HOLIDAY DECORATIONS

The Botanical Gardens put up their holiday display recently. Here's a couple of pix.

A poinsettia tree:

And an elf and snowman:

In town, yards are decorated, too. This Snoopy is in our neighborhood, looking cheerfully at us every time we go out or come in.

This is a festive house in another neighborhood:.

While this house... This house is...  I can't describe it. These people must really enjoy the holiday! Here's the front which is off a side road.

And here's just a part of the side on the main street. They must have ten or twenty inflatables!

And I can't help adding a photo of some of the candy I make once a year, usually at Christmas. This pan is going to the photography club's party. Pralines, fudge, peanut butter and divinity. About the only thing I can cook that tastes good!

Happy holidays, everyone!

CANDY

I don't cook except for making candy. I make the old-fashioned kind. Like fudge:

And divinity:

And pralines:

And my favorite that my mother used to make when I was a kid, peanut butter candy:

Tomorrow I get to cut them and parcel them out. It's hard to know who eats candy and who doesn't nowadays but I've never had anyone refuse it. My petsitter gets a package and also the vet's office for their loving care of my sweet cats. Then my critique partners and some other friends.

I try to give it all away--yes, I do, I really do!--but somehow there always seem to be a few pieces left over.

Guess they'll take care of those pounds I've struggled to lose.

HOLIDAY COOKING

The only thing I can cook okay is candy. I make it and give it away (what we don't eat) once a year, sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I'm not talking about magazine type candy like peanut butter balls or chocolate covered peanuts. I'm talkin about old-time homemade candy. Fudge with pecans, fudge with peanut butter, peanut butter candy, pralines, panocha, and my personal favorite: divinity. Sometimes I make cream cheese candy or orange candy, but they aren't that popular so I don't make them that often. I can only eat so many leftovers, you know.

I began by making fudge when I was, oh, nine or ten. Then I added the others, except for divinity. I never could get divinity right. But one of my neighbors, Mrs. Margaret Harvell, made the best divinity ever and when she saw me gobbling it up, she offered to teach me how. Think I didn't jump at the chance?

"This is never-fail divinity," she assured me. "It always comes out pretty." So I watched the boiling syrup till she showed me it was spinning threads (that was the first time I understood what 'spinning a thread' in candy talk means). Then I watched her beat the egg whites stiff. Then I watched her pour the syrup into the egg whites as she continued beating. Then we spooned it out into pretty swirls. Perfect.

And the first time I made it by myself, it was perfect! I was nineteen or so before I actually had a batch fail and realized that confidence was the key. That was the big thing Mrs. Harvell gave me. Since then I've only had three or four batches not work.

She's dead now, but her divinity recipe is still going strong! Even in this sugar-conscious, calorie-conscious, healthy-eating age, people ask me for it. Thank you, Mrs. Margaret Harvell!

CHRISTMAS CANDY

I made my usual batches of candy for Christmas: fudge with nuts, divinity, fudge with peanut butter, panocha, pralines, and peanut butter candy. No orange candy or cream cheese fudge this year, but that's okay.

Despite my giveaways, I had plenty left to eat. Too much.

And too bad.

The scale tells the sad tale.