A Cracker Jack Hack

I took that photo on my patio yesterday morning before tucking into what looks suspiciously like a bowl of Cracker Jack. It's not quite the Cracker Jack I remember but it's something far, far better.

I had two wildly inconvenient dental procedures last month and after my last one, my dentist warned me not to eat popcorn until my gums healed. Not a problem because I never eat popcorn. I never eat it that is until a dentist tells me not to.

The surest way to get me to do something is to tell me I can't do something. My dentist's warning about popcorn gave rise to something deep inside of me and I was seized with a craving for not just popcorn but a very special kind of popcorn and something I hadn't eaten since I was around 12.

I became consumed with a craving for Cracker Jack so profound I lack words to describe it accurately. It kept me awake at night and when I couldn't stand it any longer I gave in and sped off to the grocery store. To my profound horror, Publix doesn't sell the stuff and if Publix doesn't sell it it may as well not exist.

Undaunted, I came home and turned to the internet for caramel corn recipes. As a point of order; that word, caramel, is pronounced kar-mel. Pronouncing it with the second A marks you as someone from the west coast. The horror!

Anyhow, I adapted a recipe I found on Recipes.com and I cranked out a king's ransom in Cracker Jack Hack. Let's look at my glorious effort again:

Here's what to do.

• 1 cup butter
• 2 cups brown sugar
• 1/2 cup corn syrup
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 5 quarts popped popcorn
• A mess of peanuts

Preheat oven to 250 degrees F. Place popcorn in a very large bowl.

In a medium saucepan over medium heat, melt butter. Stir in brown sugar, corn syrup and salt. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Boil without stirring 4 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in soda and vanilla. Pour in a thin stream over popcorn, stirring to coat.

Place in two large shallow baking dishes and bake in preheated oven, stirring every 15 minutes, for 1 hour. Remove from oven and let cool completely before breaking into pieces.

That seems really cut and dry but believe me, this is one of the messiest things I've ever made in my life. I took some liberties with the original recipe by adding more salt and a lot of peanuts. I think the added salt makes the sweetness less cloying and the peanuts are what make Cracker Jack Cracker Jack.

Craving sated, I can now concentrate on concealing the evidence from my dentist at my follow up appointment this week.

As fantastic as this stuff is, I made enough that I ate my fill on the first day and now I have great bags of the stuff sitting around. The next time I make this I'll split the recipe in half. As a side note, the caramel it makes is fantastic in its own right. It cools to the consistency and taste of a Sugar Daddy, another old friend from childhood. As wonderful as this fix was, it was still missing one key element.

Alas, I had no cheap ring or booklet of cheesey tattoos with which to while away my sugar-fueled afternoon.

It's 2011 and I'm back

I'm back after a hiatus that took a little longer to get out of my system than I thought it would. After posting daily for two-and-a-half years I thought it was high time for a bit of a break. I needed to prove to myself that the world wouldn't end if I took off for a little bit. Obviously, the world didn't end.

I'm going to go back to blogging daily so long as the spirit's moving me to do so and when I don't feel like writing a blog post I'm not going to. That's one of my New Year's goals for this year. It's also a survival scheme. I have a travel schedule coming up that makes my head spin if I think about it too much (four major trade shows! Eight cities! Four countries! Three-and-a-half weeks!). Blogging every day while all that's going on is not something I'm willing to take on. I'll be checking in form my exotic ports of call on a very regular basis of course, and there will be times when this blog goes blank for a day or two while I'm traveling. Bear with me.

Being away reminded me that I love this blog more than just about anything and it also reminded me of the difference between a commitment and an obligation. Thanks for sticking around gang.

Happy new year video

I'm not quite back yet but I like this video.




Local, aspiring filmmaker Kyle Kien makes videos of life in these parts and I like them. Here's his time lapse review of holiday stuff from Thanksgiving 'til last night's fireworks. You may need to be from here to appreciate his work but I think he captures enough humanity to make the appeal pretty universal. In any case, his videos remind me why I like living here. It's been getting harder and harder to remember those reasons lately so thanks Kyle.

Happy New Year!

I like both of these old covers.

I'm still on my blogging break and I'll be back in full swing next week. Have a terrific New Year's Eve and thanks for a spectacular 2010 at K&RD!

The ghosts of Christmas variety shows past

It's Christmas Eve. I don't know if it's your thing or not but it's sure mine. This is my favorite day of the year, my favorite night of the year to be specific. So before I take off for a couple of days to ring in my Christmas Eve, I want to thank all of you guys for another terrific year. This little blog thing has brought so many great people into my life and they've brought so much good stuff with them it gets overwhelming to think about.

So as we get ready to show 2010 the door and usher in 2011 I want to wish all of you the very best for the coming year.

2010's been a feast on one hand and a famine on the other. Whattya say we all work on having there be more feast and less famine in 2011?

And although it's great to look forward to what's next, Christmas is always a good excuse to look back too. I'm not one to entertain a whole lot of nostalgia, it never seems like a productive use of time. However there are some exceptions. Most people get all excited every year when the Grinch comes on TV. Or how about A Charlie Brown Christmas? For other people it's all about A Year Without a Santa Claus. The Christmas stuff I remember so fondly never makes it back onto TVland or ABC Family.

I'm talking about Christmas variety shows of course. They're the ignored art form from the days of network only TV. Well thank heavens for YouTube. Even now, despite all of my classical longings, it's not Christmas in my house until I break out the Andy Williams.

Andy Williams defined Christmas for me as a kid. Everybody was nice, sung well and wore sweaters. What more could you ask for really?






And of course, Andy Williams discovered the Osmond Brothers. The addition of the Osmonds to Andy's Christmas specials ratcheted up the treacle levels to near-cavity-inducing levels but it was a lot of fun anyhow.






The Osmonds took their early fame and turned it into an entertainment moguldom that should make the Brittanys and the GaGas squirm with discomfort. These people were an entertainment machine. One of the neighbor kids and I used to ask each other all the time "Who would you want to be adopted by, the Osmonds or the Jacksons (of Jackson Five fame)?" I would always pick the Jacksons. Even then, at nine or ten, all that forced happiness made me uncomfortable. It was sure fun to watch though.





Once everybody figured out that there was money to be made in TV variety shows, Christmas specials in particular, the floodgates opened and everybody got in on the act. Watch, if you dare, this clip from Sonny and Cher. Count the B-list celebrities.





Variety shows always made for strange bedfellows. Whether it was Charo and Señor Wences chewing scenery with Donnie and Marie or Ruth Buzzi hamming it up on the Flip Wilson show, variety shows brought together the weird and the wonderful and everybody ended up singing. In the next clip, the has-been and desperate meet the new and eager in an orgy of self-promotion at any cost.





Though variety shows as a rung on the career ladder peaked in the mid-70s, the genre lived on as a vehicle for selling records as evidenced by this gem from the early '80s. I'm dedicating this to my great friends Brandon and Kevin who abandoned me and the glories of Christmas in St. Pete for the sordid bacchanal of New Orleans a couple of years ago. The memory of their drunken renditions of Hard Candy Christmas, sung a capella on my sofa every year, sustain me through hard times.





Finally, I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when John Denver's agent sobered him up and explained that they were going to save his career by having him sing with puppets on TV.





It worked.

So have a great Christmas one and all. If Christmas isn't your thing, enjoy having the movie theaters all to yourselves this weekend. I'm going to take a couple of days off and I'll be back next week.