In Which We Attempt a Taffy-Pull: With Sticky Results

First of all, we'd like to start with some thank-you's. Thank you, Leah and Anna, for watching the younger ones while we had our young-adult night, Thank you, everyone else who commented. (We love comments!:) Now, for the real business: Today in school(for our Victorian literature based unit study) we had to make taffy. It sounded quite easy and fun, and the little illustration in the book depicted a bunch of 5-year-olds pulling wads of taffy. We sort of forgot that the Victorian era was very romantic and embellished practically everything including taffy-pulls. Anyway, we had all the ingredients so while Rachel studied Newtons Three Fundamental Laws of Gravitation(or tried anyway) we began the sticky business of taffy-making. The picture up there ^ is the pulling process after we had boiled the mixture to the firm-ball stage.

(switching over to Rachel now!)
You are technically supposed to pull the taffy until it is light in color and not sticky anymore. I am here to tell you that we got a whole front-arm work out and got taffy all over everything, including the doorknobs of the back door (in putting the taffy outside to cool) and it still wasn't unsticky! We were literally covered in taffy from head to toe, and had some fun and alot of anxiety over Gracie licking the wax paper and Abby dribbling her unpulled taffy over my pulled taffy and mixing it all up. We rolled it into ropes that eventually sank into flat strips and onto the table-top.

The taffy is still sitting in wide, limp, and hopeful strips on the wax paper, waiting for one of us people who made it to be brave enough to try to cut it. I highly doubt it will be usable. It tastes as good as ever taffy tasted, but it is rather sticky and none of us presently want to see, much less taste, any more of it! We are highly inundated with the smell, look, and most importantly, feel of that blasted taffy!

But hey! We made quite a few memories, and it gave us something to write about! Maybe I've learned a valuble lesson: never attempt taffy during the fitful Virginia Septembers!

Isn't it funny: the book we were reading about taffy in was Anne Of Green Gables when she remarks: "Diana and I made taffy after tea, but it didn't turn out too well! She asked me to stir it while she buttered the platter, and I forgot and let it burn. Then when we set the platters out to cool, the cat walked across one, and we had to throw it out! I suppose it was because neither of us had made taffy before!" Shouldn't that've been a warning to us aspiring taffy-makers? Oh well, it was a very diverting amusement for a couple of hours and we may try our hand at it again with a taffy-pull sometime during the winter months.

So that concludes our adventure of the day (whoops! We forgot to mention the long green snake that made it's appearance while we were pulling the rest of the taffy on the back deck)