Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews

Dove Chocolates Discoveries Barnyard Truffles

The email I received said -- and I quote:

I hope you are well! Easter is quickly approaching, and Dove Chocolate Discoveries has an adorable Barnyard Truffle recipe (image below) that brings great cheer to the holiday! These festive truffles are made with three simple ingredients (featured below) and decorations for their eyes, ears, and noses. They make perfect cupcake toppers or a fantastic extra treat for your Easter celebration. Making the truffles is easy and a great activity for kids too! 

"Easy and great for kids."

Great! Send it on over! That sounds fun!

And then I got a box with a metric ton of high-end chocolate:

This was when I started to worry a little bit. No instructions, just a recipe book. That said stuff about a tempering kit, which was apparently not included.

What the hell is tempering? Oh, she-yoot.

My husband was looking at me with one of those "what has she gotten herself into" 100-mile stares. But my girl was ready to MAKE THE TRUFFLES!

How can I resist this?

I decided to attempt a new skill. I seriously should've realized that truffles would be hard, but I sort of did what a lot of reviewers did -- I glanced at the pictures and assumed "easy" and "do with your kids" meant that.

The first step was to chop the dark chocolate into the shape of a map of the United States.

This was really, really good chocolate. It smelled heavenly.

Next, you were supposed to boil some heavy cream and pour it over the chopped chocolate and let it sit for two minutes. Note to self: submerge the chocolate chunks, because otherwise they won't melt. Mine didn't after hand whisking my hands into severe cramps. Beloved ended up reheating it in a double boiler to get the lumps out. He is so smart. Then we refrigerated it for an hour and went to buy cat food.

Next step: Temper the chocolate to go over the main truffle innards we had just created. I was completely paranoid as a) I didn't know how to temper chocolate (whisper to it reassuringly?) and b) I didn't have the fancy tempering kit clearly referenced in the provided recipe. Oh, and you need a candy thermomenter. Which I didn't have. We picked one up yesterday while out and about -- more on that later.

Easy!

So I printed something off About.com.

Note it says the difficulty is "average." The hubris of About.com. AND ME!

To temper, you have to use that double boiler again (I used a Dutch oven with a metal bowl that balanced on top with the bottom just touching the water). You get it hot, then you add 1/3 of the remaining chopped chocolate, which makes it cooler, then you get it hotter, not to exceed extremely specific temperatures that my $3 candy thermometer did not go down to. So I totally winged it.

My thermometer started at 100 degrees. ha ha ha ha ha

 

If the chocolate is tempered correctly, it's supposed to look shiny dried on waxed paper. Can't believe I pulled that off.

We coated half the truffle mix in dark chocolate and then went on to try the white chocolate, because, barnyard animals.

What up?

The About.com instructions said you really need a pound of chocolate to temper. I only had eight ounces. Here goes nothing!

Shiny! Again, it's an Easter miracle.

Decorating supplies not included in the kit. 

Pig.

Rabbit.

His whiskers are made out of tempered-dark-chocolate-covered potato sticks. Because I had more than a pound of the dark chocolate and no idea what to do with the extra once it was all tempered and stuff.

Bear.There are totally bears in barnyards. In Montana.

Hewwow? I wuv you. Come back! Don't be mawd about the chocowate.

This is an Easter egg decorated by a Montanan bear.

Pig who stayed out too late last night.

Bunny who let the bear apply his make-up.

Dark chocolates I made with the candy molds I bought when I realized hey! I need a candy thermometer and I have more than a pound of expensive dark chocolate.

LOOK HOW SHINY!

Total time from first chop to clean kitchen and immediate review written: Six hours.

Family loved the chocolate. Cute idea. Not a successful review experience.

Let's Panic Giveaway!

Drumroll, please!

The winner of a brand-spanking new copy of Let's Panic About Babies by the fabulous Alice Bradley and Eden Marriott Kennedy is:

DAWN K! Dawn, I'll be in touch to get your mailing address, you lucky duck.

Congratulations to Dawn and stay tuned for more giveaways.

What I Would Tell Her, Edited by Andrea N. Richesin

It would be unfair of me to not warn you about this book. What I Would Tell Her: 28 Devoted Dads on Bringing Up, Holding On To and Letting Go of Their Daughters, edited by Andrea N. Richesin, will make you cry. Unless you are an alien.

