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.

Black Wines Matter

What's a properly self-isolating woman to do to support the Black Lives Matter movement? She can use her computer and her wallet, of course, but she can also put her money where her mouth is by purchasing wine from Black-owned wineries.

Sources: Newsweek June 6, 2020; Wine Enthusiast June 8, 2020; Rose Mansion June 4, 2020

Abbey Creek Wine
Alexis George Wines
Amour Genéve
Aslina Wines
Bodkin Wines
Brown Estate
Charles Wine Company
Charles Woodson Intercept
Corner 103
Darjean Jones Wines
Davidson Wine Co.
Domaine Curry Wine
Domaine Curry:
Dwade Cellars
Earl Stevens Selections
ENAT Winery
Esrever Wines
Eunice Chiweshe Goldstein Winery
FLO Wine 360
Fog Crest Vineyard
Free Range Flower Winery
Frichette Winery
Indigené Cellars
J. Moss Wines
Jenny Dawn Cellars
L' Objet Wines
L’ Objet Noir
L’Tonya Renee Red Blend
La Fête du Rosé
Le Loup Gris
Longevity Wines
Love Cork Screw
Lovelee Wine
LVE Wines
Maison Noir Wines
Markell-Bani Wines
McBride Sisters
Michael Rose Cellars
MYX Fusions
Okapi Wines
Ole’ Orleans Wines
P. Harrell Wines
Sapiens
Shoe Crazy Wine
Simply Love Wines
Sip & Share Wines
Sosabe Wines
Stoney Wines
Stover Oaks Vineyard & Winery
Stuyvesant Champagne
Stuyvesant Champagne
Taste Collection Cellars
Theopolis Vineyards
Tympany Vineyards
Vina Sympatica
Virgo Cellars
Vision Cellars
Wachira Wines
Wade Cellars
Wandering Wines
Wifey Brands
Zafa Wines

Going It Alone: Self Isolation Tips

The Introvert’s Guide to Happy Self-Isolation

I’ve joked online for years that I live like a hermit by choice, but it’s no laughing matter for the extroverts chafing under self-isolation, craving the social contacts they cannot safely enjoy. So here are some tips from a grizzled stay-at-home-all-day-every-day veteran.

TIME MANAGEMENT

Set an Alarm. Get up about the same time every day. You can get more sleep than usual, sleep until a later hour, but get up. Likewise, go to bed about the same time every night. Sufficient sleep is a luxury for lots of working people, but it’ll do you good, both physically and psychologically.

Schedule Activities. Have blocks of time set aside for certain activities each day. Why? Because it’s too easy to refresh social media, check your phone yet again, and otherwise spin your wheels, accomplishing nothing and not enjoying yourself, either. (Which would count as accomplishing something.) Mix up things you do for pleasure and things you do because they need to get done.

Block out Reading Time. Even if you’re not a reader, a well chosen book will transport you from the present world and its problems to someplace else. You do not need to read something challenging, although this is a fine time to do that if you feel like it. Reading strictly for pleasure and entertainment is the goal.

Schedule Food, Too. It’s easy for someone unaccustomed to being home all the time to eat all the time, and stress eating is real. So eat your usual meals, slate yourself some regular snack times, but don’t sit down to any activity and stop every half hour to eat something. When this is all over, you don’t want to emerge with a weight gain.

Pre-Arrange Time with Friends or Family. Maybe you meet for cocktails with your parents via Skype thirty minutes before you need to start dinner, or FaceTime over coffee with a friend mid-morning. “Seeing” someone every day for conversation has the power to normalize the way you’re living. You can pre-arrange to see someone daily, rotating among friends and family members. (Please help low-tech people if you can.)

Differentiate Weekdays from Weekends. It helps to have some semblance of the normal rhythms of ordinary life. Put different things on your weekend schedule than the weekday. Maybe dinner Friday night is take-out, or something a little fancy served with wine. Maybe it’s movies in the evening instead of series TV. Maybe you do something religious or spiritual. Maybe you make a pizza Saturday night. Whatever makes the feel of a weekend different is good.

TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF

Dress Yourself. Uncertainty, depression, isolation—what’s the point of getting dressed when pajamas are so very comfortable? And who’s to know if you washed today or brushed your teeth? While comfort is important when you’re stressed, make yourself bathe and dress every day. It does good things for your state of mind, even if all you achieve is sweatpants and a T-shirt.

Use Your Body. Some of your scheduled activities should be physical motion. Whether you go for a walk or run in the deserted streets, change the sheets on all the beds, tackle yard work, take a yoga class online, or scrub the kitchen floor on hands and knees, being physical is good for your body and your mind. See if you can get a minimum of thirty minutes six days a week, mixing it up however you like.

