I dont think I ever fully appreciated Tu B'Shvat before I had a real live orange tree to take care of, a tree that I watch over and check on to make sure the oranges are okay before they're ready to be picked - which just so happened to be in the past few days, which worked out amazing because yesterday was the 100th day of school.
And you know how teachers love to ask kids to bring a hundred somethings to school? I sent 100 oranges with one of my kids. I hope I wasn't the only one laughing about that.
But anywho, I really like Tu B'Shvat because it's a simple holiday in the middle of the winter, I am not obligated to prepare anything and if I do want to make a big deal out of it, throwing a birthday party is totally appropriate.
This year, I decided to go with a dessert because I love dessert. We're going to be making some chocolate bark because one, it's chocolate and two, because it's called bark and bark is from a tree and today happens to be the birthday of the trees and do you see how that all came full circle. Love that.
Get yourself some good melting chocolate, chopped almonds and some cranberries or whatever dried fruit you happen to have on hand. I mentioned cranberries because I happen to have those. Perfect.
Melt the chocolate over a double boiler or, if you're totally lazy like me, in the microwave.
Mix the chopped almonds and cranberries into the melted chocolate. Pour the whole mixture onto a wax paper covered cookie sheet. Let the chocolate set in the fridge for a while and then break the huge chocolate sheet up into pieces.
That was so easy, I'm almost embarrassed to call it a recipe - but I said almost, and so I am going to tag this as a recipe and call it a day.
Happy birthday to my friend, the tree!
:)
jen