Good Friends Eat Burnt Caramel

 It’s true. You know you have good friends when they don’t mind that you burned the caramel.

In the spirit of fall festivities, Abby Sapadin and I decided to make caramel apples after the community meeting on November 21st. We bought apples and cider at the Farmer’s Market (buy local!), and caramel from Kroger’s.I didn’t plan this particularly well, because I volunteered to facilitate the meeting as well, so I couldn’t stir the caramel. Aaannnd I forgot to add the water to the caramel. Anyways, I got a volunteer to watch it during the meeting, but 20 minutes later…

“It smells like burning.”


“It smells like SOMETHING, that’s for sure.”


“It smells good!”


“Is anyone stirring the caramel??”


“Ummm…”

This was followed by a rush towards the kitchen, to discover that the caramel was indeed burning. I frantically grabbed the open bag of caramel to figure out what went wrong, which is when I figured out I forgot to add the water. Great. Now this would be a complete failure. “Does anyone have a microwavable bowel??” I called out. None of the Elliot guys do. (LAME.) But soon there were people crowding into the kitchenette, peering over my shoulder.

“Oh, that doesn’t look bad!”


“Can I just have an apple? These apples are delicious!”


“Just take the caramel off the top, it’ll be fine.”

And then everyone was asking for apples, sticking them with broken chopsticks, and swirling them in the half burnt caramel. It turned out that it didn’t taste so bad after all. The burnt stuff kept it from being too sweet, they said. :)

We hung out in Elliot for half an hour or so, just chatting, eating caramel apples, and drinking delicious cider.

This is why I love Scholar-Leader, I thought. We do fun things, we love hanging out together, and we eat the caramel even when it is burnt. We’re friends.
-Sarah Rings