Grandma's Nut roll (Not a fruitcake!)

This is a fun project to do with your friends or kids, although you may not be able to keep them from snacking along the way.

One of  the delicious treats my mother -in-law prepared each year was her exceptionally rich nut roll, a concoction that combined the tastes of nuts, candy, and two sweet dried fruits.  We started making this roll ourselves twenty years ago as a Christmas treat for family and friends.  Strangely, we have never experimented with different ingredients, but I imagine that dried pineapple, mango, or papaya would work equally as well as dates and raisins.

The recipe is simplicity itself: Graham crackers, Walnuts, Pecans, Dates, Raisins, and Gum or Spice Drops, and Marshmallows.  That's seven pounds of ingredients, folks!

Tear off six or seven pieces of waxed paper about  twenty inches long.  You will use these to shape and hold the rolls later.

Measurement of the ingredients is simple since all of them come in (about) one pound packages that can simply be dumped into a large bowl for mixing after they have been chopped.  The graham crackers provide structure for the roll and so should be crushed into small pieces.  The most tedious task is cutting the gum drops into small pieces since their original size is out of scale for the other ingredients.

After you have everything except the marshmallows thoroughly mixed in the large bowl you need to melt the marshmallows with a cup of milk over low heat until the mixture is smooth. At this point you mix the other ingredients while stirring to coat everything with the melted marshmallows.  It never seems like there is enough, but persistence pays.

This next step cannot be done by one person since the mixture is extremely sticky.  One person should quickly place handfuls (about a pound) of the gooey mixture onto each sheet of the waxed paper.  The other person, who has clean hands, should immediately press it into a loaf shape.  Wrap the rolls tightly and refrigerate until cool (and solid).  Rewrap each loaf in fresh wax paper as soon as possible since the original wrapping with adhere tightly if left too long.

We generally cut quarter inch slices, since thinner slices tend to fall apart.  

Rant

This is not about writing but something that has irritated me for too many years.

I live near the grounds of the annual Maryland Renaissance Festival which, for more than a month, attracts thousands of people to chew turkey legs, watch plays, but crafty stuff, sword fight, and do all the things that represent old English customs from about 1200 - 1700, more or less. Fun stuff but costly (especially the turkey legs and I'm not talking about the damn tights that ride up your crotch and.... not that I'd ever wear anything like that, no sir, not me, never.  Besides, they itch.

There is no train station, metro liner, bus service at the Faire (note how I am getting into the spirit of things) so everyone has to come by automobile to produce acres and acres of parked cars, some so distant from the entrance that some take a lunch so they can snack along the way.  Hillsides of automobile, cascades of steel and plastic stretching as far as the eye can see.  Acres and acres of parked cars each of the weekend days it is open.  And all of those cars make it to the site down a two-lane road forming a parade miles long and manages to block access to the surrounding communities.

None of which bothers me much, except that they all seem to need gas.  The nearest station/snack shop has eight pumps, four on each side, and has two entrances at ninety degrees to each other.  Cars pour in from either of the entrance to gas up, some coming from the right and others from the left.  In a logical world this would present no problem: Cars would line up to take their turns like good little soldiers.*  But we do not live in a logical world.  In the real world car manufacturers have no appreciation of mechanics or the realities of gas stations.  Willy-nilly they put the filler pipe on the driver's side or the passenger's so that it is impossible to have an orderly line.  Instead the cars butt head to head, cutting from one side to another and, on too many occasions, finding that the side nearest the pump is the wrong side.  In older times, but hopefully later than the RenFaire period, hoses were long enough to reach the opposite side of the vehicle, but today the behemoth trucks, SUV's, and even ordinary cars, that is not possible.

What I want to know is why there can't be some standardization?  I don't care which side they want or whether it has a flip lid or not.  Just put the damned filler cap on one side.  Is that too much to ask?

So each Saturday or Sunday a low level conflict takes place as those in line for one side scream at those who, at least to them, cut into line from the opposite direction, or block them from leaving by parking too close. Lesser skirmishes blow up when someone* decides to do a little shopping or have lunch while leaving their car at the pump, but that is a subject for another day.

*except for the occasional oblivoid (e.g. asshole) who ignores social conventions
*ibid