Recipe for the sweetest spot in a busy season:
Put sugar, cream, and butter in a heavy saucepan. Pull up a tall chair, turn your back on the world, and stir.
Laundry needs folding? Sorry--keep stirring. Cat throwing up? Someone else will have to clean it up. Bills beg to be paid? It's not worth ruining the recipe.
Focus full attention on the pan. Watch the bubbles bursting open with a bloop. Give a stir. Glance at the candy thermometer. Stir some more. Drag the spoon through the bubbling sugar to make serpentine lines in bubbling chaos. Look at the thermometer. Look at the bubbles. Stir, stir, stir.
Wait with sweet anticipation for that moment of tension toward the end, when it appears as if the mercury might be ready to rise past that little line. Wait for it! Getting closer! Not quite yet, but maybe--yes, there it goes! Grab the pan off the heat and get ready to burst into action.
The moment of transcendence is over--but while it lasted, ahhhhh, how sweet.
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