food for thought

My name is Megan and last week I burnt caramel.

I burnt it, it smelled just like burnt sugar, but the optimistic side of me went right on ahead and poured that burnt, smoldering caramel onto the shortbread that was going to be part of the delectable caramel bars. Oops. You know what I learned, if it smells burnt. It's burnt. Leave it be or toss it out or make some caramel brittle. That would have been a good choice.

The next night, I made those caramel bars all over again to much more success, but in the process I found a few caramel recipes I really wanted to share and a few other delightful, interesting things as well.

food for thought

When I was making my caramel, I combined the caramel recipe I used for caramel apples with this fleur de Sel caramel recipe- I just really wanted to avoid the corn syrup step.

These salted caramel bars by What's Gaby Cooking were my inspiration for the caramel bars I ended up making- I used her shortbread recipe and I really loved the combination. I'll be sharing the whole process soon!

I taught preschool a while back, for quite a few years, and was a nanny for small children- so temper tantrums used be a big part of my daily life. This article on What's Behind a Temper Tantrum makes me feel a little bit better about my strategy for dealing with them- leave them be, make sure they are safe and so is everyone around them (they can really throw stuff in those tantrums!) but just let them get it out. I really enjoyed reading about the vocalizations the kids made during, the idea of studying this fascinates me. I would never, ever want to spend hours analyzing those screams and skirmishes but I'm glad someone else did!

I used to read the comics daily in our local news paper, and while I still receive the paper on the weekends (it seems so relaxing to me, paper and coffee and early-ish morning light) I still find ways to get my comics fix, here is one of them and here is another one (and a personal fav).

Enjoy!
-m