TOFFEE

This was some months back. 

So I have this craving for toffee earlier this afternoon with nary a lump of the stuff for kilometres. You know how it is...

So, toffee is easy to make, says I to myself. It's just sugar and butter and well.....oh....um. And then Mr Google was summoned and a few recipes perused. As one does. 

I can do this, says I. 

"Karen?" I holler, "Do we have this, do we have that, do we have the other?" 

"Indeed," says she, puzzled. "What are you up to?"

"Toffee," I reply, "a craving..."

A sardonic smile from Mrs M and I'm alone in the kitchen. 

I have the thick bottomed, deep pan. I have the dish lined with waxed paper, I have the deep fry thermometer. How organised, thinks I to myself. 

And then it bubbles and then it froths and then it turns a little darker but the temperature is not what it should be but I press on. And I use a bigger gas ring and we get to the desired temperature. Then there is the stirring and the pouring and the cry for help to assist in the scraping of the dregs into the wax-paper lined dish and the squealing in pain as the good Mrs M scrapes scalding hot liquid onto my fingers. Oh how I cursed. How my fingers did blister. 

And I turns out that wax paper is only waxed on one side so we have some very sweet paper backed sweet glassy stuff that is way too hard to be the toffee that I wanted but after rinsing off a segment or two and scraping off the paper and yielding up some really sticky substance, I decided that my toffee craving had been sated. 

Stick to omelettes, says I as I sit down to a beer and the TV. That cold glass surface is heaven to those blistered digits.

Drive to the shop next time is the chorus that is ringing in my head.

Wilson's have been making the fucking stuff for decades.