Domestic Goodness

I love all the opportunity I have right now to exercise my inner Domestic Goddess.  Last night for dinner I made venison steaks (courtesy of my sister's BF) with "pan gravy" and potatoes.  It was super-good.  Maybe just a touch gamey, I think doing something with a marinade would probably help that.  And I need to learn how to get everything to be done at the same time!  But other than that, it was awesome.

I totally punted on the post-church lunch - tortilla chips and queso dip out of a jar.  But since I barely slept at all last night (seriously, maybe 2 hours), I didn't want to put too much effort into lunch.  Mostly I was waiting to sleep until the oil guy came to refuel my tank, since apparently last night I ran out....oops...

But then, tonight, I made hard candy for the first time.  I used this recipe for "Stained Glass Candy." Here's how it turned out:

I cracked it already, but then found that the center parts had quite set as well as I would like, so I put it back in the fridge.  I had a lot of fun doing this, and it tastes pretty good.  I chose green food coloring, and then tried to put a little dot of red on each piece, which didn't work out so well.  The red mostly just kind of set and gelled there, and it still kind of wipes off.  I want to get creative about how to get more than one color, to give it an actual "stained glass" look. Also, on the recipe site, it looks like some people used Kool-Aid mix instead of extract flavoring + food coloring, which I also really want to try.  I also took the advice of one person to "score" the candy as it was setting, so it cracks a little more predictably.  It only kind of worked, but I think I needed to be more "sincere" about my scoring efforts, and I think I can improve on the next batch!

In all, a very fun night!!