Traditions

I remember a long time ago, that the families in our neighborhood would exchange gifts on Christmas Eve. My dad would load up the car with our gifts to give all the neighborhood families. We used to have a dozen families swing by our place to wish us happy holidays and to drop off gifts (which were usually something amazing to eat and only reserved for the holidays). For many years we made caramel corn for our neighbors. I was the one who usually made it. After a couple of years, the caramel corn became the expected Vincill family gift. We even had neighbors give back the tins for refill. Refills? Yeh, thats right, expected refills on the Vincill family caramel corn.

I haven't made carmel corn in over 15 years, but today I checked out the Organette Blog and she had a post on carmel corn, and it brought back a flood of childhood memories. I miss those years. There, I said it. I am a sucker for Christmas traditions. Now as Ruthie and I start our family together, I get excited about starting our own Christmas traditions. Today we made a batch of the Vincill family caramel corn and are sharing it with our good friends in Madison.

This is the original family caramel corn with new twist. I added fleur de sel (flaked sea salt) which compliments and intensifies the caramel flavor.

Vincill family Caramel Corn with Fleur de Sel

makes 3-quarts or more

16-18 cups of popcorn (make sure it is not salted or buttered; for popcorn recipe)

2 cups light brown sugar

1 cup butter

1/2 cup corn syrup

1/2 tsp table salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups roasted, salted peanuts

1/2 tsp fleur de sel (flaked sea salt)

Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Make popcorn and put into two very large pans (preferably with high sides) and place in the oven to keep warm. In a 3 quart saucepan, bring sugar, butter, corn syrup, and salt to a boil over medium heat. Stir only until it comes to a boil and then stop stirring. Boil over medium heat for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and let sit until it stops bubbling. Quickly add 1/2 tsp. of baking soda and 1 tsp. vanilla and stir for less than 30 seconds until it starts to foam up. Pour quickly and evenly over warmed popcorn and stir until evenly distributed. Don't worry if all of the caramel doesn't coat each individual piece of popcorn because that will happen later. Evenly distribute coated corn into the two large sheet pans. Add peanuts (optional) and place in oven for an hour stirring every 15 minutes. During the last 15 minutes, sprinkle 1/2 tsp fluer de sel over the caramel corn and it will stick to the carmel.

After an hour, remove from the heat and place on wax paper and separate large pieces. Cool completely and store in airtight containers. The peanuts usually don't stick to the carmel and usually drop to the bottom of the containers.

St. Vincent's Finds

We talked about this thrift store before in previous posts.  This store is literally across the street.  Just like most thrift stores, most is crap, but we have been able to find an uncanny amount of really good furniture.  Today we found an amazing dinning room table.  It is solid walnut with 2 leafs.  We originally had a square table, which was awkward is getting chairs around the table unless you have a VERY big square table.  But this table is semi-circular, so we can get two people at each end with a comfortable 6 people and if need be 8-10 people total.

The table was only 45 dollars!!  But then St. Vincent's had a 50% off all furniture sale that day so we got it for 23 dollars!!!

Here it is.  The chairs were ours, but they actually match the finish extremely well.

Here it is with the leafs in:

Baby, It's Cold Outside...

I feel this is extremely appropriate, given that we've just had 20 + inches of snow dumped on us today.

This is a couple of Tennessee Natives we went to school with.  A darling couple and a great sound.

  Aren't they fantastic!  Madison, you should become familiar with Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors.

Stay warm tonight!

It's Christmastime!

It's Christmastime in our house.
Many of you know that I have a hard time waiting to give gifts or tell surprises, because I get so darn excited! In the spirit of this, we ended up exchanging gifts early this year...like super early...in fact, the night we put our tree up...which was the day after Thanksgiving.
I know it's ridiculous. However, Let me show you my Christmas gift this year (thanks to the Williams-Sonoma employee discount--I'm holiday help again).

The KitchenAid Pasta Extruder (it makes tubular pasta) I couldn't be more excited! I l.o.v.e. homemade pasta, particularly tubular pasta...

Of course, I made some right away. AND once the pasta dough was the right consistancy, it was easy as pie.

Eric, of course, then made me the most delicious mac and cheese I've ever tasted.

and I just had to share it with you. I give this KitchenAid attachment two thumbs up!