Off-Topic with Tammy

Hey Friends!
I've decided to try something new on the blog on Thursdays. I know that The ScrapRoom is a site dedicated to scrapbooking and scrapbooking kits, but we all know that life is not one-dimensional, so I thought I'd take one day a week to share some of the other dimensions in my life... and so we begin, "Off-Topic with Tammy."

Here's a bit about me. I am the owner of The ScrapRoom, an online monthly scrapbooking kit club that began in October 2004. It's been a great ride, and I'm looking forward to celebrating 10 years in business in October 2014! And while my business is The ScrapRoom, my main job and focus in life is my family. My husband, Chris, and I have been married for almost 23 years, and we have (5) amazing boys, ages 20, 19, 17, 15, and 14. My oldest two sons are in college, and my youngest three sons are in high school and middle school and are active in sports (cross-country, soccer and track) and church life. As a family, we keep very busy, and I am blessed beyond measure to have been able to work from home while my children were/are growing up.

(A recent family photo taken last fall while on vacation, doing what we LOVE to do - hiking in different parts of the country, seeing some of the treasures that God made for us to see. Gifts!)

As you can imagine, with (5) super-active and growing boys, one of the biggest roles in my life is feeding them! I spend a lot of time planning meals, shopping for food, cooking food and cleaning up the kitchen! Fortunately for me and for my family, I love to cook (and I love to eat, which is not-so-fortunate for my figure - but that's for another post. :) And, while I do regularly cook meat and vegetables, my favorite thing to make is "good snacks." In fact, I have always had a "knack for snacks" and have an entire board dedicated to my favorite food group on Pinterest. (Feel free to follow me here: Tammy's Snacks & Treat Pinterest Board) So today, I want to share a recipe I recently found and adapted on Pinterest for Salted Caramel Pretzel Bark - a new snack that disappears as fast as I can make it. It's caramelly, chocolatey, salty, crunchy and highly addictive - and it feeds a crowd!

SALTED CARAMEL PRETZEL BARK

1 16-oz. bag of mini pretzel twists

4 sticks of butter (YIKES!)

2 cups of brown sugar

1 bag of chocolate chips (2 cups)

coarsely ground sea salt

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
• Line (2) large jelly roll pans with parchment paper and divide the bag of pretzels between the two pans. Try to get them into a single layer, but mine overlapped quite a bit. (It's all good...)
• In a medium saucepan, melt the butter and the brown sugar until the sugar is dissolved. Let it boil and turn into a nice smooth caramel. Stir occasionally. (I found that I got a nice consistency/flavor when I boiled the caramel mixture for 2 minutes after it started to boil.)
• Remove from the heat and pour evenly over the top of the pretzels. Put pans in the oven for 5 minutes.
• Sprinkle chocolate chips over the top. Put pans back in the over for 2 minutes more.
• Remove pans and spread chocolate chips around with a spatula.
• Sprinkle generously with coarse salt.
• Let cool on the counter for a few minutes and then pop into the freezer for 2-3 hours.
• Remove from the freezer and break it up into chunks.

We host a high school boys Bible Study in our home on Friday afternoons (topic for a different off-topic post), and the boys gobbled these two pans of yumminess down before I could refill the koolaid pitcher. It's a keeper! Enjoy your Easter Holiday Weekend!