City Chick is fairly certain that most readers of the blog are familiar with the commonly occurring theme of “anything worth doing is worth overdoing” here at Farm Narnia. While this is mostly prevalent in the shopping habits of Farm Girl (and yes … City Chick fully admits to contributing to this during shopping excursions) and regularly with some of the events hosted by our amazing clients (what – there is one inch of space left on this table? We must put in something to fill it or it just looks so empty!), it is also frequently uttered during our own food oriented experiments, meal development and just general farm feasting (although, admittedly, this usually involves cheese, bread and crackers).
So, Farm Girl has a super secret recipe for her famous candied pecans. They are absolutely to die for. And, this year, Farm Girl, City Chick and Kuhs Kid #1 almost did die for them – not only for eating too many of them (oh, but the pain is so worth it) but we also had a bit of an incident. So, City Chick had braved the cold and the lines at Sam’s Club and brought back 24 pounds of pecans, 8 pounds of butter and 14 pounds of brown sugar (as well as other assorted secret ingredients) in order to make these delectable little pieces of holiday joy. She had waged war on the Farm House kitchen to ensure that there were as many work spaces available as possible while Farm Girl brought over 3 giant bowls (catering sized bowls for salads . . . HUGE). Farm Girl then set City Chick and Kuhs Kid #1 to dividing all the nuts evenly between three bowls while she prepared the awesome-sauce that is the coating for the pecans to bring them to holiday glory. In doing so, she took a paper towel to serve as a spoon rest for the spoon that was being used to mix and stir the butter-brown sugar concoction . . .
Now, it being a rather chilly morning and as City Chick was still roaming about in pj’s, she also had the kettle of hot water keeping toasty warm on the stove-top to keep hot water at the ready for hot tea (she is an utter addict. She blames Mama-Lou and her grandmother . . . she also wastes tea bags on a prolific level, using a new bag for each mug of wonderful. Don’t judge.). The kettle was merrily burbling along on the front left burner while Farm Girl created magic on the front right burner. Do you see where we are going here?
Inevitably, Farm Girl (who is a hurricane in the kitchen), moved the spoon (now stuck with sticky goo to the paper towel spoon rest) on the actual stove-top. In the middle, but sort of off to the left. Where it . . . yes, CAUGHT ON FIRE. LIGHT IT UP (lyrics from that song by Fall-Out Boy . . . ), indeed. In fact there was a momentary suspension of all movement as the three stared in horror as the paper towel embers that were floating up towards the top of the 10ft ceilings. Then General Farm Girl swung into action (while yelling at City Chick and Kuhs Kid #1 to also swing into action – all at the same time, literally standing over each other) and somehow managed to douse the mini-bonfire going on while City Chick stood at the ready with a wet dish towel to smother any floating embers. There was a nervous laugh as the contemplation as how badly that could have gone was reviewed. But then –
The magical concoction was at the perfect texture and consistency to be poured over the nuts. It was a marriage of decadence and indulgence as Kuhs Kid #1 and City Chick frantically and carefully stirred and folded everything into the mixture that Kuhs Cowboy was called in to help hold the pan (it had to be a lot to cover 16 pounds of nuts that we did on the first batch!) while Farm Girl ladled it all over the nuts in a deluge of delicious. She got to work on her own bowl last and then we had to spread the nuts over waxed paper to allow everything to fuse and dry together. (Well . . . what was allowed to dry. Kuhs Kid #1 and City Chick were doing extensive quality control checks over the batch.)
Are they dry yet?
This is what Farm Girl looks like when she is dissatisfied with City Chick and Kuhs Kid #1’s attempts to adequately spread nuts:
Are we over-doing it? Maybe . . . but probably not. We already are planning another batch for this weekend!
Kuhs Farm 