Festival Food at Home- Kettle Corn!

If you're like me, you love festival and fair food. It's only available in the summer time and you find yourself craving it every year when June rolls around.

I grew up in the city that hosts the Missouri State Fair and I have a confession, I don't love that fair. Every year the fair would come to town with it's hoard of state troopers, tourists who didn't know which lane of traffic went where and nary an available restaurant seat to be had. Residents stocked up on supplies like a blizzard was coming or went to the lake for an extended vacation.

I also worked the fair as a teenager on those parking lot trams that, for 50 cents a person, would take you to the front gate. I did this for two years until I was old enough to get my first real job in fast food.

Newer fairs and festivals are quite different for me and now I look forward to street vendors selling deep-fried confections, sandwiches in foil wrappers and corn on the cob with any number of toppings. I love to wander through craft tents touching and smelling and shaking my head at demonstrators hawking products I don't need. I like the fairs and I want the food year round. Imagine my surprise when I learned, quite by accident, how to make kettle corn quickly and on the very very cheap.

The key to good kettle corn is an oil popper with a stir stick. You can do this with a pot and spoon but be very careful since the sugar gets super hot. The rest is very simple. I've given the measurements in parts, with my measurements in parenthesis, so you can scale up or down to your tastes. Don't skimp on the oil, it helps keep the sugar from burning.

My Love/Hate Relationship with CakePops

We have a little niece who turned 10 this week! Happy Birthday to little C! Ten is a big age full of opinions, pouting, energy and ideas. It just so happens that the week before we had all been to an event and C wanted cakepops sold by a vendor. Daddy said "no" and Nana mentioned that if C wrote me a letter, maybe I would make cakepops for her birthday. So I got a letter and who could resist?

I have to admit I cringed inside. I do not like cakepops in their popular incarnation. They may be a "pop" but they're not cake, more like gooey truffle on a stick. If I wanted truffle on a stick, that's what I'd make. Since C hadn't actually had a cakepop at last weekend's event she wouldn't know what to expect so I set out to make a better cakepop, one that was actually cake. Mine contained no icing. I had some cake oops moments but all turned out well. Here's what I did.

Snack Crack Caramel Corn

I am a sucker for sweets and this popcorn is snack crack in my book. I love the caramel corn that comes in the tins over the holidays and remember my excitement seeing it over the years. There's something about the lightly crunchy caramel shell over soft popcorn that gets me every time. When I saw this recipe from King Arthur Flour, I knew I had to try it. I've made it twice (in a week) with some adaptations. Don't be freaked out by the candy making process, this recipe's really forgiving. It's awesome and will be in my arsenal for a long time coming.

The Perfect Oatmeal Cookie

Today was a day of cravings. I chalk it up to not sleeping well last night. I was up too late and then couldn't stay asleep so then I was up too early. When I'm sleep deprived I crave, crave, crave carbs and sugar. I'm sure there's some scientific explanation for this but I've got an English degree so I'm better at reading a recipe than understanding the science of cravings. So today was full of carb indulgences and bedtime will come early.

Tonight Sweetheart was looking for a chili recipe and, lo and behold, my childhood oatmeal cookie recipe card shook itself loose. Sometimes I believe in fate, mostly I believe in Karma. Tonight I'm putting my money on fate since the perfect snack recipe fell into my lap.

The story on these is that the recipe belonged to my maternal great grandmother, was passed to my grandmother who scaled it for her 5 children and my mom inherited it. I can remember making trays upon trays of these as a kid and now that I look at the recipe I realize it had been tripled! Here's the secret perfect family oatmeal cookie recipe. Don't worry, I've re-scaled it to its original proportions so you won't have to make quite so many.