My big accomplishment for October was making my mom's caramel recipe. This recipe is the real deal. It has sugar, sugar, and more sugar in it plus a whole bunch of butter and cream. Boil all that for 45 minutes or more, stirring the entire time, and when you reach the "soft-ball" stage you get the most delicious caramel I have ever had. I made caramel the last two years and neither of the recipes I used turned out as good as my mom's (the lack of a good candy thermometer may or may not have contributed to the problem). When I found the candy making book that contains the recipe she uses I decided to give it a try. After much difficulty trying to find a candy thermometer I finally had the tools to make the caramel. And guess what? It turned out fabulous! Smooth and creamy; not too soft nor too hard. Mmmm. I tried to pace myself, with some degree of difficulty, while eating them but ended having to give most of them away. Lets be honest here...I have little self control when it comes to sweets. But if it's not in my house I can't eat it!
We didn't go trick-or-treating this year, although I did briefly consider it until it started raining and hailing. If we were to go out I was planning on going with Grandma Bodily and uncle Brett to a few of the people in their neighborhood who know us. I mostly just wanted to show off Kara's adorable costume and not be judged for taking a child so young trick-or-treating. :) Thank goodness we had a family Halloween party where I could still show her off.
The cheesecake I made with a spider web decoration on top won the best dessert contest. Go me! We didn't win the best costume contest but I was still proud of our costumes. I was a Sunkist orange, Trevor was green grapes (his favorite fruit. It's astounding how many he can eat in one sitting), and Kara was a strawberry. Her costume looks like a fairy but if you look closely the suit is strawberry print. She was, by far, the cutest one there in my humble opinion.
Sadly, our pumpkins didn't win the pumpkin carving contest. There was good effort on our part though. Trevor's pumpkin is, well, barfing, mine is a blinged out bat, and Kara's pumpkin is bedazzled as well as carved. The gems are difficult to see in this picture but they're the same star shape as the carved parts.
