Candy Thermometer for Election Day

Got going early this morning so I could vote right after the polls opened at seven. My polling place is the middle school my sons attended. Middle schools are very scary places, so I wanted to be long gone before incoming students began swarming.

Last Friday I had my hair permed. My relationship with my hair is difficult. We are like roommates who live in the same apartment, but aren't actually friends. We cycle through phases of amused tolerance, benign disinterest, forced civility, not making eye contact, and outright loathing. About once a year we need a professional mediator and a permanent.

It's a good perm. I like it a lot. Adults seem to like it, or are very polite. My students take one look, scrunch up their faces like they are studying a flipped-over beetle wiggling its legs in the air, and say, "You look really weird. What happened to your hair?"

This afternoon the preschoolers gave my appearance a thorough appraisal, and informed me I looked "like a clown". A few minutes later the oldest girl amended that analysis. "You look," she said, "like the mother of the clown." That's harsh! And there I'd been humming a West Side Story tune to myself...

I feel pretty,
Oh, so pretty,
I feel pretty and witty and bright!
And I pity
Any girl who isn't me tonight.

I feel charming,
Oh, so charming
It's alarming how charming I feel!
And so pretty
That I hardly can believe I'm real.


After the perm Friday, my stylist convinced me I needed a product to define my curls if I wasn't going to aim for the Texas Big Hair bouffant look. For relaxed, easy shower-and-go, I definitely needed Twisted Taffy Raw Hair Goo.

The Raw Hair Goo results were pretty good Saturday-Monday. Something went way wrong this morning. The Twisted Taffy never progressed past the soft ball stage. It didn't dry all day long, let alone define curls and provided promised "textured shine."

Soft ball stage, as any Camp Fire Girl who ever tried to make popcorn balls for treats knows, begins at 234°. A small amount of syrup dropped into chilled water forms a ball, but flattens when picked up with fingers.

"You can't make fudge when it's hot," my wise team teacher quoted. Since I make fudge once every other Christmas, I did not know if this was ancient wisdom or something she made up for this occasion. We are experiencing ridiculous temps in the mid-eighties, and humidity around sixty per cent. For November, that qualifies as hot.

When my sons were young, they melted plastic toy soldiers with the magnifying glass out on the afternoon sidewalk, in the name of science. Being of a certain majestic, energized, and powerful stage in life, I can probably melt any plastic toy soldier within three feet of my scalp, in the name of menopause.

Can weather affect candy making?

Oddly enough, it can. Cooking candy syrup to the desired temperature means achieving a certain ratio of sugar to moisture in the candy. On a humid day, once the candy has cooled to the point where it is no longer evaporating moisture into the air, it can actually start reabsorbing moisture from the air. This can make the resulting candy softer than it is supposed to be.

That’s why dry days are recommended for candy making, although the effects of humidity can be somewhat counterbalanced by cooking the candy to the upper end of the appropriate temperature stage.

Cool weather is also recommended for candy making, because—generally—the faster candy cools, the less chance it has to form unwanted crystals.

My what bad hair you have, Grandma!