Since I have a few free days before heading up North for the 4th of July, I decided to do some baking. I've had a few recipes sitting out that I have been wanting to make for quite some time. I had Hollywood Squares, Honeycomb Candy, and Dark Chocolate and Macadamia Nut Toffee Bark on my list. After a quick trip to the market for some butter, I got started on the Dark Chocolate and Macadamia Nut Toffee Bark. Since I didn't want to spend an arm and a leg on macadamia nuts, I decided to replace them with sliced almonds and rename the recipe. I didn't make any other changes to the recipe since I had never made it before, but I was a little nervous that it would be just a bit too humid for the toffee to harden properly. Everything seemed to work out okay, and since the toffee is actually baked in the oven, I think that helped dry it out.

Dark Chocolate and Almond Toffee Bark

1/4 C. brown sugar
1/4 C. sugar
1/2 lb butter (2 sticks)
1 12 oz. package dark chocolate chips
2 cups sliced almonds (or other nut if you prefer)
1/2 box honey graham crackers

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line a lipped baking sheet with tin foil, covering all edges. Arrange a layer of graham crackers in the pan; do not overlap crackers. In a saucepan, melt the butter and sugars. Bring mixture to a boil, then reduce heat to low. Simmer for 5 minutes. Then, carefully pour the butter and sugar mixture over the graham crackers. Using an off-set spatula, spread the toffee evenly. Bake for 10 minutes. Remove from oven, spread the chocolate evenly over the graham crackers, and let it sit for 5 minutes. Once the chocolate has softened, smooth it evenly over the top of the toffee. Then sprinkle the nuts over the chocolate, and press them in. Let the candy cool on the counter, then refrigerate until set. Carefully peel from foil and break into pieces.

Yield: 1 lb

The graham crackers are all lined up on the pan ready to go.

Melting the butter and sugars.

Ready to pour over the graham crackers. It was the consistency of a soft praline, and not at all sticky.

Baking away in the oven.

Ready to come out now that the toffee is all bubbly and starting to brown. Chocolate chips melting, waiting to be spread out. The finished product!

Does anyone know how to get that Undefined tab to go away? Or do whatever it is supposed to do?

Yes, I realize I haven't posted anything since the Oscars. My bad. It's been a busy spring?

Anyways, school is finally done for the year, and I am very excited. The last week it took all I had to get there and get things done. When I hit the wall, I hit the wall hard. Luckily it was the last week of school this year. In the past it's been the entire last month, or the last few weeks, or longer. It helped that I chose to have all of my classes read a novel instead of continuing on in the textbook. That change of pace was very welcome, both to me and my students. I think I will do the same next year.

One of my students who graduated last year stopped by to see me during workshops. She is going to minor in Spanish, and is going to spend part of the summer in Nicaragua. How cool is that! I can't wait to hear about her adventures.

Hugh Jackman nailed the opener! I think it was right up there with the best of Billy Crystal's openers. I'm keeping my hopes high that the rest of the show will be as entertaining.

Fashion-wise, I thought it was a bit disappointing. I really like Anne Hathaway's gowns, along with Miley Cyrus', and Marisa Tomei's. But what were Beyonce, Freida Pinto, Whoopie Goldberg, and Heidi Klum thinking? Yuck, yuck, and double yuck. And how much does the necklace Amy Adams is wearing weigh?

Since when do we get spring weather in February around here? It's been raining off and on since midnight-ish, and we are even supposed to have a chance of thunderstorms tonight. Crazy stuff. Due to the fact that winter and rain are like oil and water, and therefore do not mix, the roads weren't very nice before it warmed up this morning. That meant that I got to sleep in an extra couple of hours due to school being 2 hours late, and I only had to teach one class due to the other school canceling completely. It was a great day. The only part I wish I could have skipped was almost sliding into another car in the parking lot. I managed to stop with an inch or two to spare. Perhaps they could have sanded or salted, eh?

I am also excited to say that I have done my taxes and already received my refunds! I typically do them the end of January/beginning of February, but this year I did them extra speedily because I need the cash to pay for my x-rays a few weeks back. I'm also happy to say that I've met my deductible for the year. That usually takes until July, so I'm sure BCBS is happy with me... Not! I'm not looking forward to seeing what my rate increase is going to be.

