"Bible"

This cute little find (on clearance at Target for $1.50!) has become my holiday "Bible" this year:You would not BELIEVE the amount of stuff I have already managed to jot down in there...

--various recipes - funny story on this end, below...

--Holiday shopping list - who's getting what, the budget, how we're doing in the budget (i.e., one person's has "15+19=34...15-ish to go..."

--Christmas card list - which has been budgeted down this year, unfortunately

--grocery shopping list for Christmas party

--decoration shopping list (you can never have too many Christmas decorations!)

So on the recipes. I found a recipe for microwave fudge - you basically melt everything in a big glass bowl in the microwave, duh. That way, you don't have to worry about the long "bring these ingredients to a boil" stovetop process of old. I decided to do a test run the other night, and make some peanut butter fudge. For some reason, it was a sticky, taffy-ish, un-fudgelike substance MESS. I could NOT for the life of me, figure out what had gone wrong. I knew I'd followed the directions perfectly.

Then, last night while grocery shopping, I grabbed a jar of Marshmallow Creme, resigning myself to making fudge the old-fashioned way. Lo and behold, the recipe on the Marshmallow Creme jar calls for one can of Evaporated milk. I pulled out my aforementioned "Bible" and realized I had written the recipe down incorrectly: "one can (12 oz) Condensed milk". OOPS. No wonder my trial fudge turned out more like taffy. WRONG kind of canned milk product. Don't make the same mistake I did. Use EVAPORATED milk for your fudge!!!