Cotton Candy

I have a sugar problem.   Although this post isn't about that.  I'm addressing my diet because it needs a lot less sugar in it.   Tonight was all about sugar though.  

We had a bit of a dilemma on what to get my daughter for Christmas for a while.   She wanted things like a wheelchair and other unrealistic things that were either too large, unattainable, or unrealistic.   Then one night she said she wanted a cotton candy machine.  

Now, this was a present I could get behind.   It was similar to the trampoline in that it was something I had always wanted as a child.   These days, things seem far more readily available than they were when I was younger.   Mass production and a general increase in commercialism maybe.   Or maybe I'm just an adult and I can buy things today that I couldn't afford with my allowance when I was younger.   

I don't think my parents would have let a cotton candy machine anywhere near our house when I was a child.  I was, "hyperactive" a label I don't contest to this day.   Oh, to be hyperactive again.  These days I just try to be active.   My daughter was onto something with the cotton candy machine though.   They wouldn't be that expensive and I'd get to have cotton candy.   Win all the way around. 

I looked into them and there were some little ones made for children.   I didn't want one of those.   The real ones weren't that much more.   It was not dissimilar to when we looked into getting a popcorn machine.   I thought it would be really expensive, but it was fairly reasonable and for the amount of popcorn we've made in it over the years, it was a downright bargain. 

So I got a real cotton candy machine and tonight in the garage we tried it out.   It wasn't as terribly messy as I thought it was going to be but it was exactly the amount of fun I thought it would be.   My daughter and I took turns making little bits at a time to figure out how the machine works.   She found out that the dog liked cotton candy and then proceeded to give her too much.   Fortunately, a lot of cotton candy is a lot less sugar than other sweets. 

I learned some lessons about temperature setting (or don't turn the one knob up too far or you'll fling sugar out instead of making cotton candy).  I got it stuck, with melted sugar in a mass on the inside.   What I found out though was that dealing with clogs and cleaning up was far easier than I'd ever imagined.   I mean so much easier than I had prepared for. 

You turn down the temperature some and then pour little bits of water into the sugar reservoir.   Water and steam, along with the now-dissolved sugar flings out onto the side of the basin.   You do this several times and the reservoir is clean.   Then you wipe around the basin to collect the sugar and flung water and you're done.   I marveled at how easy that part of the process was.  

Tomorrow, we're going to practice our cotton candy collecting skills.  I'm going to see if I can get the process down so I can avoid the mistakes I made today.    

My daughter likes the pink vanilla, my son likes the blue raspberry, I like the grape and the dog likes all three flavors of cotton candy.

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Hostage Negotiation:  A conversation between my children tonight:  My daughter yelled that she had his bear blanket hostage.   My son yells back from the computer, "the only thing that matters in life is Pigstep!" Then my son explained to us how you could only use five seconds of the Pigstep song in a YouTube video without copyright infringement.   My daughter persisted with the blanket hostage situation until my husband intervened and asked my son if he was listening about the blanket.   My son said, "yeah, could you do something like force her to give it back to me?" all the while not looking away from the Minecraft game he was playing.  My daughter lost interest in harassing her brother and went over to see what her father was doing to rebuild the computer he had out on the table.