Every year I make this huge list of things I want to try baking, and this year I got inspired to try cooking candy. I have made candy in the past; I made these AMAZING apple cider caramels last year and homemade butterfingers about 10 months ago or so, so I know the basics but I really want to try my hand at making taffy this year. Along with several other things...and I have a brand new stove that I get to abuse and no reason to NOT do it! My poor dutch oven is just sitting on a shelf all sad and unused (since I promised myself I wouldn't fry anything!) just waiting for this season to come upon us!
On that note, if you don't have a dutch oven, or don't know what a dutch oven is used for, let me explain: a dutch oven is by far the greatest thing ever for any kitchen. As stated above, you can do ANYTHING in it from frying foods to making candy and everything in between. It can go in the oven and go camping with you (yes, camping...it can sit in the campfire and everything!) and bake breads and cook soups...I could go on forever. I love my dutch oven, I got it as a wedding present and just stared at it in its box for about a year before I just HAD to get some kind of use for it. I don't even remember what I made in it, but I'm pretty sure I cooked some kind of meat for my first attempt at tamales...and the meat was the only good part about that! But, I fell madly in love and never looked back.
This year, I hope to let Penny help me out with the regular baking. I look very forward to our first year decorating Christmas cookies and giving our neighbors some goodies. She always wants to help me and I usually give her a small job, but this year one thing we are going to do is make David's birthday cake. I want her to be able to present it, no matter how lopsided and unevenly iced, and be able to say "Look what I made you, Daddy!"
If you don't know me personally, I'll let you know now that there is nothing more adorable (and, slightly annoying) than how much my oldest daughter LOVES her Daddy! She loves me too, and enjoys our time together whenever we get it, but I am well aware that she is a daddy's girl, through and through. I do get tired of it, but for the most part I embrace it.
However, lately Penny has started to take on my mannerisms and hand gestures. It's very funny. We spent a good hour the other night making "emotion faces"...I don't think I have laughed that hard in years. But this big step has also been an eye-opener. I know I can be hard on my kids, and I like to believe it's for their own good and that as long as there is a good balance of love and the firm hand, they will turn out normal. However:
This really makes a parent think about how they go about discipline the next time the kids are driving her up a wall! I think I had great parents, but they weren't perfect and neither am I. I'm not shooting for perfection, but I am bound and determined to try and not make the same mistakes.
It's a constant fear as a parent, that you will screw up your kid so badly that they won't be able to make it in the real world on their own and have normal social relationships. You wonder if you are too soft, or too hard on them. You wonder if spanking them will ruin them for life or just teach them to not be a jerkface, and then if you don't spank them you wonder if you are teaching them that they can get away with their actions...and then it just spins out of control.
But, then there is this time at night when your kids are going to bed and they come up to you with those sleepy eyes and crawl into your lap, wrap their arms around your neck, nuzzle their heads into your chest and just breathe. And all of it is 100% worth it.
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