Cooking.

Yesterday I perfected the divine art of toffee-making in my friend L's kitchen. I successfully brought sugar and butter to 300 degrees in a saucepan without using a candy thermometer. This isn't easy. It's taken me three winters to do it right. L and I made 3 batches and in the past we've burned the first batch, undercooked the second batch so it came out all crumbly and useless, and juuuuuust barely got the third batch to the crunch point. We have done this because candy thermometers absolutely suck. Who came up with this design? "Ok, lets make it a huge dial the size of a coaster and then give it a long metal spike that sticks directly into the center of the pot so no one can stir what's inside, and then let's slide this crappy rubber clip up the spike but not secure it at all so it falls off and flicks nuclear candy into the air. This is brilliant. Best idea ever." Oh, and one more thing about candy thermometers, a wee eccentricity, a minute detail, just a teeny, tiny piccadillo...if the thermometer touches the bottom of the pot, even for a second, you're FUCKED. START OVER.

So candy thermometers can suck it. This year L and I wanted to find one of those bitchin' laser thermometers that are shaped like guns, and you point it at something and it tells you the temperature instantly. We couldn't get one in time, though, and all the ones our friends had were covered in pit grease and oil from car shops and other mechanic-type things, and we didn't think penzoil and toffee were such a good flavor combo.

If you're making toffee the L and Jacky way, the first batch is going to be a loss, unless you have a coven of people who routinely destroy their tastebuds with cigarettes and black coffee. These people have the mind-over-matter thing going for them and don't actually taste things anymore, so burned batches don't bother them - they just imagine what they think it's supposed to taste like or how they remember it tasting as a child. Toffee feels crunchy in their mouths and they enjoy the stroll down memory lane. Luckily, L's husband has been working at the scrapyard for years, so our burned batch has always found a home.

The second batch is awesome crumbled over ice cream. Not a loss, but not toffee.

The third batch is...well, there's no describing it. And this year, I pitched a perfect game. One pound of butter with 2 cups of sugar brought to a boil over medium heat and stirred slowly until it's at 300 degrees, then dumped onto a cookie sheet, spread out (quickly before it cools!) and drop hershey bars face-down on top. Cover with another cookie pan and let it sit outside in the cold air until the chocolate it completely hardened. That's why it's a winter project. After all that, lift up the sheet of toffee and smash it apart with the blunt end of a butter knife, and eat so much of it you get so sick of it you can't eat it again for another 12 months. That is also why it's a winter project.

I wonder who invented toffee. Who was the first person to discover that this exact ratio of butter, sugar, and temperature yields the perfect piece of candy? Did they start with the ideal of toffee in their minds and attempt to reach that goal through experimentation, or did they have no idea where they were going and just burnt up a whole bunch of valuable butter and sugar until something worked? I am fascinated by invention. Inventors, moreso. To be able to see something where there was nothing and then make it reality, that's amazing to me. I want to invent things. I feel like I have a lot of great ideas, but no funding or ability to plan or do math. Inventing takes a lot of math, of course you know. But to invent things usually requires already-invented things to be molded or shaped or changed into new ways they have never been made before, like making a plastic or metal prototype. Does one call up a steel yard and just ask for a certain dimension of metal? It's such a mystery.

I want to invent simple things. I want to invent non-computer things, because those things will still be around after the apocalypse. There have been three blackouts in Baltimore in different areas for no discernable reason at all in the past week and a half and I'm fairly convinced the End Times are here, so I have very little time to get my inventions off the ground.

I want to invent a bookcase that converts to a carrying case for books. Each shelf will break apart and close up and can be moved from place to place without disrupting the books or packing them into bins. Then when you arrive at your destination, you stack up the carrying cases, open them up, and you have your bookshelf. It might be a little industrial-chic looking, but that's totally in right now.

I have a great idea to reinvent the candy thermometer. I think it should be a little marble sized ball sensor that gets dropped into your batch and transmits the temperature to a little display on the counter. It would read the temp from it's surface, which is completely submersed in whatever you're making. It would be like a little laundry ball for your 3oo degree candy. It would allow for stirring because it's just in there, hanging around. It could have a heat-resistant string that ties to the top of your spoon so when you're done you can yank it out of the mixture like yoink!

My dad invented things. Well, not really. But he got really resourceful with the junk he had lying around. One Christmas he cut the end off of a garden hose and stuck it down through the tree and into the tree stand. The little metal end wrapped around a branch at arm level. We could water the tree standing up with a watering can instead of on our stomachs on the floor with a ball jar, getting poked in the face with sappy pine needles. I liked that invention. A few years before, the antenna fell off the house the day of the Superbowl and out in farm country in 1998 we didn't get any internet or cable or satellite, so dad climbed on the roof and duct taped our huge antenna to the fake chimney. It was still there 10 years later when we moved.

Dad also cooks a lot. He makes peanut brittle every year, and it took him about 3 winters to perfect his peanut brittle making too. I think he may have started with a candy thermometer like me, but gave it up after a couple of candy-thermometer-related disasters. Maybe he still uses one. I think he might even stir it with the spike, which is a resourceful use of an existing invention. That's his specialty - which will certainly come in handy when the apocalypse hits and we'll have to find some use for all these iPads and Xboxes.