Caramel Addiction

They say the first step is admitting you have a problem.

Well, I'm The Missus, and I have a problem. I'm a caramelcornaholic. It started innocently enough. I made a batch (technically, I made a third of a batch, at least according to the recipe I was using) Saturday night, in preparation for Sunday's Football Festivities. Between the Rev and I, that ginormous bowl of caramel deliciousness did not make it through the night. By bedtime, it was all gone. All of it. Gone.

So, Sunday afternoon, like the domestic maven I am, I prepared twice as much. This, along with the frozen pizzas and the veggies and dip I prepared the day before would be our Football Festivities Feast.



And, like the domestic maven that I am (or have been of late, anyway) I managed to burn one pan of the caramelly goodness. It was there that I learned a profound lesson. Yesterday's oven temperatures do not work with today's (adjusted) recipe.

I realised I had read the recipe wrong on Saturday, putting less baking soda in than I should have. Baking soda makes the caramel get all puffy (sorry for the technical terms here) and fluffy. So less baking soda means less fluffy caramel poured over your popcorn. This means it's a little thicker, so it doesn't melt as well in the oven. You put it in the oven on baking trays to help coat all the popcorn, taking it out every 15 minutes to stir. Because it wasn't melting as well, I bumped up the temperature a bit to help things along.

Fast forward to Sunday's batch. I realise I read the recipe wrong the day before, and make the proper adjustments, resulting in gloriously fluffy caramel. I poured it all over the popcorn, and put the trays in the oven. At the same temperature I had the day before.

Which resulted in this:



That, friends, is a charred pan from which burnt caramel corn was scraped off. And eaten. I mean, it's still caramel corn. (I told you I had a problem. In my defense, I couldn't eat all of it...just the least burnt parts. And I saved the good batch for the game. Really.)

The point? (Besides showing you my yucky pans?) Yesterday's solutions may not work for today's problems. It seems obvious, but sometimes I need to be reminded to think things through, taking every circumstance into consideration.

But, I decided to make the best of a charred situation, and share with you my secret for cleaning this:


See that white stuff all over the pan? Yesterday after they cooled off, I wet the pans just a little, and poured baking soda all over the burnt sugar mess. You want to make a paste out of the baking soda and water, and essentially cover the burnt bits with the paste. Don't be like me, and forget the edges and corners.

Then, do nothing. Let those babies sit. Give the baking soda past plenty of time to work its magic. Then, after about a day, take a plastic food scraper (oh, how I love thee) and scrape the mess away. Everything under the baking soda paste will scrape away. You probably won't even need the scraper to get it off. But, I use it just in case I find a spot I missed with the paste. A little rinse under the faucet, a quick scrub with some dish soap to remove any residue, and there you have it:

Clean pans! (My food scraper wanted to pose with the pan, so I let it.) Now, I know you're thinking that pan isn't exactly gleaming, but it's not like it was gleaming before it was covered in burnt sugar. I mean, it's still me we're talking about, after all.

Not Being That Girl

There seems to be this idea going around that I'm a good baker. Probably because I post pictures, lots of pictures, of things that I've made that look yummy.

What I don't post, however, are things that look less than yummy.

You see, I want you to think I'm a good baker, a good cook, a good musician, a good wife and mother (and not necessarily in that order, of course.) But I like the notion that I have it all together.

It's completely false, of course. I don't have it all together. You don't have it all together. We all know someone that we think has it all together. Someone who only serves healthy food to her family, who seems to have a natural gorgeousness even wearing sweats and a ponytail, whose house could be (and let's face it, probably was) featured in a magazine.

But I'm guessing even that woman doesn't have it all together. She can't. No one can. It's not how we're made, and I think there's a reason for that. I think we're not supposed to be able to stay on top of everything so that we realise our need for something other than. Something (or rather, Someone) other than us.

Well, today I'm going to show you my less-than-wonderful side.

I tried to make cookies today. I tried. But I was out of shortening, and my recipe calls for half butter and half shortening. I thought I could make it work with just butter. Yeah...not so much.


