Christmas Baking

I love to bake, and since we are celebrating Christmas with my mom's side of the family this Sunday, I decided that I'd make some yummy peanut clusters (#71) to take with us.  (I'm also making Chicken Tortilla Soup for lunch Sunday.)  I got this recipe when I worked at a bank in Cambridge, and it's one of the yummy treats I got to enjoy during their annual "Tasting Tea."  Every Christmas season, all of the businesses in town would make some kind of Christmas snack to share with everyone that walks store-to-store to sample the goodies.  One year that I especially remember, was when I volunteered to wrap pickles with cream cheese and dried beef.  Chad offered to help me when he saw that I had 300 (!) pickles to wrap.  Anyway, this recipe for Peanut Clusters is the best peanut cluster recipe I have ever tasted.  The secret ingredient is butter brickle chips. 

Minnick's Peanut Clusters
Preheat oven to 375 degrees, then turn oven off.
In 9x13 pan, put 1 1/2 pounds vanilla almond bark. 
Set in warm oven for 10 minutes.  Remove & stir.
Add one 12-oz pkg semi-sweet chocolate chips.  Stir.
Return to oven for 10 more minutes.  Remove & Stir.
Add 1 pkg butter brickle chips and 5 cups peanuts. 
Stir and drop on waxed paper using tablespoons. 
Allow to cool & set thoroughly before storing.
Makes approximately 5 dozen.

As a side note, I'll leave you with a photo from last night.  The snow was falling, the roads were slick, Jillian's "Y Kids Art" class was postponed, Jenica was finished with BB practice for the season, the girls didn't have any homework, and we had time for a Christmas Movie.  Jenica got to pick the movie this time, and we ended up watching "Home Alone 2 - Lost in New York City." (#72) It was fun to watch, because we had been in NYC ourselves this past summer, and we recognized a lot of the locations and scenes from the movie.  We kept saying, "hey, we saw that!"  Or, "hey, we took our picture at that same spot."  Remember the "bird lady" from the movie?  She threw bird seed on the bad guys in Central Park, who happened to be covered with varnish, so the birds would attack them long enough for Kevin to set off the fireworks, alerting the police where they could find the robbers of "Duncan's Toy Chest."   Well, we took Jacob & Jenica's picture beside that same bridge.  (See them in this picture?   #73 - a Christmas movie that will always remind us of our trip to NYC in 2011.)  And I've now added something new to my Bucket List:  a trip to NYC during the Christmas Season.

Jillian snuggled up with me on the couch (#74), because the suspense of the bad guys trying to get the little boy Kevin was almost too much for her to handle alone.  She put this silly Santa hat on before the movie, and proudly wore it the whole time. 

The quilt we are snuggled up in happens to be another of my favorite quilts (#75).  It's the quilt my great-grandma Daisy began, but never finished.  After she passed away, my mom found it in Gma Daisy's home and decided to finish it.  My mom surprised me with it as a gift when I graduated from High School.  I'm pretty sure it's made using scraps and clothes that great-grandma had on hand.  So, it's a pretty special treasure, and I always envision my g-gma Daisy when I snuggle up in this lap quilt.