WWBFD (What Would Brett Favre Do?) and Crock Pot Dulce de Leche

We have made easy and muy delicioso dulce de leche in the crock pot before, using a can of sweetened condensed milk. But could I also use the crock pot to make dulce de leche from scratch? Would that not be better and tastier?

Following Lora Brody's recipe in Slow Cooker Cooking, I put 3 cups of whole milk, a split vanilla bean, 1 2/3 cup of sugar, 1/4 cup water and a pinch of baking soda in the crock pot, left the lid off, set it on high, and went on my merry way.

For several hours, it just looked like this: hot, spiced milk.

And then 5 hours in ... voila! Caramel color! Thickened caramelliness!

But, the recipe dictated several more hours - 4 more hours, for a total of 9 hours in the crock pot.

And this is where I was faced with my Brett Favre moment.

Do I stop here, turn off the crock pot and take what looks to be a good batch, a successful batch, and call it a day?

Or do I keep going? Do I let it caramelize even more, reaching possibly even greater heights of glory? And risk going too long, ending a long, sweet run with the bitter taste of failure?

I took the way of Favre: I waffled about it forever, and finally decided to keep it in a little longer. The recipe, I figured, couldn't be that off. My crock pot, I thought, can't be that hot.

But while Brett Favre is currently generating talk of a possible MVP, my dulce de leche just generated talk of being my LFF - Latest Food Fail.

Because the next time I checked the dulce de leche, less than an hour later, it looked like this:

Burnt.

Not super-caramelly and slightly burnt, which might be good, but kind of curdled and a little too burnt.

Adding the additional cup of milk as directed by the recipe made it seem less burnt. It tasted okay, but it still had that bitter edge, and it wasn't quite the creaminess and sticky goodness I had hoped for, once had, and lost.

Which goes to show you that I am no Brett Favre, and that you should watch the food, not the clock, and not the recipe.

Candy Not to Give Away: Jujubes

Hope everyone had a good Halloween! GoatSpawn and Foodgoat enjoyed their costumes immensely - the monkey in the banana tree.

This year, a new candy appeared on the list of things NOT to give out - Jujubes.

A few weeks ago, for GoatSpawn's 1st birthday party, I gave out boxes of Jujubes as party favors, since that happens to be one of our pet names for her. I had a vague recollection of Jujubes as squishy, chewy, gummy bear like candies, but when I opened up a box to try them (alas, after the party), I was alarmed to find that they are not at all like I thought they were.

No, these Jujubes are not at all squishy. Nor are they chewy, unless you have jaws of steel. Nor are they like gummi bears, which are sweet and fun to eat, as opposed to weird tasting and a dental nightmare. No, they are hard. Hard and small and artificially flavored.

So now when I see a box of Jujubes, I don't think, "Oh, cute name for GoatSpawn!" No, I think, "Nasty choking hazard."

If I'd wanted the soft, chewy type of candy, I should have gone for the Jujyfruits. Or I should have looked for Canadian jujubes, which apparently are the soft, edible kind.

Thus I left with several boxes of Jujubes I don't know what to do with. I think it could work as buckshot. Or to fill in potholes. But eat them? Not such a good idea.

Thank Goodness Easter is Over

It's a great relief to me that Easter season is over, because Easter candy is quite possibly the most unappealing holiday candy of the entire year. There are Peeps (no one actually eats these, do they?), there are Cadbury eggs (raw eggs, even pretend candy raw eggs ... eww), and then there are the aisles and aisles of cheap, sugary, probably grainy and untasty, milk chocolate bunnies.

In third grade, we had to sell foot tall milk chocolate bunnies. I ended up eating a lot of them myself. I must have overdosed then, because I can't stand the idea of eating a Easter chocolate bunny now.

White Chocolate Kit Kat

Who can blog when on one side there's a family member getting meanly and unjustly fired by Crazy Lady Boss, and a Foodgoat going through self-inflicted WarCrack detox and withdrawal on the other side? Oh, and throw in Freezing Cold Rain and the official start of Sock Weather.

Not Ladygoat, that's for sure.

I've been eating, but it hasn't been exciting eating, and it hasn't been adventurous eating. And there's no point in blogging about ordinary, everyday, just-get-the-stomach-to-stop-bothering-me eating.

Perhaps I'm just depressed because the last food adventure I had ended badly. It was a brief affair, a long time in blog years ago. I was younger, but that's no excuse: I was seduced by the glitz, the newness of it all. But nothing about it was pretty. I didn't even tell Foodgoat about it, I was so ashamed.

I tried the Kit Kat White Chocolate.

I don't know why I did it, it was just there by the cashier! It was a mistake. It's so clear to me now. White chocolate, despite its name, is no chocolate. The whole thing was chalky, horribly chalky, and the sweetness was so fake. I hated it, really. It didn't mean anything to me. And it will never happen again, I swear.