Baked Caramel Corn

 

Since this is not a cooking blog monetized by how much text I make a reader scroll through to get to the damned recipe, I'll just announce that this is an excellent recipe, written simply enough for middle-school cooks and I-don't-really-cook adults to succeed. Enjoy.


MARYN'S BAKED CARAMEL CORN

5 quarts popped popcorn*
1 c. whole almonds or pecans, unsalted, optional   
1 cup (2 sticks) butter or margarine   
2 cups firmly packed brown sugar   
1/2 cup light or dark corn syrup   
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla

Yield: About 5-7 quarts caramel corn, Prep time: 90 minutes or so

Note: Requires very large bowl or pot for mixing. Can NOT be mixed in one bowl/pot used twice.

Pop the popcorn. Spray 2 or 3 large cookie sheets heavily with a nonstick spray product (even if you cover with foil or a silicon mat, spray the foil or mat) and spray a large container in which you will stir the popcorn (and nuts). Preheat the oven to 250 degrees (low heat). Mix the popcorn (and nuts) in your large container.

In a 2.5- or 3-quart saucepan, melt butter over low heat. Stir in brown sugar, corn syrup and salt. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. (This takes 7-20 minutes depending on the pan used and on the stove itself.) Boil without stirring 5 minutes. (This takes 5 minutes, silly.) Remove from heat; stir in soda and vanilla. The mixture will swell up and bubble considerably,which is why you need the large pot. Stir until this reaction seems to have stopped, about a minute.

Pour caramel mixture over popped corn (and nuts), mixing as well as you can. It will be impossible to coat every kernel. Work somewhat quickly, because once it starts to cool, the caramel won’t spread well or leave the pan voluntarily. It helps if you do this over a clean counter so any popcorn bits that are pushed out of the pan or bowl can be returned—but be careful, the caramel is hot enough to burn fingertips.

Turn onto the baking pans, flattening and separating clumps as much as you can. Bake at 250 degrees for 10 minutes five times.

Huh? Remove both sheets from the oven after ten minutes of oven time. Stir and rearrange caramel coating, which will be semi-liquid, to cover as much popcorn as you can, then return to the oven for the next 10 minutes of baking, for a total of five sessions of 10-minutes-of-baking. (This takes more than an hour, usually.) Alternate which of the two cookie sheets is on top and rotate them end-for-end for more even cooking.

Note: Do not block airflow in the oven by filling it side-to-side with cookie sheets. (This will make the sugar burn, and the whole batch taste of char.) If you can't fit two in without blocking it, do them one at a time until one tray is finished, then start on the second tray. It's okay if it stands and its caramel hardens before you begin.

Remove finished caramel corn from oven and cool completely on wire racks over waxed paper or foil (to catch what falls through). Break apart. Store in tins. Ha, as if it wouldn’t all be eaten immediately. In reality: Pick warm caramel corn off the foil with fingers. If you have metal fillings, check carefully for clinging shreds of foil and remove before eating.

* Measure how much popped popcorn you have using the 2.5 or 3 quart saucepan you’ll make the caramel in. Estimating it is fine. Less popcorn equals more kernels fully coated. We generally pop a cup of kernels, measure what we need using the saucepan, and much on the remaining cup and a half or so.

Or go with approximate values:
1/2 c. kernels = 12 c. popped, or 2 Tbsp. kernels = 1 quart popped

On Vertigo

 Because of the vertigo I had earlier, we re-watched Hitchcock's Vertigo last night. Of the entire cast, only Kim Novak is still alive.

I wish I could say it held up, but it did not. The sexism was really bad, for one thing. The age gap--James Stewart was 49, Kim Novak 24--bothered me and apparently wasn't well received in the 1950s, either. She's stunning, but what does she see in him? He's not rich, powerful, handsome, fun, or especially sweet. Zero chemistry on screen. At least the husband she's cheating on, also older, is filthy rich.

Whatever does Barbara Bel Geddes, the unrequited love interest, see in him? And puh-lease, don't tell me they went to college together when he looks his actual age and so does she, fourteen years younger. Stewart is a lean, lined almost-fifty and she's a girlish thirty-five.

The older man's assumption that a woman should be willing to change her appearance completely because he wants her to? Hell, no. When he tells her to bleach her hair platinum blonde and change the style, she doesn't want to and his reply is, "Judy, please it can't matter to you..." Dude, it's her head. How about you shave your head. It can't matter to you.

And since she was paid to turn herself into the same person in the past to commit fraud, why the hell does she forget how to move, act, and be more like the person she's imitating on his command--a role she played previously to perfection?

There's much more not to like. Two people swearing love when they haven't had an actual conversation? Nope.

His taking a half-drowned semiconscious woman to his apartment, where he strips her naked and puts her to bed, instead of to a hospital... Ugh. Creepster, especially when you add the age difference. It's not TLC, it's predatory.

And--spoilers okay on a movie from 1958?--why the hell didn't the nuns lock the tower door after the first death from a fall? And why would Judy be so scared of a nun's arrival that she backed away and "died again"?

And finally, Acrophobia would not be as good a movie title, even though that's what Stewart's character has.

Foam Alone

When we were new to this house, I got my first-ever new chair that was just for me. The plan was I'd use it in my sewing room/study. Which I did, for a while. It looked good with the carpet color, which we would not be changing. It fit my body and supported my back. It rocked. It rotated. It was magical!

But we needed more seating where the TV is, and my chair was appropriated. It even looks good in there. I had to make a solid case for getting it back, and I did.

We ordered a leather chair for the family room in June and were quite surprised to learn it would not be ready until March, nine months ahead. We joked about them having to first impregnate a cow, wait for her to calf, let the calf grow chair-sized...

My mom-mobile has long had a little body damage and Mr. Maryn thought it might be time to trade it in, since every time he sees it he gets mad at himself all over again. (Super tight parking garage in Toronto, steel meets concrete column.) Did I like the car enough to get one just like it? 

Well, you can't. There are no new models of this car within hundreds of miles. How about a road trip to where we used to live? Check it out--none there, either. WTF?

The foam shortage is what. It's a big deal to the furniture, mattress, and auto industry. The makers of the chemicals saw a huge reduction in demand at the start of COVID, laid off workers, reduced production to some low percentage, and hoped to hang on.

Little did they consider that being home for long periods of time made people want new furniture and mattresses. Or that working from home and/or home schooling demanded more spacious quarters that needed new everything because the old furniture just didn't work.

Less safety in air travel meant the demand for cars was up, too--cars with upholstered seats. So the foam industry came back hard, trying to make up for lost time, which caused them to make a grave error. Some workers had moved on, and training takes time, so production had not reached pre-pandemic levels.

Usually when hurricanes or other "weather events" are predicted, virtually all heavy industry shuts down well in advance, battens their hatches, sends workers home while it's still safe, and waits it out. Only the chemical companies had such high demand, and the Texas blizzard gave so little warning, that all five plants in the US were running when they lost power. All of them!

Improper shut-down damages equipment. Apparently it's freakishly good luck no person was injured or killed as machinery abruptly stopped. They lost supplies to ice and cold. Lines froze. Some burst.

It's a testament to plant engineers that they recovered as quickly as they did, the industry says. It wasn't all that quick, and orders for foam chemicals backed up even more.

My chair might come in May. Might.