Allergies Advisor Addams Family Auction Almond Bark HA!!! Alliteration!!!

“I've been yours since that first day you carved my initials in your leg.”

Affectionate words from Morticia to Gomez, on the Addams Family TV show

Jim and I came home from church one day and were talking about all the cute babies and young couples in the ward. We were commenting on the fact that there weren’t many “older couples” left in the ward these days. Then it struck me. As we get older, more and more people are younger. We are one of the “older couples” now. :/ I hate those kind of realizations.

Fall is fickle in Houston. One day will be clear, crisp and cool, the next one sunny and in the high 70’s, or cloudy and overcast with off and on thunderstorms. The only constant, it seems is the ragweed in the air... OH, excuse me. The BEAUTIFUL goldenrod plants that line every vacant lot with their profuse yellow pollennnn oh I mean blooms. The presence of it fills the air I breathe, is inhaled into the air conditioner in my car, and settles on my clothes, hair and skin.

Each morning I have to choose whether to:

a) spend the day putting up with watery blinky eyes, tickly throat, and the occasional random sneeze

b) Take Benadryl, which makes me groggy, blah, and unable to operate motor vehicles or heavy machinery (which ought to include the blender and the can opener for me, considering how out of it I get)

c) Take Claritin, which dries out my whole head so I feel like a recently unearthed mummy ready to disintegrate, wondering (with my shriveled up brain) exactly when my lips will fall off

More and more I choose to go without the meds, because the med side effects are worse than the actual allergies. When I do this, however, people come up to me when I’m wiping my eyes or sniffing or sneezing and say from a reasonable distance back, “Are you ok?”, which I interpret as, “Please tell me someone died and that you’re not exposing this whole general area including me to a horrible unknown disease that will make us all suddenly drop dead.” I debate confirming their worst suspicions but usually mutter, “Stupid ragweed”, whereupon they sigh with relief and say, “Oh it certainly is bad, isn’t it! My mother’s sister’s third cousin’s great uncle has TERRIBLE allergies this time of year…”

Considering all the people in our area that suffer from allergy to that LOVELY specimen of nasty raggggg…uh, I mean goldenrod, I vote we take up a collection from each allergy sufferer of a couple bucks (what they spend on allergy meds in a week) and pay one of these ever present lawn companies to mow down all the yellow crapppp I mean GORGEOUSssss… feathery goldenrod. If anyone complains we’ll present them with a whole haystack’s worth of pollen weed to grow in their very own backyard, and then wonder why they don't have any friends any more.

OH guess what!! I finally got a new calling! I’m Mia Maid advisor. For those of you who aren’t LDS and don’t know the lingo, that means I teach Sunday lessons and help with activities for the 14-15 year old girls in our ward. I know and love them already, and I’ve taught many a lesson to teens thanks to my 4 years teaching early morning seminary, so this should be a fun calling.

The ward Halloween party was this last weekend. They call it the Fall Festival. I don’t know why, because it IS a Halloween party. It’s not like we don’t believe in the holiday. Everyone brought potluck dishes made from pumpkin, which distressed Jim a bit because he doesn’t care for pumpkin in any way, shape or form. I say if you’re picky you miss out and more for the rest of us. Besides they had hot dogs for finicky small children and adults. I signed up to make a dessert, and made pumpkin swirl ice cream pie with whipped cream, chocolate almond topping and warm toffee sauce on the side. It disappeared rapidly. I’m sure this is because it had chocolate on it, and because it didn’t LOOK like pumpkin, even though it really was.

Of course we had to dress up. There was a costume parade for the kids and a contest for adult couples. No masks at the party, so Stephen had to set aside the freaky clown mask he adores that he bought with his own money for Halloween, and pulled a black and white striped suit and handcuff chain from our dress up. He went as jailbait, and when it was his turn to go down the costume runway, he ran and rolled down the runway with very dramatic getaway run. Danny went as a pirate, with his amblyopia patch. He was very happy that no one asked him why he was wearing the patch. Actually at home (due to issues with him peeking around his patch when he thought no one was looking) we’ve switched to those big square bandage patches. He appears when wearing them to have had an awful eye injury, but he can’t cheat with a bandage. At his last trip to the eye doctor, he was able to read the next line of the eye chart down from the one he could read before with his weak eye. It’s nice to know the patch wearing is paying off.  Sarah skipped the party to go on a double date.  She does have a costume planned for Halloween, but since I'm not giving away her secret, you'll just have to wait and find out next week. 

After much debate and discussion (and advice from family members and friends), Jim and I decided to go as Gomez and Morticia Addams, which was actually Brittany's idea. It was loads of fun. I hit the local thrift store, and bought a snazzy shirt for Jim, fancy black vneck top and black car wash pants (you know, those long wide ones with the dangly flaps like the flaps in a car wash?) for me, as well as a long black wig and a mustache from Party City. Shush… I hear you thinking. The mustache was for Jim. I carried a red rose. After popular vote, Jim and I tied for first prize with another couple that dressed as the Mad Hatter and the Queen of Hearts.

We also won another prize for our Trunk or Treat Car decorations. They really weren’t all that, although we did do dry ice like we do every year.  I think the judges were impressed that when they came by, my iPod player was blasting the Addams Family theme song, and we were snapping along. Dadada DUM! Snap snap! They gave us the prize for “Most Obsessed”.