Feed Your Body. Some stress eating and treats are okay, but not every day and not in large portions. While grocery stores struggle to maintain stock, buy and eat what’s available that’s essentially healthy.

Feed Your Inner Self. Do something solely because it brings you pleasure, peace, or comfort, daily if possible. Take a long soak in the tub. Meditate or pray. Pet your pet (hence the name, right?). Go for a drive. Have sex with your partner or solo. Sing or play an instrument.

Not Too Much. If you drink alcohol or use marijuana, don’t let yourself overindulge as a new way of daily living.

Soothe the Savage Breast, or Beast, Whichever You Have. Use music to set moods that match your needs. New Age and Classical allow you to do work that requires thought. The right kind of rock gives you energy for tasks. Other music makes a pleasant background for cooking, during a meal, or to listen to while you enjoy a stroll.

Breathe. There’s something different about fresh air. Open windows if it’s warm enough, airing out one room at a time. Better, get yourself outside regardless of the weather. You can walk or run, or simply sit in a chair in the yard or on a park bench, even if it requires a coat. Stroll a public park or hiking trail if social distance is possible for all. Don’t let temperature or precipitation be what stops you. A walk in the rain can be really calming.

TAKE CARE OF YOUR SPACE

Organize a Little at a Time. Your day’s schedule should often incorporate something that organizes your home. Clean the coat closet, the sock drawer, kitchen cabinets, under the bathroom sink. Throw away, set aside to donate, re-arrange for actual use.

Cleanliness is Next to… Something. Walking into a place that’s usually cluttered or dirty is very, very different than when it’s clean, free of dust, nothing out that shouldn’t be. Schedule cleaning right up there with organizing. Messes and clutter that seem too large to tackle can be dealt with in the time you suddenly have.

Fix It and Forget It. You have things you’re holding onto because they need a small repair, mending, the hem reattached, a new screw, a dab of paint, right? Now’s the time. If you don’t have the materials, make a list. Order online, or shop, maintaining social distance and washing well afterward, if the store is open.

Big Deal. A break of weeks at home is also the time to undertake some projects that seem just too much for a weekend. Is this the time to tear out carpet, paint the bedroom, deep clean the car inside and out, build those movable shelves to hold the bins of fabric, camping gear, tools, or keepsakes? Yeah.

CREATE

Return to a Hobby. Or try a new one, accepting the learning curve. YouTube has videos, websites have tutorials, and if you have or can get the materials, you could be doing something that both makes something cool and brings you satisfaction and pride. There’s no limit to the possibilities here.

It’s Only Words. There’s time to write that story or get a start on the novel, try your hand at poetry, write up family history to pass on to relatives, or a zillion other projects that involve writing. Remember that whether anyone ever sees what you write is entirely your choice.

Adventures in the Kitchen. There are websites galore with new recipes for you to try, alone or with others. Find something that sounds good and give it a try.

Think of Others. While you’re at home bouncing off the walls in your eagerness to get out, don’t forget that within a few miles there are health care workers who haven’t had more than twelve hours off in weeks and live away from their families in fear of contagion, people unable to afford food for their kids, worried about Dad alone in another state, suffering increased symptoms from their mental illness, unable to get the drugs they need for serious health problems, sick with something that could be COVID-19 if there were enough tests to know for sure. Take a moment to be thankful all you are is stir-crazy, and to give to help others however you can.

ABCDEnough

July 28, 2019

When it rains, it pours. And hails.

The Monday before a trip planned to begin the following Sunday, I took my car in for its state inspection. On the drive there, the check engine light came on, showing transmission fluid overheating. They could reset it, they said, but the inspection requires data so they couldn’t perform it until I’d driven fifty miles.

During the fifty miles, the check engine light came on again. It went off after the car had sat in the garage overnight and didn’t come on when I started it again. I called but the next service appointment wasn’t until the following week, when we planned to be in another state and our inspection would be expired. They suggested I leave it all day Friday, which I did. They inspected it and passed it, and fixed some wiring leading to the transmission temperature sensor. They didn’t charge for the wiring.

Good thing, since the light came on again on my drive home. I called and was assured it was safe to drive on a trip and they’d try again on my return.

Sunday, the house was awfully warm. The house’s air conditioning wasn’t cooling. This prompted us to leave early, breaking the very long day’s drive into a half a day Sunday afternoon and a regular day Monday.

As we backed out of the driveway, we saw that bees were swarming their favorite spot, which had required an exterminator the year before. No time for that now.

