The Search for Miss Direction: Taffy Troubles

I've had a rough Mom day today. Perhaps the best way to describe it is by sharing a text I sent to Grant at shortly after 10am this morning:

Rope is fraying, not much room left to tie a knot. Strongly considering using rope to tie up children.

(I kid. Mostly....)

My favorite twosome has worn by patience extremely thin all day with their antics. I'm not sure what's gotten into them over the past couple of days but it has been whine and tantrum city. I was really hoping to either go to the library and play on the computers for awhile today or have a picnic/tea party, but honestly after putting out one fire after another neither of those things happened. We did manage to get Kid Kitchen in, but even that seemed to be working against me (more on that later). And it's not just me - when Grant got home tonight I don't think he was home more than 5 minutes when he looked at me and wanted to know how I had possibly survived this long today. We went bed shopping again after dinner and I think we both strongly considering just leaving the kids in one of the mini rooms Ikea designs... *Sigh* Prayers for strength sent my way after you read this would be most appreciated. (And please, do NOT pray for my patience, it does not need to be tested any further at this point....)

So, as I said, we also had a mini failure in Kid Kitchen. We did manage to make some yummy chocolate cut out cookies for Noah's teacher gifts tomorrow first. I knew after all his culinary creations this year that they would appreciate something he made. I also made some really adorable flower pots (Noah decorated them) that I 'planted' flower pens in, and included a note thanking them for helping Noah "grow" this year :) But back to our flop...

So first of all, Happy National Taffy Day. As I mentioned last night, I did put together a yummy taffy apple salad for with dinner tonight (pineapple, apple, marshmallow, whipped cream, peanuts and snicker bars - how can you go wrong?) so all was not lost. I decided that the kiddos and I would try our hand at making some saltwater taffy. Here's where I'll share today's Kristi's Kitchen tip: If you're going to bother making homemade candy, invest in a candy thermometer. The taffy needed to reach hard ball candy stage (about 260 degrees), and I knew that the 'trick' was to drizzle it in water and if a ball forms you're good to go. Apparently the further trick is to not cook it for too long in the first place, because even if you get it up hotter than 260 degrees it will still form a ball.

Once we left it in a pan to cool for a bit before pulling it out, I knew we were going to have problems. While there was some give to the taffy I was afraid we'd end up with an emergency trip to the dentist if I actually let anyone eat it. So not worth it... So no saltwater taffy here today. But we did try so I'm not calling it a flat out failure. And next time I will get the candy thermometer. Probably a handy thing to have around a kitchen that is active as mine anyway.

Alright, I'm not much fun tonight, so I'm going to wrap it up. I'm really hoping that tomorrow is going to be better. I'm looking forward to graduation (will probably cry at the yearly video) and I'm sure you'll all get a good giggle out of how I handle escargot :) Until then...