Tip of the Week: Candy Corn Time!

I am trying to get this blog post together tonight and I have so many ideas floating around in my noggin that my head actually hurts! I wanted to show you a picture of something I LOVE doing and I was going to go and buy all the articles it took to do it, but doing so would have entailed going to Wal Mart on Friday at 4:30 P.M. I love ya'll but I just could not stomach it. So I have done some other pictures and will describe some of these ideas for "anytime" decorating.

The other night one of my FaceBook peeps, old Grenada, Mississippi friend, Melinda made a very innocent status report. She mentioned something about buying and eating her first of the season bag of candy corn. I thought about it for hours and posted that, in spite of my diet, I might be forced to go buy a bag, too. Within thirty minutes or so I had over 23 comments and I have no idea how many "likes" concerning said purchase of said candy! The next day, I reported that I had lost 5 pounds and had "dodged a bullet" by NOT getting the candy corn after all. Again a rash of comments and likes. I had NO idea that there were as many of us who shared this guilty pleasure. I can eat a bag of candy corn on the way home from the store...(nobody is ever the wiser.)

Adding salted dry roasted peanuts to the mix makes the best "faux" PayDay candy bar you have ever eaten. Candy pumpkins, chocolate cats (the only kind of cats I will touch) and yellow moons are also "da bomb". Last year, Wal Mart had half an aisle devoted to all kinds of gourmet candy corn...candy apple, caramel apple...on and on...I tried them all. I was in CC heaven.

Someone even gave me a candle in the shape of a big piece of candy corn...I couldn't bear to burn it. So, in honor of my pledge to do something about my ever expanding girth, I committed to eating 20 pieces at a time and carefully taping the bag closed and storing it in the garage in the freezer. That means about a 25 foot trek outside, through the carport and over the stone path to the garage. Sounds like a prequel to the song "Over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house we go.." but mine would be "Out through the carport and over the stone path to Grandmother's freezer I go.." That would certainly be a deterrent to eating too much. Also is frozen candy corn as good as thawed? Hmmm. Will report on that in a later post.

I want you to imagine the possibilities of decorating with candy corn. (This is what I was going to go to Wal Mart to purchase but felt it was much too dangerous to be left in the house alone with several bags tonight.) This is a really cute idea. Take a glass hurricane or candle holder. It needs a bottom in it, not one of those open ended hurricane globes. I use my Madeline Hurricanes by Southern Living At Home. Pour in several inches of whole coffee beans (hazelnut), then carefully layer in some dried green peas, another several inch layer of dried black eyed peas, a layer of dried kidney beans, a layer of black beans, then insert a candle in a glass jar (jar must fit inside hurricane), and fill the remainder of the space up to about 2 inches from the top of the candle jar with candy corn. Make sure each layer is smooth before going to the next. (See above...compliments of Southern Lady magazine.) I use a candle in a jar for safety sake. Light and enjoy the sight!

I surround a hazelnut candle from Wal Mart with whole hazelnut coffee beans year round. When the beans begin to lose their fragrance (after a couple of months), I microwave them for about a minute and it "scents" them right up. Light up that glass jarred candle and watch the look on everybody's face when they walk in the door...what's for supper? What's that good smell? What are you making? I do this at our high school library all the time and the kids (especially the boys) LOVE it. It's a very welcoming scent. I once tried vanilla beans and vanilla candle but didn't like the scent as well.

The garland above is cute, too, but labor intensive. And the hurricanes with fruit (Martha Stewart style) could really be jazzed up with candy corn! If you make Haystack candy, just before the butterscotch morsels harden, tuck in a candy pumpkin. Give jars of the peanut/candy corn mix to your friends...spread the love!! You can only do this once a year, make hay while the sun shines!