We were nearly an hour away from home, the check engine light on, when the warning chime for a dangerous condition sounded and the panel showed us with no data from the sensor. Then a dial showed, the temperature at the middle. Jump to the maximum. Disappear, no data. Middle again. Maximum. The whole time the chime was sounding about every 60 seconds. We could not make a trip like this.

So we drove home—the house was really warm now—and put our luggage into the other car, which is fifteen years old and needs a muffler. We backed out a second time, noting there were at least ten bees gnawing their way under our siding. The person who’d be picking up our mail wasn’t going to like that.

Nearly two and a half hours after we’d initially left, we were on the road again. We wouldn’t reach our hotel before dinner, so where should we stop? We discussed revisiting a restaurant we’d enjoyed well enough for lunches in past trips.

When we arrived, it had gone out of business. There were two other restaurants near the exit. One had an hour wait, the other a half hour. We didn’t want to lose that much time.

We drove past the major city and its immediate suburbs and saw a chain restaurant that didn’t have a full parking lot. Good enough—barely.

Over dinner, we checked our email and had a message left at 7:46 pm. on our landline back home from Home Depot in Watertown, Massachusetts. We don’t live there, but our daughter isn’t far. I texted her; she’d been waiting all day for them to email and text her at her own number that her order was ready for pick up. No, she hadn’t given the landline number at a place she hasn’t lived for a dozen years. Her last name isn’t the same as ours since her marriage. How they’d gotten that number and why they ignored the one she gave remains a mystery—but there was no mystery that the store was closed for the day.

Our hotel check-in went smoothly enough, but there was a wait for the elevator, because one wasn’t working. I’m in the hotel now, mulling over our day.

A, the air conditioning broke

B, the bees are swarming our front door

C, the car was undriveable despite being in for service twice that week

D, our dinner choice was impossible, and so were back-ups in the vicinity

E, the elevator was out

F, Home Depot fucked up on who and how to notify an order was ready

I can’t wait for G.

Friends Whose Names I Don't Know

For decades, I’ve shopped at a particular Wegmans within a two-hour range on a weekday morning. As you’d expect, you see other people whose habits are similar to your own. Maybe you say Good morning or I don’t think much of these green bananas after a year or two. Eventually you talk briefly about the store and it contents, the city you’re in, the weather, a tragedy in the news. You aren’t friends, but you connect with these people.

They remark when they don’t see you for a few weeks, and you tell them of taking your oldest off to college, the funeral you attended, the vacation you enjoyed. Once or twice a week for years, you exchange pleasantries, without even knowing their names.

I have more than one Wegmans-friend, but the one I saw today is special. At one time, he was always with the same woman, clearly her assistant of whom she was fond and vice versa. Over time I learned she’d lost her husband to MRSA in what should have been a routine surgery, and getting out of the house regardless of the weather, shopping every day for food, did her good. Over a period of years, her own health failed and he shopped for her, and we continued to chat over nothing much. Later he appeared to be shopping for himself and I presumed she no longer employed him. I could only guess the reasons, none of them pleasant.

“Haven’t seen you in a month!” he’d say. “You been good?”

I’d tell him of a weekend in Boston, our younger daughter’s search for work, the traffic that made me appreciate where I live.

Today he didn’t look so good. We waved from across the store, and for no particular reason, I stopped, waiting for him to catch up. “How have you been?” He was thinner than I’d ever seen him, and looked tired.

“Not so good,” he said. “My daughter passed, on Mother’s Day.”

“That’s awful. I’m so sorry.”

To my surprise, the tears of sympathy were immediate. I’m not a person who cries easily or often. But it was too easy to imagine the loss of either of my own girls. 

I didn’t hesitate. This was my friend, whether I knew his name or didn’t. I hugged him and cried for his pain, right in the produce section. We talked a while, me crying the whole time, and I learned that this was his second daughter to die in a two year period, the happy one who was always able to draw a smile out of him when he picked her up from work no matter how grim his thoughts. He had another daughter who’d suffered a massive stroke and could not speak. She appeared to recognize family members, but maybe that was just what he wanted to see. He was taking this fresh loss hard, hadn’t been able to really cry about it.

There is no right way to grieve, I reminded him, no clock on when he had to cry. I muttered some platitude I don’t even believe and hugged him a second time.

People stared when a plump white woman hugged a somewhat rough looking black man, and others stared when that woman cried or sniffled through the soup aisle and bulk food.

This was a real connection, a human who cared about another human’s pain and loss. I don’t know his education, political beliefs, who he hates or fears, any of that. I just know he was hurting, and that I truly cared.