Maybe you are snowed in with a little extra cream from holiday baking. Or you want to master the art of candy making. Perhaps you want to impress someone with the most delightful sweet bite at the end of a meal. Maybe you have some fantastic honey to highlight. I adapted this recipe because I had excess expiring Snowville cream I couldn't let go to waste. Caramels sounded good but I could find precious few recipes without corn syrup. I'm not rabidly against corn syrup but I don't choose to keep it around the house. I also wanted to practice candy-making. I am inconsistent because I typically become distracted with another chore or are trying to manage too many things in the kitchen at one time.

I started by making butter by hand to use up more of the cream. I waited patiently while sugar and butter roiled on the stove until the exact right temperature. I even remembered to let the hot sugar cool before tasting - no burnt tongue!

The results were worth the effort. These caramels are soft and chewy but not pull-your-fillings-out sticky. They smell floral from the honey and surround the taste buds with richness. Whatever your reason, you will not be sorry after you spend an evening cooking caramels.

Soft Caramels adapted from Chez Pim Makes: 40-50 1 1/2 inch squares Time: 30-50 minutes

1 1/2 cups granulated cane sugar 1/2 cup honey 1 cup heavy cream 1/2 cup sweet cream butter (make by shaking approximately 2 cups room-temperature cream in a quart jar and skimming butter from buttermilk or use unsalted butter) 1 generous pinch salt 1/4 cup finely chopped chocolate (optional) parchment paper

1. Mix sugar and honey in a heavy-bottomed pot. Heat over medium until the mixture is melting, swirling the pan to stir without using a utensil. Continue to cook until the sugars have caramelized to a deep brown.

2. Meanwhile, in another heavy-bottomed pot, slowly heat cream to a simmer.

3. Whisk butter in small pieces into the sugar and honey. When it is totally incorporated, whisk in the cream and salt as well.

4. Cook over medium heat until the mixture measures 255F with a candy thermometer. Do not stir. This may take up to 15 minutes of boiling - be patient and keep cool water nearby in case you accidentally touch a splatter.

5. Meanwhile, line a cookie sheet or baking dish with parchment paper.

6. When the candy reaches 255F, pour onto the parchment-lined pan. If using chocolate, sprinkle over the top after 10 minutes of cooling.

7. Allow the caramel to cool completely. Cut with a serrated steak knife and wrap in parchment squares or layer between parchment paper in a covered container. Consume within 7 days for best texture.

The season of Excessive Consumption is upon us, preceded by the month of Meaningful Worries and followed up with the weeks of Staggering Stuff. Usually my anxiety about winter holidays holds off until mid November but this year, Halloween candy is haunting me.

Off the bat (Halloween pun?), let me be clear that I believe a day or two of sugary indulgence is not the end of the world for my girl Lil. We serve healthy food on a regular basis and sweets really are 'sometimes foods' in our home.

Besides, we temper the candy feasting with creative and educational pursuits like costume design and creation, making decorations, picking and carving pumpkins, and roasting seeds. There's a lot more to Halloween than one night of trick-or-treating.

Meaningful Worries

However, I am increasingly concerned not only with the locality and quality of ingredients but the treatment of labor used to plant, harvest and process foodstuffs. Sugar and chocolate, components of many candies, are conventionally made with notorious disregard for farm workers.

I choose to purchase fair trade labeled coffee, baking chocolate, sugar, and spices for our home kitchen. Though no food label is perfect, the fair trade standards give me some security that my family is not benefiting from the destruction of another.

If I were to hand out a fair trade chocolate bar (just one mini size piece) to the hundreds of beggars who visit our neighborhood, I could easily spend over $100. Lil is tired of the organic lollipops we usually give away, wanting something more mainstream. She has rejected my non-candy suggestions. Our compromise this year may be food-dye laden, but at least made in North America, Smarties.

Staggering Stuff

Moving on to the next ghoul: the candy haul Lil brings home. In previous years, the excitement of costumes and decorations at a few houses was enough to thrill her. I can see in her glistening-like-a-candy-wrapper eyes that this year, she expects to fill her basket.

Like I said before, I'm not afraid of an evening's sugar buzz. Between her distaste for anything containing nuts or having too chewy or sticky a texture, she dismisses much of her beggar's night haul without prompting.

But what do we do with the rejected haul? Alex and I certainly don't want to consume all the additives in common candies. Plus, when I eat sweets, I feel a sugar high and dip faster than a bat darts through our alley.

We could pass the excess candy off to Alex's office, but he frequently complains about the high level of obesity in his workplace. Donating to a food pantry makes me feel equally guilty. No one should eat this stuff.

Do we throw it away? That seems like a senseless waste of all the resources necessary to grow, process, and package the junk.

I have no solutions to the creepy side of Halloween candy. Are you haunted too? To show that I'm not a complete treatophobe, take a listen to one of my favorite songs of late, Sweet Tooth performed by David Rawlings and Gillian Welch.