Cookies made solely with butter have a tendency to spread. Factor in my tendency to make larger cookies, and you end up with a pan full of cookie blobs all stuck together.

Then imagine me trying to remove said cookie blobs. It wasn't pretty, friends. The picture doesn't do these mangled, twisted cookie wrecks justice. The Rev actually laughed when he saw them. (That didn't stop him from sampling them, however.)

So, besides their photo here, these cookies will never see the light of day. They will not leave this house. I imagine The Rev, Wiggle Man and I will not let them go to waste. We'll probably snack on them over the next day or so. (The leftover dough that I never even bothered to bake once I saw how the cookies came out? That, my dears, is safely stowed in my fridge. Cookie dough is cookie dough.)

Mother Hubbard

Sometimes, an empty cupboard can be a good thing.

I've spent the last month getting to know my kitchen, and trying to remember where I put everything. I mean, it was hard enough deciding where to put everything, but I had no idea it would be this hard trying to remember where I actually put it.

So you can imagine my surprise when, while rummaging around for who knows what, I discovered a totally empty cupboard. Two whole shelves, just waiting to organize my duplicate zesters and garlic presses.

I'll admit I felt a bit of a rush as I pondered the possibilities. Would I rearrange my baking pans? Maybe shuffle around my miscellaneous tools, like my apple peeler/corer/slicer. Perhaps Wiggle Man's dishes could have a shelf of their very own.

In the end, though, I did nothing. I left the cupboard empty. I wanted to have a little extra breathing room, in case I found I needed it down the road.

And I got to thinking--why don't I do that in the rest of my life? Why can't I leave myself a little extra "just in case" space? Why do I cram my day so full of things to do that I have no time to spare?

So, I'm leaving myself a bare cupboard. I'm going to leave a little spare time for spontaneity, for a cup of tea, even for when dinner takes longer to prepare than I expected.

One day I'll probably need to fill that empty cupboard. But for now, I kind of like having it around.

Kitchen Lessons

When we were unpacking from our move, the kitchen was all mine. There was no question that The Rev would even poke his handsome head in while his Missus was organizing. It was a foregone conclusion that this area was my domain, and the best he could help was by keeping Wiggle Man occupied as far from my kitchen as was reasonable.

If you know me, you know that this is as much my choice as it is The Rev's. He's actually one of those enlightened gentlemen that will cook and clean. (His Mama taught him well, what can I say?) However, I enjoy the kitchen, and had been looking forward to arranging it to my tastes.

Well, The Rev did poke his handsome head in every once and a while--just to see how things were going, of course. He was surprised to see I had doubles of various kitchen gadgets, and got a laugh out of my multiples. I'll admit, they might seem a little strange--two garlic presses, two sets of measuring spoons, two zesters...it looks like I went a little nuts in a kitchen store. And maybe I did.

But I'm learning that the things I have two of are the gadgets that I use a lot. I mean, a lot. So often, that while one zester will be in the dishwasher waiting for it's spa day, I will find I have something else that requires zesting. So it's handy to have more than one floating around.

There are other gadgets that are missing in my kitchen, because frankly, I never use them. I don't think I've used a melon baller ever. You may use your all the time, but never use a zester, which I find I need two of.

Do you see where I'm going with this? (Probably, because you're all very smart.)

The things I have and use are oftentimes very different from your tools. Why? Simple--we're different people. But (for the most part, anyway) I have the tools I need, and you have yours.

God's good like that, isn't He? He gave me music, because He knew how much I would need it. He gave me writing, so I could pour my thoughts out here, instead of yammering on at people all the time. He gave me the Rev and Wiggle Man, because He knew how much they would help me be the woman He wants me to be.

Maybe He gave you numbers. Auntie LaLa is great with numbers in a way that boggles my mind. Maybe, like a new friend of mine, you are fabulous at making newcomers feel welcome. Maybe you make a killer mac and cheese.

Today is as good a day as any to take a look in your kitchen, and see what gadgets you have laying around. You might as well make something yummy using them.

Personally, I'm in the mood for pie.