My Very Own Twilight Zone and The Caramel Apples That Helped Me Escape...temporarily...

Fall.

Fall means crisp mornings, cool night, falling leaves, rainy, cloudy, cuddle-up-with-a-good-book days, wet leaves in the driveway, jean, sweaters, cute brown boots, hot cider in the morning, fires at night.

Fall in Phoenix? Well. Let's see.
We ate Thanksgiving dinner outside..comfortably. The kids got so hot playing Bball and football that they jumped into the pool.

Hmmmm...still thinking... We've had 2 cloudy days. Two. That's right. No cloudy , rainy, fall day upon day (the kind Twinkle loves). No, just two days like that. I enjoyed the first one...and couldn't wait to see the sun the next morning. And true to form, the sun appeared and brought 85 degree weather with it.

Almost Christmas? How can that be? It doesn't feel like Christmas...no freezing rain, promises of snow or heavy winter coats.

Welcome to my twilight zone of seasons.

So over the past few days I have tried to 'make' the feeling of fall for me and my family. We've had soup for lunch 2 days in a row now. The first time we ate it outside and I got so hot I considered jumping into the pool. I didn't. It's not that warm and I'm not that crazy.

Today I thought we could make caramel apples for a fall-ish type snack. Have any of you ever made caramel apples before? We have. We've unwrapped all of those little square caramels, melted them slowly over a double boiler, washed and dried our perfectly round apples and pressed a craft stick into each one. Then ever so slowly, like dipping candles, we dipped our apples in the the luscious goodness of the caramel. Our mouths watered at the delicious prospect ahead of us. Dip, twist, dip, twist...until the entire apple was covered. Oh they looked glorious. We could hardly wait for them to 'set' and cool so we could enjoy them.

Then.

Later.

You know what happened.... yes, the sad sad truth.... all that delicious , luscious caramel....? it slid right off of those perfect apples and puddled at their feet. (figuratively speaking, of course...I know apples don't really have feet.)

Sigh.

So the next year we tried another technique.

Same result.

And so we figured we were destined to only enjoy caramel apples on the very rare occasion of a visit to a candy store.

Until this year.

This year, Nora recommended the caramel apple wraps.




So we thought we'd try again.

We purchased our selection of red and green apples.




Wrapped the caramel.


and put them in the oven.

and waited.


And look at our snack......

Perfect.

and actually, I warmed mine in the microwave and it was even better.
Finally. A caramel apple worth making. well, at least a caramel apple that stays a caramel apple.

Welcome Fall.


And hey! don't remind me it is almost Christmas, ok? One season at a time OK...next week we'll start some family Christmas traditions....

Until then, we are off the fly Minnie's RC airplane in the local field. No coats, no boots, no rain, no falling leaves....

.....Hmmm, I might need another caramel apple to help me rediscover fall.


~The Mom