March 1: National Fruit Compote Day and National Peanut Butter Lover's Day

National Fruit Compote Day

I can never quite remember what the rules are for something to be a compote.  WiseGeek comes to the rescue!  If I'm reading that site right, a compote is basically fruit cooked with spices and a sugar syrup until the fruit is soft.  About.com  has a video providing instructions on cooking a fruit compote, claiming fruit compote is perfect for topping ice cream.  Then it can be served hot or cold, with or without whipped cream topping.  I suppose this means applesauce is a fruit compote?

Taste of Home has a hot fruit compote recipe.  (I love how they put it in martini glasses - very stylish.)  Good Housekeeping also has a recipe that features winter fruits and brandy - always a winning combination.


National Peanut Butter Lover's Day

According to Punchbowl's info for National Peanut Butter Lover's Day, the average child will eat 1500 PB&J sandwiches by the time he or she graduates high school.  That's a lot of sandwiches. 

January 24th was National Peanut Butter Day so I pretty much said everything I wanted to say about peanut butter in that post.  These "Something-something Lover's Day/Month/Week" somewhat confuse me.  Take today for example.  Is this a day where we're supposed to give a gift to someone that loves peanut butter, like we do for Mother's Day?  Or are we supposed to just take this day as an excuse to revel in the fact that we like peanut butter? 

Meh, I'll leave that for someone else to figure out.

February 5: Chocolate Fondue Day

Right now, a majority of Americans are watching the Superbowl, the game of all games for the sport known as (American) football.  I'm one of them.  I have no particular investment in the game - no money on the game, none of my teams made it - so I'm just rooting for a good game.  Well, I suppose I'm semi-cheering for the Giants, since so many of my friends are Giants fans.

In addition to being the day of the Superbowl, it's Chocolate Fondue Day.  So while the game is on, we're dipping various foodstuffs in melted semi-sweet chocolate mixed with cream.  We started out with fruits and some peanut butter sandwhich cookies as you see pictured here, but as the game has gone on, we started dipping anything and everything in the chocolate.  Leftover waffles?  Dip it!  Pumpkin bread?  Dip it!  Hey, we have some carrots! Uh....

Okay, so we're not dipping everything.

First step for the fondue, after buying everything, was chopping up the chocolate.  That was tiring so we took turns.  Next time, I buy the chocolate that comes in smaller pieces.

Initially, for our chocolate fondue, we mixed about half a pound of semi-sweet chocolate with 1/3 cup heavy whipping cream. As the chocolate melted, we added about 1/3 cup more cream since the chocolate was looking thick.  We began by dipping fresh pineapple chunks, fresh mango slices, fresh seedless green graps, dried figs, fresh satsuma mandarin segments, fresh ruby red grapefruit, dried papaya  spears, and peanut butter sandwich cookies.  As the chocolate dipping continued, we added some fresh banana, pumpkin bread, and even some leftoever waffles.

By the time halftime came around, we were chocolated out (but not out of chocolate.)  Sometime in the third quarter, we unplugged the mini crockpot we were using for the chocolate.  (While being bi-coastal is great for exploring, it sucks when your electric fondue pot is on the other coast and you're looking for it.)

I feel like I need to eat nothing but cruciferous greens for the next 24 hours to atone for the chocolate consumed.

Happy Chocolate Fondue Day, folks!  And here's hoping the end of the game is exciting and the commercials improve!