..non*sense..: November 2013

for our fall backyard movie night I chose Arachnophobia. I hadn't seen this movie since I was a kid! I remember being a little scared when I first saw it, and it still has its creepy feeling when all the real spiders are running around, but it was pretty corny, so that was fun!

I did a big no-no and tried stuff I hadn't done for a crowd before. I never have good luck when I just throw together an idea for a recipe, especially for a party. I will test a recipe out until we're sick of it so I know how to do it, but this time I just threw caution to the wind and hoped for the best, and if it didn't work out I had Matt's corn dogs to fall back on, but it all came together great :)

while I have made beer pretzels before, I only did 8. I made 24 this time, and set out a bunch of dipping sauces - a variety of mustards, "cheese" sauce, caramel, and chocolate - they doubled as a savory and a sweet treat. it's a nice little versatile "snack" :)

I made Rolo pretzel spiders which is not quite a first time "recipe" either, but I took a chance that they would turn out in a nice spider configuration, and they did :) I tried melting the Rolo and sticking the pretzels in, but that didn't work so I used candy melts to glue the legs to the candy. chocolate and pretzels seem to be a hit combination at movie night so I'm glad I did them.

a new thing I did that I hadn't tested out before was kettle corn. I used coconut oil and bacon drippings, stirred in some sugar and salt with the popcorn kernels and shook it all together on the stove in a big pot until it was done. this one didn't come out as awesome as I thought it would, but it was okay. some people really liked it so I'm happy I tried it.