Friday, January 04, 2008

Back Atcha


It's back to school on Monday. *sigh* I barely had time to slouch horizontally on the floor, drool and read fiction whilst watching bad television and eating chocolate "bon bons" (those'd be from the 10 pound bag of Hershey's kisses left over from the holiday party we (the Nursing Student-y Organization that I'm a part of) threw for the nursing students and staff). I was barely able to take the kids to holiday-flavored events and locations and now I have to go back. I spent most of the break coping w/ my badly-removed tooth and the perplexing and constant issue of Toy Storage that always comes to a head 'round about now.

This quarter I'm doing my geriatric and my pediatric rotations. Most of my clinicals have been pretty geriatric, actually. Everyone in the hospital these days is elderly, it seems. And a lot of 'em smoke, or are obese or are drinkers. I'm not being cynical. These are just observations. Someone back me up here. I'm actually looking forward to going back despite the list of things I didn't do at home, the things I didn't bake and the parks I didn't take the kids to. *sigh*

Pictured above is the ice cream sundae I made for Christmas. The ice cream is from one of the best ice cream places in a town of good ice cream places. Yes, it's mint ice cream and the color comes from ground up mint leaves. It's topped w/ hot fudge (recipe follows) and whipped cream and pulverized candy cane because -darnit- if it's not sprinkled w/ pulverized candy canes in December it might not be worth dipping a spoon into!

Hot Fudge Sauce

1 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup corn syrup (hey, can any of you find corn syrup *w/out* added vanilla?sheesh!)
9 ounces fine quality bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
1/3 cup dark brown sugar
good pinch of salt
2 Tbsp butter (skip adding salt if using salted butter, but you wouldn't use salted butter would you?)
1 tsp vanilla

Bring cream, corn syrup, salt and chocolate to a simmer in a heavy saucepan over low to medium heat. Once it's bubbling, turn down the heat and cook for five minutes. Stir it half as often as you think you should. Remove from heat and add butter and vanilla. Cool to warm before serving. You can refrigerate it and heat a little bit up until shiny before serving.

Note: a lot of recipes will lecture you about "breaking " your chocolate sauce. This is when the solids and the oil separate. Apparently, these grumpy bakers believe this will lead to a grainy sauce. Every time I make a chocolate sauce it breaks and I just cool it in the fridge and whisk whisk whisk until it comes together and I have never had a problem with poor texture...so there!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

yea, you do tend to get the sick ones in the hospital...still scratching my head when I think about the COPD'er's with an O2 tank out at the smoking shelter...

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