The neighborhood garage sales continue. In the last couple of weeks, among many other fun things, I bought a really nice Cuisinart food processor/blender still in the box for $25, and from someone getting rid of a parent’s estate, boxes and boxes of nice Italian hand-painted blue porcelain dishes (dishwasher and microwave safe), the like of which I’ve been looking for in stores for a while. My sister Laura would definitely approve. She’s been trying to get me to break down and buy nice dishes for a while. So yes, now I have some! Pat and I went to one sale and there was quite the salesman there. As soon as I walked in the yard he said, “Looks like you need… a WEDDING DRESS!” He pointed to a lovely dress hanging from a tree in the yard. I laughed and told him we’d already purchased two in the last year and won’t need any more any time soon thank you very much. After which he presented me with a huge book I was looking at and said, “It’s yours no charge!! You deserve it.”

The local public library was having a silent auction along with a used book sale to raise money, and Pat volunteered me to donate something. She was going to have me do a watercolor painting, but after some thought, I decided some of my cards might sell better and be more useful (everyone needs cards, right??). So I donated three different handmade one-of-a-kind thank you cards with a pop-up THANK YOU in the middle (if you go back to the beginning of my card blogs I have pics of them). I gave them to Pat to give them to the librarian she knows, figuring it would be an anonymous donation and that would be that. On the day of the silent auction we went to peruse the books and check out the auction. Pat introduced me to the librarian she had given the cards to, and she raved about the cards and asked if I would come and give a class next month. Pat spoke up (I think I was standing there stunned) and said I had a wedding in December and would another month do, and the librarian said I should come for Valentine’s Day. So I’m committed I suppose. I don’t know how Pat gets me into these things, but I suppose it’s good for me. After the librarian went back to her duties, I noticed that my cards were there on display, but there was no bid paper. I mentioned it to Pat and she said something about the librarian and her husband liking my cards so much, that she purchased them herself and didn’t put them up for bid. On the way out to the car I asked how much she paid. Pat said, “$50. And she likes them so much she says she might never send them, she’ll just keep them.” My mouth dropped open for the second time that day. I like to think that the librarian would have donated that much to the library anyway, because I can’t imagine my cards being worth anywhere close to THAT much.

Recipe:

In honor of the season, here’s the pie recipe I used for the Fall festival. I got it from epicurious.com. Who needs a cookbook???

Pumpkin Ice Cream Pie with Chocolate-Almond Bark and Toffee Sauce

From Bon Appetit magazine November 2008

by Sarah Patterson Scott

yield: Makes 8 servings

Crust:

• 12 whole graham crackers (about 7 ounces)

• 1/4 cup sugar

• 7 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted



Filling:

• 1 cup canned pure pumpkin

• 3/4 cup (packed) golden brown sugar

• 1/4 cup heavy whipping cream

• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

• 1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

• 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice

• 1/4 teaspoon salt

• 2 quarts premium vanilla ice cream



Bark, sauce, and topping:

• Nonstick vegetable oil spray

• 6 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped

• 1/2 cup slivered almonds, toasted, coarsely chopped

• 1 cup (packed) golden brown sugar

• 1/4 cup dark corn syrup

• 3 tablespoons water

• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter

• 2 cups chilled heavy whipping cream, divided

• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

• 1/8 teaspoon salt

• 2 tablespoons sugar

Preparation

For crust:

Preheat oven to 350°F. Finely grind graham crackers in processor. Mix in sugar. Add butter; mix to blend. Press onto bottom and up sides of 10-inch-diameter glass pie dish. Bake until light brown around edges, about 12 minutes. Cool completely.

For filling:

Whisk first 9 ingredients in medium bowl. Slightly soften ice cream in microwave in 10-second intervals. Measure 1 cup ice cream; cover and freeze (reserve for another use). Spoon remaining ice cream into large bowl. Working quickly, add pumpkin mixture and fold just until swirled into ice cream (do not blend completely). If ice cream begins to melt, freeze until almost firm. Spoon ice cream filling into cooled crust, cover with plastic, and freeze until firm, at least 6 hours. DO AHEAD: Can be made 2 days ahead. Keep frozen.

For bark, sauce, and topping:

Line baking sheet with parchment paper; spray with nonstick spray. Stir chocolate in bowl set over saucepan of simmering water until melted and smooth. Pour onto baking sheet. Using offset spatula, spread chocolate in even layer into 12x9-inch rectangle. Sprinkle with nuts. Place in freezer until hard, at least 30 minutes. Invert onto work surface. Peel off paper. Coarsely chop. Place DO AHEAD: Chocolate-almond bark can be made 2 days ahead. Keep frozen.

Bring brown sugar, corn syrup, 3 tablespoons water, and butter to boil in heavy medium saucepan, stirring until butter melts and sugar dissolves. Reduce heat to medium and boil until dark brown, stirring occasionally, about 5 minutes. Carefully stir in 1/2 cup cream, vanilla, and salt (mixture will bubble vigorously). Boil 1 minute longer. Cool slightly. DO AHEAD: Sauce can be made 2 days ahead. Cover and chill. Rewarm before serving.

Using electric mixer, beat 1 1/2 cups cream and 2 tablespoons sugar in medium bowl until peaks form. Spoon decoratively over pie. Sprinkle chocolate-almond bark over. Cut pie into wedges and serve, passing warm sauce alongside.