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Make your own fancy-schmancy sea salt caramels

For years I assumed that the word caramel came from the name of the first celebrity chef, Marie-Antoine Careme, A.K.A the King of Chefs and the Chef of Kings. 

But no, it's just a corruption of the medieval Latin for sugar cane, cannamellis. Though I love them dearly I've never attempted to make my own caramels. But I know someone who has ...

My food for Thought accomplice Nancy Leson made some great caramels and she tells how she did it right here.

In her Times article Nance mentions her favorite childhood candy, Goldenberg's Peanut Chews.  Mine was Bonomo's Turkish Taffy("Crack it up!")  From what I know now, it wasn't really taffy or even Turkish.  It was a flat, brittle bar you could  shatter into savory fragments by smacking against the seat arm at New Rochelle's RKO Proctor movie palace during those double feature monster-movie-20 cartoon-Captain Marvel installment- Saturday Morning Madness kid-o-ganzas.  

But enough about me.  What was your favorite kiddie konfection?

"Anyone who uses the phrase 'Easy as taking candy from a baby' has never tried to take candy from a baby."

– Multiply attributed

Dick Stein joined KNKX in January 1992. He retired in 2020 after three decades on air. During his storied radio career, he hosted the morning jazz show, co-hosted and produced "Food for Thought" with Nancy Leson and wrote and directed the Jimmy Jazzoid live radio musical comedies and 100 episodes of Jazz Kitchen.