Confection Confessions

The windows of my kitchen were thick with the condensed steam that came from the pot on the stove. I was busy with the second batch of peanut brittle, and an eclectic mix of holiday music was streaming in from the living room - "Merry Christmas Baby, I Don' Wanna Fight" by Joey Ramone stuck in my mind. I continued to stir and stare as the sugar, water, and peanuts continued their slow journey from goo to brittle. I kept stirring, since I knew that the worst thing that could happen was that "it could scorch." I'm not completely sure what that is, but I had been told many times by my father and had it reiterated previously that night by my mother that "to scorch" is bad, so keep stirring.
It takes a good long time to cook raw spanish peanuts in a mixture of corn syrup, water, and many cups of sugar. I had time to reflect on my experiences with holiday treats. As a kid, my family was especially devoted to keeping the neighborhood and a great many friends and relatives well stocked in Christmas cookies and candy. When I was much younger, I remember that the entire block worked to outdo one another with sugary snacks. Every family had their own plate of delicacies hand-delivered by children in knit caps and mittens. There was a lot of variety, but I like to believe that our family had the "greatest hits package": Snickerdoodles, Chocolate Crinkles, Chocolate Chip Cookies, fudge, and the ubiquitous peanut brittle. As the years wore on, fewer families entered into the fray, and I believe this was due in large part to the dominance of the Caven Kitchen. By the time I was in junior high, our plates had refined to the most elemental: Fudge and Peanut Brittle.
For weeks leading up to Christmas, our laundry room was a vast storehouse with tubs of peanut brittle and rows of coffee cans filled with fudge. There was horrible temptation on every trip to the back yard. We were discouraged from gorging ourselves until the rest of the free world had a chance to eat their fill. There were many stealthy nips out to the back of the house to taste a bit of purloined fudge or crack off a piece of peanut brittle. Truth is, had all three boys been turned loose on all that sugar, we probably still wouldn't have made much of a dent.
Back in the present, the peanuts were finally ready, according to the hard-crack test. I poured in the vanilla, soda and a pinch of salt - careful not to splatter any as the mixture foamed up mightily. Onto the pans I poured the bubbling goo where the cooling began almost immediately. I could tell I had a good batch the second time. My dad had a "magic pot" that he used for years. He insisted that you needed to get one pot and stick with it. I've got one of those, and I've got a counter full of various sized tins and bags filled with my own peanut brittle.