Saturday, November 24, 2007

Making Peanut Brittle - a Family Tradition

Peanut brittle. It's a family tradition to make peanut brittle at mom and dad's house the day after Thanksgiving. The Maxwell women have been doing this for years and will continue (God willing) to do so for many, many more years to come. Making peanut brittle isn't difficult -- a bit time consuming, but certaily not difficult. This year, due to a very full schedule, my sister wasn't able to join us. But she was there in spirit!! Mom and I started about 9:30, refreshed and ready to go!

Assemble all of the ingredients. Check.

Cook the candy. Check.

Spread it out and let it cool. Check.

Break it up into lots of bite-sized pieces. Double check.

Place said bite-sized pieces into goodie bags....

And we're done!!

See - simple, right? Seven hours, fifteen pounds of sugar, eleven packages of peanuts, six bottles of Karo syrup...and 44 individual bags of peanut brittle later. It's a rich tradition filled with love, and many wonderful memories, that I wouldn't trade for the world. Give me another year to rest up, and I'll be ready for the next batch of peanut brittle.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

It has become a tradition in my family to make peanut brittle as well as caramels and mints for Christmas every year. There is something very reassuring to me when things are done every year. Your brittle looks absolutely wonderful. God bless.

Randa said...

Thank you, Jackie! God bless you, too, my friend and fellow peanut brittle maker. I completely agree - I love traditions and rituals; they're very comforting.