Weekend Cooking: Fancy Caramel Corn

We have had one of the best autumns here in Portland -- glorious leaves, crisp weather, not as much rain as usual.  My neighborhood has gone all out for Halloween, everything from an over-the-top haunted house that kids line up around the block for, to magazine-pretty displays of pumpkins and Indian corn.

So it seems like the perfect day to make some of this caramel corn my sister keeps crowing about.  She's a chef in Bavaria, at the fancy Steigenberger Hotel about an hour west of Munich, and wanted to introduce her German co-workers to a traditional American treat to get them in the mood for Halloween. 

She says it is super easy and has been experimenting with various additions.  I'm going to try her version of Chili-Roasted Pumpkin Seed Caramel Corn.

Here are her in structions:

Pop just under one cup of popcorn kernels in regular oil and set aside. [Note: Our family has never been air poppers, but I suppose air popping the corn would work.]

Cook 2 cups regular sugar and 2 cups butter and 1/4 tsp. salt on the stove until a dark amber color, constantly stirring. Add grated fresh nutmeg and vanilla also, if you want. When caramel is ready, pour over popcorn, and throw in some handfuls of the toasted seeds, nuts, chocolate chips, coconut, whatever, and stir together until all the popcorn is coated. Spread out in a thin layer on a baking sheet and sprinkle with sea salt. Let cool. Crumble into a big bowl when cool, or into a large plastic sack to keep.

Yum! Thanks Sis!

WEEKEND COOKING

Hosted by Beth Fish Reads

Opening Sentence of the Day: Cathedral

 

"The tea has got cold."

-- Cathedral by Nelson DeMille.

A deceptively benign beginning for a story that takes off like a shot and never stops.

This counts as one of my four choices for the Chunkster Reading Challenge. It is only the second book I've read for the challenge, so so it is a good thing the challenge runs through the end of January. Maybe I can read two more by the end.

Wendy at caribousmom is hosting this fun challenge again this year.  The challenge post is here.

Opening Sentence of the Day: Wicked Autumn

Wanda Batton-Smythe, head of the Women's Institute of Nether Monkslip, liked to say she was not one to mince words.

-- Wicked Autumn by G. M. Malliet.  The title made this a good pick for Halloween week. And isn't Nether Monkslip a great name for a village?

This is the first in a promised series featuring Max Tudor, a former M15 agent turned Anglican priest.

The set up reminds me of a male version of Martha Ockley's new Faith Morgan series, featuring ex-cop, newly-ordained vicar, Faith Morgan (my review of the first book, The Reluctant Detective is here), or a male, British version of Julia Spencer-Fleming's series featuring Clare Fergusson, a former Army helicopter pilot turned Episcopalian priest.

I got this one from the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program.

A Few More Pages hosts Book Beginnings every Friday.  The event is open for the entire week.

Opening Sentence of the Day: From This Wicked Patch of Dust

Pilar Martinez stumbled into her mother's apartment, which had once been a church in El Segundo Barrio in Downtown El Paso.

-- From This Wicked Patch of Dust by Sergio Troncoso.  This book was released last week.


THE BOOK: In the border shantytown of Ysleta, Mexican immigrants Pilar and Cuauhtémoc Martinez strive to teach their four children to forsake the drugs and gangs of their neighborhood. The family's hardscrabble origins are just the beginning of this sweeping new novel from Sergio Troncoso.

Troncoso has many readings and appearances scheduled this fall. His next appearance is this coming Tuesday, November 1, 2011, at 7:00 PM at the Weiss Center for Children’s and Young Adult Literature, at New Jersey City University in Jersey City, NJ. His complete schedule is here.

Teaser Tuesday Two-fer: Where the Crooked River Rises and Potluck

Two teasers this week, from two books I received from OSU Press.

But if I say "the old Hackleman place," his face lights up with recognition.  He pictures the plunge and curve of the road off the rim, the way the two-story house sits st the head of the valley, its windows squinting into the sun.

-- from the Prologue to Where the Crooked River Rises: A High Desert Home by Ellen Waterston.  There is a lot more geology in this book than personal anecdote above would suggest.  But that is what I like about what I call "random memoirs" -- they often head off in a direction I would not have anticipated.

Waterston founded and leads the popular Bend, Oregon literary festival, The Nature of Words. She is also offers workshops and retreats for emerging writers at her Writing Ranch.


My parents now live in Bend, in Oregon's High Desert, so it is interesting to learn more about that part of my state.

There ought to be some middle ground, I think, a way for a handful of people to hole up in a tiny undeveloped cranny and make it their own, to develop a little maybe, but not a lot.  Maybe it's too much to ask anymore.

-- Potluck: Community on the Edge of Wilderness by Ana Maria Spagna, essays about "the enduring human connection to place" from OSU Press.

Since I occasionally fantasize about living in cabin on a river outside some very small mountain town, I am fascinated to read about someone who actually lives this way.  I prefer the chapters on Spagna's life in a sparsely populated valley in the North Cascades of Washington state to those about her childhood and travels.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.