrive home and the little man starts digging in the dirt – after a tiny little timeout for inadvertently running in front of an oncoming car. All of a sudden his face crumples as though he has just impaled himself on a bed of nails.

‘My t-o-o-o-o-th br-u-u-u-u-u-sh.’

Riiiiiiight….. the toothbrush that went to the park but didn’t quite make it back.

Oh, that toothbrush.
Lost.
Nowhere-to-be-found.

We retrace our steps to the blessed park.
Nothing
We walk home, inconsolable, while I cross my fingers the nearby Walgreen’s carries the same toothbrush.

It’s like the inane Veggie Tales song.….