Weaving my way home on All Hallows Eve I had but one thought in my
mind, Do Not Hit The Children.
Little Biebers, Avengers, Taylors and Disney Princesses all
whoring themselves door to door for a fun sized candy bar. Not that I'm
judging. I sold my soul for pixie stix back in '72 and never looked back.
When I walked in the door dinner was, as always, ready. There were
two pots on the makeshift stove. (Our actual stove and oven crapped out ages
ago and due to a complicated web of faulty and not so faulty reasoning is not
likely to be replaced in my mothers lifetime. We have a two burner electric
thing that's really meant for keeping Swedish meatballs warm in
church basements but we make do.
One burner held the evenings dinner. You may recall that on Tuesday
last week I told my mother that I would make the brown gravy and pork meatballs
on Saturday and that I would also make hamburg and macaroni to freeze for later
in the week. She had made hamburg and macaroni for supper. Well okay fine
Passive aggressive but fine.
The other pot had something I couldn't identify. Not good news.
Mom had started talking months ago about making caramel corn for
my work friends. She had found an old recipe that she loved and wanted to use
it. We bought the bags for it the moment Halloween stuff came out but the night
before the holiday was the night I made the pork meatballs and we'd done a lot
that day and were both exhausted. We agreed to do them later in the week.
Apparently one night later was late enough because the other pot
on the stove was the sugar and butter required to make the glaze. We had
purchased popping corn (yeah, the non microwave kind) the day before so began
trying to pop. Well, first she had me get the bag of corn and open it. Easy
enough right? Not so much. She was standing in front of the drawer containing
the scissors and rather than risk her wrath by squeezing in near her or ask her
to stop her rant about I don't remember what I used this super cute kitty that
sticks to the fridge and is supposed to open any sort of package.
I opened the popcorn wrong. Of course I did. She picks up the bag,
starts to pour it into the pot she's using to pop and says “You couldn’t
just open the corner? You couldn’t just…open the corner?” and gives me a look.
For better or worse mom’s a smart cookie and could see the wheels turning in my
head, she could just see it in my eyes how I’d be blogging about this later so
she changes tactics from bitey to nice.
Mom insisted the popping could be done with no oil or fat at
all. I disagreed but not out loud. Turns out it can be done if what you want is tiny, mostly unpopped
popcorn. We added oil and the kernels popped a little larger but
still nowhere near what we needed. We have tons of microwave popcorn but
it’s all buttered and you can’t use buttered for the caramel corn, the caramel
sauce won’t stick.
I remember that they actually have natural microwave popcorn at
the store and look at the time. It’s 9:30 so I know a few places will still be
open. I take off to the store and buy two GIANT boxes of natural microwave
popcorn because I have no feel for how much we need. There are ten bags in each
box. Turns out we need 2 bags.
Whatever, we’ll make this again if it turns out well, and we can
use some for stringing for the Chrismas tree.
I’m really worried as we throw in the first bag because if it doesn’t
pop well we’ve wasted a ton of time and I’ll have picked the wrong popcorn and
it’ll be my fault.
Instead it pops up huge and beautiful (it’s Hannaford’s natural if
you want to know) and shockingly it’s really tasty all on its own.
We’re both really excited about the nice popcorn so we move on to
making the caramel which instead of taking over like she normally would mom did
a fantastic job of stepping back and guiding me with good humor.
Because we were working on the church basement burner it took
forever for the caramel to come up to the right temperature but it finally did
and we were ready to make the corn. We had two bowls of popped corn so I poured
caramel into one for her to mix and another for me to mix.
She was way better at it :
But I managed to get it done as well. We spread it out in pans and
pushed it down then let it cool. It was actually fun.
When it was cool be broke it up and put it in bags then I tied the
bags with twist ties for work the next day.
We snuck a few bites and I thought it was good and it got the
Bluff seal of approval as well.
I brought it to work the next day and everyone
really seemed to like it but I knew it was actually pretty good when my
coworker Katrina who is honest to a fault and known for not eating things
cooking in people’s kitchens if she hasn’t seen them not only accepted it but
asked for and ate a second bag. (In her defense I had them in tiny bags).
So now I know another thing to make that’s really
pretty easy except for the wait time on the caramel that people enjoy.
I’ll add here that I made dinner one day on my own
completely but it was just hamburgers and chips. I did remember to cook the
hamburger with onions and peppers though so I felt like a freaking Master Chef. It may not look that appetizing but it tasted great!
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