Christmas is right around the corner and as usual I am completely unprepared for everything. I have no idea what to buy, where to go to purchase anything and my daughter will be home for the holidays, which means life as I know it is over.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
It is truly a joy to know I have sent my daughter Katy to college to become smarter so I could become dumber by the day.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I do enjoy cooking for Katy and my son Chris. I make them all the stuff I never eat. This Sunday I will bake cinnamon rolls. I make it with brioche which is a French butter dough that clogs your veins just looking at it. Brioche also makes the best stuffed French toast. I stuff it with a mix of cheeses for Katy and make a fruit syrup.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I enjoy experimenting with food and recipes, which I admit can lead to certain problems. There are some who seem to think I have weird eating habits, actually almost everyone. I get a lot of snarky comments here at the office when I eat my homemade granola mixed with cottage cheese and buttermilk.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
When I was a kid I could never understand how my grandma could drink a glass of buttermilk in the morning. Now I do it. I guess I\u2019ve turned into my grandma.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I can report that a scientific experiment I conducted in the office last week created a little stir. Remember scientific experiments that don\u2019t go quite as expected are not necessarily wrong or bad.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I decided I would hard boil some eggs in my microwave I have in the office. I had it all planned out perfectly, until someone called me with a hot tip and I forgot to check on the eggs.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Three eggs left in a microwave covered in water for eight minutes will amazingly blow the door open on the microwave with a very loud bang, spread eggs all over the office and cause everyone to look at you and point for quite some time.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
One of my favorite memories of Christmas is the divinity and almond roca my grandma would make. It was the only time of year she would make them and I loved them both.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Grandma would start her baking right after Christmas. There were five of us kids and it took a lot to keep us happy.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I remember watching her make candy with thermometers sticking up everywhere and stuff boiling and steaming. It was great.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I make candy, but grandma always had the chaos under control. Admittedly, that does not always seem to be the case when I am making candy.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
There has been more than a few times I\u2019ve created an unholy boiled black substance on the bottom of pan that couldn\u2019t be cleaned out with a blow torch. I know because I have tried.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I hardly see anyone make divinity anymore.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Grandma made three colors \u2013 red, green and white. She would put them on this fancy three-tiered silver dish. I can see that dish filled with divinity on her table in the living room right now. Mom and grandma would always tell me I couldn\u2019t have any sweets until after dinner.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
My job every year was to steal as much divinity as possible, but figure a way to fill in the holes so I wouldn\u2019t get caught.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I was always very successful. The only thing I was consistently smart at as a kid was stealing divinity.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll probably try to make some divinity for the kids this year, but it won\u2019t taste like grandma\u2019s.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
She used some special kind of magic, and I will never forget it.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Have a merry Christmas and a happy New Year.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Christmas is right around the corner and as usual I am completely unprepared for everything. I have no idea what to buy, where to go to purchase anything and my daughter will be home for the holidays, which means life as I know it is over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":215,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-5034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5034"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/215"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5034\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5034"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=5034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}