Bear Essentials: Mitten Noms - Michigan Classics(+ Black Forest Fudge)

Michigan has 3126 miles of shoreline, and about twice that many fudge shops.  Which is lucky, because when I'm baking on the sun-soaked beach, what I crave most is a trip to a steaming candy kitchen and a brick of chocolate the size of a smallish possum. 

Taking Candy from Babies, Part II:An October Public Service Announcement( + Fresh Mozzarella, Prosciutto, and Fig Jam Panini )

Earlier this week, I announced the Bearfrau's foolproof plan for reclaiming your lost youth.  I don't want to bore you with the high-tech details, but mostly it involves eating the Halloween candy you bought for the neighborhood kids.  Of course I'm not actually advocating taking candy from babies.  What am I, a monster?  I'm advocating taking it from grown children.  And not even really taking it - just creating a series of obstacles to it.  If the child decides the challenge isn't worth the reward, well, that's just a commentary on the decline of tenacity and drive in the youth of America today.  It's no fault of yours.

Taking Candy from Babies, Part I:An October Public Service Announcement( + Tuna Panini )

Imagine it's 1987.  An elementary-school cafeteria, the day after Halloween.  A swarming madhouse of glucose-addled children, gearing up for recess after a healthy meal of half a bologna sandwich and as many fun-sized Butterfingers as it takes to fill a Thundercats lunch box.  Gods and heroes are being made today.  Ryan Finnegan is telling the Homeric epic of how he grabbed an entire bowl of Sweet-Tarts off an unattended porch and ran.  Vanessa Simmons brought so many Chuckles that she can't finish them all - the entire 3rd-grade class is singing Tiffany's "I Think We're Alone Now" to compete for her leftovers.  Are you enjoying the nostalgia?  Good.  One of us should.

I myself have trouble enjoying Halloween because it always reminds me of the bleak hellscape of misery and despair that was my low-sugar childhood.  No Pop Rocks.  No Pop-Tarts.  No Ring Pops.  And definitely no pop.  It was a dark time, filled with lies and misdirection.  For years, my brother and I labored under the false impression that sliced dried pineapple was a "treat."  I didn't have my first Dorito until the age of 16.  And I still wake up sweating in the night with the taste of carob in my mouth.

Mr. Bear is Not a Foodie (+ Sourwood Honey Salted Caramels)

Mr. Bear is frowning at the grocery list.  He’s trying to understand why “caramels” is on there.  You know the ones.  Square, pale, wrapped in cellophane, and about as much bother to unwrap a bag as if you’d made the batch yourself.  It’s not the caramels themselves that Mr. Bear objects to.  He’s remarkably amenable when it comes to food, willing to eat pretty much anything that doesn’t come attached to a set of tentacles or antennae.  It’s the why that’s confounding him, since he spent most of yesterday morning watching me make a batch of caramels from scratch.  I can see him looking surreptitiously from the list to the table, where the offending candies are heaped in their perky waxed wrappers. 

He’s pretty sure he’s missing something - some briefing that would make this all clear to him.  It can’t be that the recipe was a dud, since he’s been listening to me crow about it for 24 hours now.  Because (1) It worked, a quality that is unreliably present in my candymaking, (2) They taste amazing, and (3) I feel like I should get some sort of extra-credit points for winning at Foodie Bingo: not only are they salted caramels, I’ve dipped into my stash of random gourmet gifts and managed to cram into them both Appalachian Sourwood Honey and Tahitian Vanilla Sea Salt, which I’m pretty sure means that the sacred foodie doors will be opened to me and someone will probably send me a copy of The French Laundry Cookbook.