Old-Fashioned Hard Candy

Another Christmas-time creation, another moment of nostalgia for me. 
Twelve years ago, when my husband and I bought our house, my neighbor brought me some home-made hard candy at Christmas.  I had one of those moments where you you feel like your life is rewinding at a high rate of speed.  Everything around me went blurry. I probably went a little slack-jawed as I whooshed (yes, that's a word in my house) back to when I was about seven years old.  I was at my great-aunt Garn's house.  (Maybe it was Jane's? or Sal's?  My grandmother had a lot of sisters.)  I remember being there with lots of cousins that I didn't really know, but we were of course expected to play together nicely, and not be too loud, and for God's sake, don't knock over the damn houseplants.  I remember it being late, and being tired, but my mom and gram were not done visiting yet.

 Then I discovered Garn's candy jar.  It was filled with these beautiful, colorful, irregularly-shaped candies.  They reminded me of pieces of stained glass, except more delicious and digestable.  In my mind, I was in a dark room, with white Christmas lights in the background that made the candy sparkle.  Made the candy irresistable.  And I snuck piece after piece, licking the powdered sugar off of my fingers so as to hide the evidence.

Going back to my neighbor: she is a dear woman, and after I had a complete spaz attack because I hadn't seen that candy in 20 years and I was so excited, she agreed to teach me how to make it.  And now I share that knowledge with you. 

Old-Fashioned Hard Candy

Ingredients:

• 2 C. Sugar
• 1 C. Water
• 3/4 C. light corn syrup
• 1/2 tsp. flavor oil (I use LorAnn)
• food coloring
• powdered sugar

Combine sugar, water and corn syrup in a 2 quart heavy saucepan.  Stir until sugar is dissolved, then cook without stirring.  Once it is boiling well, lower heat and cook more slowly to 300 degrees (hard crack stage.)  While it is cooking grease (with margarine) a cookie sheet and cover with powdered sugar.  Once it hits 300 degrees, remove pan from heat.  Add food coloring and oil flavoring.  Stir well and pour onto cookie sheet..  Sprinkle more powdered sugar on top.  Allow to cool a bit and then cut with kitchen shears or break apart with your fingers.

Word of warning...do not put your face too close to the mixture as you are pouring in the flavor.  Not that my sister ever did that while making the hot cinnamon flavor, nor did she burn her face.  Nope.

For The Love of Ketchup

We took the kids to Riviera Maya last week.  It was our first big family vacation.  We were so excited for a week of relaxation in the sun. There were a couple of things that we chose not to tell our kids about beforehand, to keep the anxiety and whining to a minimum.
Number One:  Saltwater tastes awful and will likely make you want to puke if you swallow too much.  It's funny to me that we can swallow gallons of chemically-treated pool water, but gettting a mouthful of natural saltwater is sheer torture. Especially when you end up with it up your nose.  Yikes, that burns like H-E-double-hockey sticks.
Number two:  They will have chicken nuggets and french fries and all of those foods you love, but they won't taste quite the same.  We let the kids discover this one for themselves.  And we acted all suprised when they said, "This doesn't taste right."  They finally figured out what foods they could live with:  bacon, bacon and more bacon.  The fries tasted ok, but weren't crisp.  The chicken nuggets were fine.  The ice cream was a staple of their diets. 
But, the worst, most devastating part of the "The food tastes weird here" debacle?  The ketchup.  It wasn't thick, red, delicious, Heinz Tomato Ketchup.  It was catsup, thin and runny and orange-ish.  It was a travesty.
Side note:  A little research tells me that there is very little difference between ketchup and catsup; and that people in Latin American countries tend to eat catsup.  But don't tell my kids that.  They are sure there is a major difference and catsup is the equivalent of skunk pee and was invented to torture kids.
When we got to the Cancun airport to head back home, tired and sunburned, but relaxed, we had lunch at that totally American establishment, TGI Fridays.  We had big juicy burgers, crisp, seasoned fries and REAL HEINZ TOMATO KETCHUP. 


It was heaven.