Day 11, whaaa?!

A day overdue and the drunk milk looks the same, mostly:

Madame Charnushka say "You will get tipsy tomorrow".  Prophetic!

Purple and yellow water marbles. They do not freeze well.  Go figure.

I plan on straining the supposed amber nectar from the jar tomorrow.  Pictures will be eagerly shared as soon as possible.

I worked out today, after which I usually have a craving for something sweet.  The only sweet things we have to snack on are a big bowl of halloween candy (yes, I realize it's January), so there is really nothing for me to snack on.  What to make, what to make...?  How bout THIS!

The upper right ones were made with the thinner chocolate and almond butter, bottom left with thicker chocolate and peanut butter.

Frozen chocolate-covered nut-butter banana bites!  I used nomnomnomblog's recipe here, but even following the recipe as closely as I can (I heart tweaking), it was still really messy.  Here are some of my findings:

• First, I needed to add waaay less liquid to the chocolate dip than the recipe called for.  I discovered this *after* following the recipe, so I had some extra chocolate left over.  Happy accident.
• I used almond milk to thin the chocolate, so I thought it would be a good idea to use almond butter.  Not such a good idea.  Even after pouring off extra oil and stirring the heck out of it, the almond butter was still oily, which made the chocolate slide off.
• Be sure to 'butter' all the banana slices before dipping in the chocolate.  It might even be a good idea to freeze the peanut buttered bananas before dipping, so you're dipping something hard instead of something mushy.  Personal preference on the freezing, serious suggestion on the pre-buttering.

Concoction #2:

Still contemplating a color for the table.  Maybe we should just sand and bleach it.  The options still boggle my mind.

Not quite solid so the breaks weren't perfect.  It tastes perfect, though.

Paula Deen's Pine Bark.  Wow!  I followed her recipe almost exactly, using milk chocolate chips instead of bars, and adding 2 drops of doTERRA's Wild Orange essential oil instead of almond extract.  Tweaky tweaky delicious!  The orange flavor was subtle, I would even use three or 4 drops next time for a stronger taste, reminiscent of homemade chocolate covered orange peel.  I should add that to my list of things to make, haven't made it since, well, pre-marriage.  And we're celebrating our 10 year wedding anniversary this June - go us!

• Side note: I tried to find a recipe to post here as a possible chocolate covered orange peel candidate, but all the initial results included the white pith from the peel.  And a lot of boiling in plain water.  Blech.  The white pith needs to be removed as much as possible.  This makes the end product much, much tastier.  And the recipe I used in the past had you boil the de-pithed peel in increasingly sugarier pots of sugar water, not plain water.  I'll find the recipe and post the results when I'm done.  Honest.

Well, I have little boys that need refereeing.  Maybe I can bribe some good behavior with these treats then send them home hopped up on sugary goodness and covered in chocolate.  There are worse ways to end a Friday the 13th.

Not feeling superstitious at all,
Mary