Teach your children well

Another example of how the Europeans get it right and we don’t. If you teach children to appreciate good food and nutrition, they grow up to be adults who appreciate good food and nutrition.

Jamie Oliver (the Naked Chef) managed to get the British schools to change their school food policy and is trying to get American schools to do the same. It is sad that someone from another country has to rescue us from our chicken-finger-eating ways. More here.

White-Trash, Trailer-Park, Ghetto Fabulous… Toffee

This super-simple, inexpensive, addictive toffee is called “Chocolate Praline Toffee Crisps” by the kids at Pampered Chef, but is better known as “White Trash Toffee”, “Trailer Park Toffee” or “Ghetto Toffee”, mostly because of its base ingredient: the humble Saltine cracker. In fact, it should be called “Crack Toffee” because it is cheap and highly addictive. I’ve made this three times now for three different parties/picnics and it gets inhaled every time. I suggest you make some for any picnics you’re going to this summer, you’ll be very popular.

Saltine Chocolate Crunch
(aka “White Trash Toffee”)

Ingredients
1 sleeve (about 24) saltines*
3/4 C. brown sugar
1 C. (2 sticks) butter
12 oz. (2 C.) chocolate chips
3/4 C. chopped nuts

Directions
Preheat oven to 400°
Line a cookie sheet or jellyroll pan with foil, spray foil very lightly with cooking spray (or use non-stick foil) and cover cookie sheet with saltines in one layer.

Boil sugar and butter in a non-stick pan until the butter is completely incorporated into the sugar, stirring constantly. This takes about 1 minute. Do not overcook or the butter solids will separate and you will end up with grease with a sugary lump in the middle. Pour over saltines and spread evenly. Bake 5 minutes. Remove from oven and sprinkle with chocolate chips. Let set 2 minutes, then spread melted chips with spatula. Sprinkle with nuts, then press down lightly.

When cool and chocolate is set, cut on a diagonal. You can accelerate this process by cooling to approx room temp and then putting pan in freezer for 20 minutes or in fridge for about 2 hours.

Yields approx. 30 pieces. Pieces can be frozen. Broken bits from cutting are excellent on vanilla ice cream.

*I’ve also seen recipes using graham crackers and matzo crackers. If I was making this with matzo I would add about 1/2 teaspoon of salt to the butter mixture. Or maybe skip the salt there and use salted nuts on top of the chocolate. Or maybe fancy Hawaiian salt on the chocolate. Mmmm, I might have to go experiment now……

All atwitter over Mr. Darcy

Some clever person in Twitterland has begun posting Jane Austen's Pride And Prejudice in 140-character bites. Now, before your inner purist screams out "sacrilege", consider this: Jane Austen is known for her "realism, biting social commentary (now known as "snark" - Ed.) and masterful use of free, indirect speech, burlesque and irony". Free, indirect speech: A style of writing where the author's first-person descriptive blurs with their third-person perspective. Sound familiar, bloggy peeps? Were she born 200 years later, methinks she would have been a blogger (and twitterer) ........................

.........

Hmmm.. Oh, what's that? Sorry, I was busy looking at this:

{Mr. Darcy as Colin Firth. Oh, wait, I have that backwards.
Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy. sigh}

With thanks to Julia @HookedonHouses for the Twitter find.