Panic

The other night my husband was playing a bunch of make me cry country songs. Ones about little girls growing up and how "You're gonna miss this" and memories and all. And I sobbed my way up the stairs to cuddle my little one to bed and my heart hit panic mode. Full blown panic. Because no matter how hard I search, I cannot find the pause button. In fact, somehow I must keep hitting fast forward. I don't think it's a case of over scheduling ourselves and having no time, we only have one child in school and currently only one activity (Ezra's basketball). It's simply the speed of life. And it's frightening. Today they spend the majority of their time on the couch, in the kitchen, riding bikes...with me. Tomorrow they'll be gone. Boo hoo! I know God created the seasons of life. And with His help I will learn to accept it. But for a while, I'll probably fight it with tears and panic.

One cure for that kind of panic is chocolate. The other is spending time with my kids. Monday I mixed the two.

Lately I've been loving almonds and dark chocolate. I found this old recipe from Better Homes and Gardens in my files and it looked easy. It was.
The simple version is that you roast and coarsely chop 1 cup of almonds. Add 1/2 cup of chopped dried cherries. Set aside while you melt 3 ounces of chopped dark chocolate over low heat in a double boiler (or a large mixing bowl set on a small saucepan of water if you don't have a double boiler). Remove from the heat, and add three more ounces of chopped chocolate. Mix until all chocolate is melted and smooth. I might tell you that I didn't have enough really good dark chocolate in the house, so I mixed semi-sweet and unsweetened baker's chocolate. 2 parts semi to 1 part unsweet. Take bowl off top of double boiler, add nuts and cherries, mix together. Plop spoonfuls of the mixture on wax paper. Put them in the fridge for 20 minutes to set up. Store at room temp. You can get the longer directions at BHG.com.

I placed mine into Valentine cupcake liners to make them cute and also so that you have something to hold them in since the chocolate melts all over your fingers easily.
Then the girls and I worked on some cookie dough together. Look at those orange noses--perhaps I've been putting a little too much carrot juice in the smoothies???


Mmmmm...maybe pink cream cheese frosting will take away some of the orange. For the afternoon I managed to find the pause button.