How quickly a holiday fades. Halloween yesterday and BIG BARGAINS today! Went to 3 stores and found 1/2 price and even 75% off various candies. Not just specifically Halloween stuff. Suckers, Hersheys (fall packaging) Kisses, Snickers, Three Musketeers and on and on, most for around $1.00 or less.

Thrifty/Food Pavillion had bulk wrapped candy & suckers 2-4 lb. bags for 50 cents!!! I would never spend my limited Y2K resources wantonly, but this was too good to pass up. These will keep for a very long time when repackaged at home in Ziploc bags or air tight containers.

Got comfort food for yourself and kids?

-- Sammie (sammieox@hotmail.com), November 01, 1999

Answers

I have to have my chocolate! I bought the biggest bag of high quality baking chocolate chips at Sam's. They will last a long time. Also I have the chocolate and almond bark bought last year for pennies after the Christmas holidays. Here is one of the best recipes you can have for using chocolate baking powder!

No Bake Cookies? They are delish & easy to make.

Boil 1 stick butter, 2 cups sugar, 1/2 cup cocoa & 1/2 cup milk for 2 minutes. Stir constantly!!! Stir in 1/2 cup peanut butter & 3 cups oatmeal. 1 tsp vanilla Drop on wax paper & let cool. Optional: use 1 1/2 c. oatmeal & 1 1/2 c. coconut instead of 3 c. oatmeal Nuts can be added.

-- Carol (glear@usa.net), November 01, 1999.

Good suggestion. My wife already picked up a couple of bags at the local Wal-Mart.

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), November 02, 1999.

Carol,

You are absolutely right about that no-bake cookie recipe. Probably tops my list of favorites but haven't made them in years. Now I'm craving them...

One slight modification I made in 'production'-- We don't have much counter or table space, and I've never been real patient with "dropping by spoonful", so I tried pouring the whole batch (maybe double batch, ? I forget) into a bar pan and after it cools cut them into bars. Didn't have any problems doing them that way. No-bake bars....

Well, just passing this along in case there are others who have limited space or are 'drop by spoonful'-challenged. ;-)

-- winter wondering (winterwondering@yahoo.com), November 03, 1999.

Carol & Winter - the No Bake option sounds terrific (anything I can cook by boiling on my wood stove rather than baking gets top consideration). I'm not a peanut butter fan. Could I successfully drop that part of the recipe, or if not, can you recommend a substitute(s)?

-- Brooks (brooksbie@hotmail.com), November 03, 1999.

You could try tahini or almond butter, or cashew butter. I think the peanut butter is mainly to keep the cookies chewy, yet solid.

My grandma passed a recipe on to me years ago, that she used during the depression: "Eggless, milkless, butterless cake". It's a great, fluffy cake, and you'd never know it didn't have all the good stuff in it. If anyone wants the recipe, let me know and I'll post it.

Margo

-- Margo (margos@bigisland.com), November 04, 1999.

Brooks, I think Margo is right that the PB helps hold everything together. If left out, I think that they would either get very hard or very crumbly or perhaps both. I wish I could think of a PB substitute, but am drawing blanks right now. Perhaps if you even tried cutting back on the PB-- it really isn't an overwhelming PB flavor as is. Of course, I'm okay with PB. If you dislike PB as much as I dislike celery, then even hint of that flavor is too much.

On a different aside on this recipe, I recall that I have gotten by with halving the amount of butter.

Margo-- please do share your cake recipe here (do we call it cakeless cake? ;-) ). It sounds good!

-- winter wondering (winterwondering@yahoo.com), November 04, 1999.