1. Sofas that appear a dark moss green in the fluorescent light at the furniture store may arrive at your house brown. It's a good thing that it's a nice brown, and it goes perfectly with my curtains or it would be going back to Loren's!
2. Prednisone makes me bitchy, puffy, twitchy, and able to gain 5 pounds in 2 days. Boo!
3. Kids who you think will flake out on you at the most inopportune time for a meet, will. Double and triple Boo! I thought I was going to have a mental breakdown when 2 of my 8 team members decided to just skip our meet (and then have the gall to go to school the second half of the day when they were so "sick" that morning). We only had one understudy, so we had to poach from another organization on the fly. It was not pretty. I rewarded the kids with ice cream after it was all done for being so willing to step up to the plate.
4. If my 6th hour students arrive to class in a good mood, class will go well. If they arrive in a pissy mood, class will not go well. I wish that I could have lots of candy in class to bribe them with. Darn new healthy food laws!
5. The color on the box is not always the color your hair will turn. One would think that with as many years of coloring experience, I'd have remembered that when it comes to choosing a good shade of red. Now I'm more of a purply red. There's always next month!

I loved watching Reading Rainbow when I was growing up, and I had a chance to watch it again this weekend. It was just as great as I remembered it. I watched this really short clip today, and it kind of brought tears to my eyes. Will any truly educational children's shows of today be as well regarded and loved so many years into the future as Reading Rainbow?

This is the most adorable video of Peanut and Ranj. I want to know how the kitty overcame it's natural desire to hunt rodents. So cute!

And here's another video, which is both cute and really cool! I wish that I could be around when something like this happens!

I like to watch Arthur. No, not that Arthur starring Dudley Moore, but Arthur, the one starring Arthur Read, the aardvark. It's on here at 5pm when there is nothing else on the schedule that interests me as much. This fact in itself isn't so bad. However, after last week, I've started to wonder if I'm regressing back to childhood.

One of the episodes that I watched last week, which I believe I have seen before, involved Arthur, DW, and the pursuit of PANTS, or the acronym used to describe a good experiment. Arthur and Buster bought and ant farm for their experiment, but didn't realize they needed to get ants as well. They get their ants, but the ants go missing. I stepped out of the room while this happened, but I bet DW did it! Anyway, the family finds ants all over the house in odd places, and their very lenient parents give them one week to round them up before they hire an exterminator. I personally would have said, "Pack up! We have a man on the way!" So they try lots of different ways to lure the ants out. By accident they find that sugar water is the best way to get all of the ants rounded up, and there's your happy ending. But what about mine?

This was mine: It's the middle of the night, and I'm fast asleep. Suddenly I'm dreaming that I have ants crawling out of the corners of my pillows, and then they are covering me. Tons and tons of ants. I woke myself up screaming like a banshee. I was so convinced that I was covered in ants that I ran screaming into my bathroom trying to brush them off. Once I realized I was A)awake, B) screaming at the top of my lungs, and C) probably waking up and ticking off my neighbors, I felt like such an idiot. How old am I that an Arthur episode could give me a nightmare?

I went to bed feeling stupid and bad for most likely waking up my neighbors, and I vowed that I wouldn't dream about any more ants. So that's why I dreamed that I had black beans crawling out of the corners of my pillows and covering me. Sigh.

Everything is still same old, same old around here. I'm still sick, my lungs ache, my joints ache, and I walk like a little old lady. I did get to talk with a lady from the state Dept. of Health for half an hour this afternoon about my "suspected" case of pertussis. I guess blood tests just don't say it like a grown culture does.

I went home sick Monday afternoon, and spent Tuesday at home as well. This whole up and moving around with lots of talking leads to horrible coughing spells, fevers, and not much fun. I need to call my doctor again, which I would have done had that dept. of health lady not kept me on the phone for so freakin' long this afternoon!

We had our first Knowledge Bowl meet today. It is affectionately known as KB or Kick Ball. The team did better than last year, but still have a ways to go when it comes to being aggressive on buzzer and having more confidence in saying an answer, even if you don't know if it is correct. No one is going to laugh at you, really!

I found a new home for my couch and chair, so now all I need to do is schedule the arrival of the one I purchased over Christmas break. It's a full-sized sofa bed in a moss green chenille, and I can't wait for it to arrive! I'll gain some much needed space in my living room, and I'll have a bed for guests to sleep on.

I'm homesick. There, I said it. You'd think that a 30 year old woman wouldn't be homesick. Especially one who hasn't lived in her hometown for 3 years. Perhaps it is just January talking. I got back yesterday after spending the better part of two weeks at my parents. It isn't so bad when it's just a short jaunt there and back, but when it gets to be longer, it sure is hard to leave everyone behind and head back to a town where the only people I know are the people at the dentist office, and I don't know if I would put them even in the casual acquaintance category.

Don't get me wrong, I do have friends around here, but seeing as I drive 30 miles to work, and that's how I got to know them, they don't live anywhere close. Living in a small town, which is what I want to do, can either be a blessing or a curse when it comes to friends. I would say that if you aren't from there or anywhere close, and you don't work or worship in the town, then it's definitely a curse. It also doesn't help to be shy, my particular personal curse. It gets awfully lonely around here at times. So, if you have any advice for me, please leave a comment. I'm all ears, or rather, eyes!