Drat Logic

When I was a teenager, I liked to imagine the possibility of life in a past era. Lying in bed too late on school nights reading Madame Bovary, I would wish myself in provincial France. Hiding in the shade of the basement on summer mornings while everyone else was at the beach, a copy of The Magic Mountain open across my knees, I would wish myself in the Swiss Alps. Lying on the sofa on winter afternoons reading Oliver Twist in the violet dusk, the lights extinguished, a fire burning, I would wish myself in 1830s London. 

Not that I identified my own frustrations with those of Emma Bovary or was tubercular like Hans Castorp or had ever been before a bailiff or suffered the wrath of a beadle like Oliver Twist. No. I was a nephew from Paris visiting his wealthy uncle Rodolphe and amused to discover that he is bedding Madame Bovary. I was a healthy American on the grand tour who just happens to be spending the autumn in Davos-Platz. I was the boy in the brown velvet suit seated in a chaise, a King Charles spaniel in a basket on my lap, wondering what was all that commotion in front of the bookseller’s about. 

Then one day as I was reading it suddenly occurred to me:  If I had lived in another time and place as I so desired, I would be dead now. I wouldn’t be reading now. I wouldn’t be doing anything at all now. Except maybe decomposing. In which case, how could I have made these honey roasted peanut and caramel candies last night?


The thought stopped me cold. It still does.


Metaphysical mysteries aside, the present is much too hot really for candy making. Right when I started the caramel on the stove the mercury outside started also rising. By color I am a fall, but by temperature I am all winter. My dream apartment is a 2500 square foot two bedroom two bath plus walk-in freezer with a six burner professional gas range and unobstructed north and east views of the Chicago skyline and Lake Michigan. So I feel a special kinship with my caramel as it struggles to keep its buttery side in check, and my chocolate as it struggles to keep its temper.

I made the caramel, but the chocolate and the nuts are straight from Trader Joe’s. I just lay out the nuts on a sheet pan, heat some of the caramel in an oiled glass bowl in the microwave, then drop it with an oiled tablespoon over the nuts. When the caramel is cool I nudge the mounds into roughly circular shape. Next I run the base of each one over a chocolate coated spatula, and finish by spooning some melted chocolate over the top. 


Nothing fancy. Just a way to pass an hour before bed on a Tuesday night. A sweet and salty break in the present tense.