The Plentiful Vintage

It's truffle time at Casa Machina. I picked up most of my supplies Friday night. It's apparently my lucky week for making them, as Walmart had Hershey chips for $1.50 a bag, AC Moore has candy melts for a $1.69 a bag, and Dave's has Philly cream cheese buy one (@ $2.49) get one free! For the bean counters amongst you, that's basically $3 per 1 lb batch, plus flavorings. I get off cheap there, too, because I still have plenty of extracts leftover from last year. I only had to spring for a bag of shredded coconut ($1.50) and a bottle of mapleine ($2.49), this year's experimental flavor.

I'm going to make a couple of batches of cookies, as well, Marnie's chocolate chips and ATK's triple chocolates.

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AC Moore also has some 50% off coupons up on their site, one of which I may use to buy an air brush.

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For the past thirty years or so, my dad has been my easiest gift. He loves cheese and beef stick and candy, so every year I've given him a food basket based on those items, heavy on the cheeses. This was good, because otherwise he would probably be the hardest person to buy for. However, at Thanksgiving he mentioned to me that now that he's had that double bypass, perhaps it would be better if I stuck to low fat cheeses. I have since discovered that this turns out to be harder than it sounds. I always include some Jarlsberg, and that's available in a lower fat version, but after that there don't seem to be a lot of choices unless I decide to wander over to the Cracker Barrel aisle. Dave's had some no fat cheese from Vermont, but I'm leery.

Of course, a risk assessment might say that if it took him 83 years of eating regular cheese to develop the original blockage, chances are good that a nice wedge of cheddar is unlikely to keep him from reaching 166. Right?

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It was lightly warmer today, 40 instead of 32, but windier, so it felt about the same as I rode. Broke 1700 miles for the year. Not too shabby. Afterward I made beef stew in the pressure cooker. Today I also cleaned the bathroom and most of the kitchen, and did laundry. Next I'm going to make some truffle centers. I feel very accomplished.