Life: My Bucket List

During my lifetime, I would like to...

• Set foot on all continents.
• Obtain a culinary arts degree.
• Help someone find love/happiness.
• Speak another language fluently.
• Interview someone who is famous for respectable reasons.
• Create something that will outlive me.
  

"Many a false step was made by standing still" - my fortune cookie.

Katie

Treats: Peanut Butter Fudge

Mama Marshall is not my mother (she is a friend's mother).  However, she taught me how to make some really delicious deserts, including her famous Peanut Butter Fudge.  She told me I was going to ruin it the first time I made it, and I did!  But I think I'm pretty good at it now, so I'm going to share this top-secret recipe with you!

Ingredients:

2 sticks of butter
12 oz. evaporated milk
5 cups sugar
3 cups peanut butter
2 cups marshmallow cream

• First, mix the butter, evaporated milk, and sugar in a large pot.  Separately, in a giant mixing bowl, combine the peanut butter and marshmallow cream.  It is important to measure everything out beforehand because you won't be able to once you start.

• On the stove, melt the butter, evaporated milk, and sugar together over MEDIUM heat.  Stir continuously.  If you mess up, here is where it will happen!  DO NOT RAISE THE TEMPERATURE ABOVE 'MEDIUM.'  It will take 30-45 minutes for the mixture to boil. Yes, you need to stand there stirring the entire time! :)  When it boils it looks something like this:

• Boil the mixture for exactly 8 minutes and then pour it over the peanut butter/marshmallow in the mixing bowl.  Stir until all ingredients are combined.

• You can pour your fudge into a greased 9x13" baking dish.  Cover, and place in the refrigerator until it becomes solid.  I distribute the fudge into three 8x8" cake pans because it takes less time to solidify and is easier to remove from the pan once it has done so! :)

For gifts, cut these bad boys into bricks, or squares, wrap in red or green cling wrap, slap a holiday bow on it, and voila! Hope you enjoy! :)

Love always!

Katie

Life: Elite Education

I just read this article on the disadvantages of elite education written by William Deresiewicz. I think this was my favorite paragraph...


"If one of the disadvantages of an elite education is the temptation it offers to mediocrity, another is the temptation it offers to security. When parents explain why they work so hard to give their children the best possible education, they invariably say it is because of the opportunities it opens up. But what of the opportunities it shuts down? An elite education gives you the chance to be rich—which is, after all, what we’re talking about—but it takes away the chance not to be. Yet the opportunity not to be rich is one of the greatest opportunities with which young Americans have been blessed. We live in a society that is itself so wealthy that it can afford to provide a decent living to whole classes of people who in other countries exist (or in earlier times existed) on the brink of poverty or, at least, of indignity. You can live comfortably in the United States as a schoolteacher, or a community organizer, or a civil rights lawyer, or an artist—that is, by any reasonable definition of comfort. You have to live in an ordinary house instead of an apartment in Manhattan or a mansion in L.A.; you have to drive a Honda instead of a BMW or a Hummer; you have to vacation in Florida instead of Barbados or Paris, but what are such losses when set against the opportunity to do work you believe in, work you’re suited for, work you love, every day of your life?"

You can read the rest of this article HERE


Katie