The essays are well written and raw and much edgier than I thought they might be. This is not a syrupy collection. These dads are novelists, poets, screenwriters, filmmakers, entrepreneurs and not afraid of shoving their fears under your nose and letting you take a sniff.

From "To Be Read By Ava on Her Eighteenth Birthday," by Trey Ellis:

My memoir is not only infinitely dirtier but relives my mother's suicide when I was sixteen and my dad's death of AIDS complications when I was twenty-two. While I tried my best not to make Ava's mother my story's villain, the question hangs there, nevertheless, between every line and piece of punctuation: why did a woman walk out and raising her babies?"

There are stories of bad news and good news, innocent soccer games and hard partying. These are the stories of life told from the perspective I can't know: a man's. Which makes them fascinating to me.

From "El Corazon," by James Griffioen:

I felt so helpless knowing as sure as it has a rhythm separate from my own, there will come a day that it will suffer, and there will be nothing for me to do but hold her bigger fist in my hand and squeeze it, and if she'll listen, I'll tell her how strong it still is, that it is never really torn or broken, but merely wounded and exposed, and that even in that state of terrible vulnerability, the most important thing to do is never let it grow cold.

 

Let's Panic About Babies! by Alice Bradley & Eden M. Kennedy Review & Giveaway

I have been waiting for Let's Panic About Babies! How to Endure and Possibly Triumph Over the Adorable Tyrant Who Will Ruin Your Body, Destroy Your Life, Liquefy Your Brain, and Finally Turn You into a Worthwhile Human Being by Alice Bradley and Eden M. Kennedy for approximately five years, ever since I emailed Alice about contributing to Sleep Is for the Weak and that bitch withheld one essay I really wanted because she said she was planning to write a book someday.

 
The most awesome book with the world's longest subtitle for the new mother.

Imagine my glee when my copy arrived! The old-timey illustrations! The bone-dry wit! 

It was really good.

It includes point/counterpoints by Alice and Eden on topics such as "Should You Just Simply Pee Your Pants?" and excerpts from people I'm not sure actually exist who say IT REALLY HAPPENED. I actually read parts of it (where to best barf in public) to my six-year-old daughter, but saved other parts (Chapter 10: Fucking Hell, It's a Baby) for my own bathtub reading. You see, I already had a baby and I'm not having any more, so this is all just fun and games for me.

I probably should find some cons, so here's one: If you actually thought Alice and Eden were serious about not gaining an ounce during pregnancy or the fact that your baby in utero looks like an armadillo, you would freak the hell out. During my pregnancy, I had a problem with taking all people way too literally. I myself might have freaked out if I had read this during pregnancy. Of course, maybe if I had I would've loosened up and embraced Chapter 9: One Way or Another, It Will Come Out of You.

Bygones!

And guess what? Alice and Eden are letting me give away a copy of Let's Panic to one lucky reader. Each comment is an entry, enter as many times as you want. Deadline: midnight CT (or whenever I remember to shut off comments) on Monday, March 21.

Life From Scratch, by Melissa Ford

Last night on my way to a reading by the book doctors, I called my sister. I was talking about the book we had read for my social change book club (Cheap) and for what seemed like the 81st time, she said, "Don't take this wrong, but don't you ever read anything fun?"

And the answer, really, is no. Not usually. But Life From Scratch, a novel by my good friend Melissa Ford, is fun.

It's the story of Rachel, a recently divorced woman going through a coming-of-age of sorts. She decides to teach herself to cook, very Julie and Julia, and start a food blog to go with it. Her food blog, though, is more of a personal blog, and it takes off big-time. She wins a blogging award and finds herself cyber stalking someone reading her blog from her ex-husband's law firm. She's sure it's him. I was sure it was not.

It was not.

But this novel was far from predictable, because while I congratulated myself several times for paying attention to foreshadowing, I did not see the end coming at all.

Since Mel lives and works in the world of blogging, she does a fantastic job describing the agony and the ecstasy of stats and comments and the release of personal blogging. I laughed out loud when Rachel justified her actions because her commenters agreed with her. And I loved the concept of the 24-hour mope.

The novel's fast pace and likable characters made it very fun for me to read. It was fun! I liked it!

Take that, little sister. ha!