I made caramels last night. It was easier than I thought it would be. In fact, it was as easy as the following description of making caramels: combine butter, cream, sugar, and corn syrup; cook until sugar is caramelized. Admittedly, the caramelization part should have been scary, but I was far too obsessed with watching the bubbling mixture turn to from baby-food blah to a gorgeous brown to feel fear. I was also busy bugging K. as I waited for the temperature to climb from 230 degrees to 245. Multi-tasking. This morning both K. and I rose early to cut and wrap two pounds of caramels. They were a success in my neck of the woods as both the student who picked the hazelnuts out of my chocolate hazelnut sablés and the student who never touches anything I bring to class each ate one.

In other news, I can't decide how I feel about Québec being the butt of an entire Triumph sketch on Conan O'Brien. I mean, it made the front page of the Toronto Sun (an infinitely reputable paper here), CHUM issued an apology, the sketch was the lead story on cbc.ca for a while, and some federal MPs issued statements demanding that the provincial government ask for the return of the million dollars it paid NBC to bring the show to Toronto. This means that I should care, but I don't. There seems to be a lot of other, more important things to complain about and demand action against in this world than Conan O'Brien. I think this might be symptomatic of why Canada will never be a world power, it spends too much time navel gazing and it takes itself too seriously (so does the USA, but the US has more than enough firepower to get away with it). If Canadians really want to get all huffy about something Conan-O'Brien related, they should be all pissy about the fact that Andy Richter is still not back on the show. -Zh.