Rachael Ray's Candy Sushi

I don't think the original intent of this recipe was for it to be a Christmas candy. However, if you select your fruit leather in red and green, and get red twizzler's, the result has that festive, X'mas look about it. I also venture that your Christmas table will be one of the relatively few that boasts Christmas sushi.

Ok - it's debatable whether it will be a hit with the adults. But the kids are gonna love it--

Recipe via foodnetwork.com

INGREDIENTS:

1 tablespoon butter, cut into pieces
12 regular marshmallows
2 cups puffed rice cereal
4 fruit roll-ups (pressed dried fruit rounds, 8 inches) any brand, any flavor
8 strips licorice candy, any flavor – pieces should be 6 to 7 inches long, trim to match width of roll-ups

PREPARATION:

Melt butter in a medium saucepan over low heat and add marshmallows. Stir marshmallows until completely melted. Remove mixture from heat and add cereal. Stir to coat cereal evenly in melted marshmallows.

Roll out the fruit roll-ups. Place 1/4 of the coated cereal onto each fruit roll up and spread and gather toward 1 side of roll up. Place 2 licorice twists onto the center of the spread out cereal mix. Wrap and roll the candy and fruit, maneuvering the licorice to the center of the roll, so that the finished product resembles a sushi roll. Repeat with remaining rolls.

Place a sharp knife into a bowl of very warm water. Cut candy sushi with warm knife and arrange on a plate then serve.

A Thought for the Christmas Season

Do you know what is the hardest thing in the world to do? It's not climbing Mount Everest, or sending humans to the Moon, or cracking the atom. Those are child's play compared to that of which I speak.

The hardest thing in the world is breaking down those imaginary barriers that divide us. That divide nation from nation, race from race, social class from social class, husband from wife, neighbor from neighbor, brother from brother, parent from child, you from me. We spent our lives building up those barriers, tightly mortaring bricks into our psychic walls. Now, they stand tall and wide, and the voices of those outside our walls are muted, or silent.

Christmas and the New Year are symbolic times for turning over a new leaf. On Christmas Eve, Ebenezer Scrooge was reborn to become as good a friend to others as any man could be. Likewise, the New Year signifies that Ur-moment of time where we stand poised between past and future. Perhaps the past was bleak; maybe the future will be brighter. We'll drink a cup of kindness yet.... That's the drill.

Christmas and New Year's are good times to do some wall-wrecking. But you must remember two things:

1.) All that stuff you buy, that you give "out of love," may serve as brick and mortar itself, if it is offered as a substitute for a meeting of hearts and minds, as a substitute for person-to-person communication.

2.) There is no such thing as "temporary wall-wrecking" or "provisional goodwill." You either make the attempt whole-heartedly and keep at it long after January 1, or you don't.

Breaking down our imaginary barriers is the hardest thing in the world to do. And possibly the most rewarding.