#peppermint — Public Fediverse posts

My first mistake was having fond memories of childhood. Don’t misunderstand – with only a few exceptions, I had a most excellent childhood, especially as viewed by me during the experience – but this should not in any way imply wisdom gained. In fact, happy reminiscence is for me a dangerous thing. My second mistake was noting the receipt of huge candy cane sticks, each a quarter pound, and thinking, “I could do something with these.”

Something in the foul depths of my brain emitted the phrase: Peppermint sugar.

That’s the stuff that happens when you buy, pre-2k, thirty pounds of peppermint sticks at twelve cents a pound, and run it through a grinder so it can be more conveniently stored in mason jars. Now, it’s a heavy canning year, so I’ve got rather a lot of mason jars. What I don’t have is the monstrous grinder of my childhood. An eighteen inch long steel arm attached to some industrial crush-grinder with a steel shield so that whatever you’ve dropped in the hopper doesn’t explode in your face when it explodes.

It’s gonna explode. Uneven spot pressure does that, even to peppermints.

The monster grinder of my childhood can be taken two ways. One, the mechanical contrivance, and two, the grinder-of-childhood that was my upbringing. My folks, rightly, decided that any information I wished to have, I should be able to obtain. Experiments were encouraged. I studied war crimes and biology when most kids were doing arithmetic, though I did rote cram the maths as well, until they got interesting enough to do nifty later.

There’s a reason I have to think,”Is that still legal?” Before undertaking almost anything nostalgia driven. Happily, peppermint sugar is perfectly legal, and a decent way to pack away a truly disturbing amount of peppermint. Except, over the years, the extended family has misplaced many of the excellent mechanical contrivances (including myself for a bit there) and there’s no hand grinder.

Enter the Vitamix. The local beast, a 3600, is a metal cavern Stephen King might look at and go, “Yeah, someone dies from that, decoratively.” You do not reach into the heavy equipment. You Do Not reach into the heavy equipment. Even if that kid’s starting fires, maybe, and the garbage disposal is speaking of snakes again.

It’s 0200 as I shrug and pop in a pound of the sort of peppermint sticks you might defend the home with. Lid on, second cover – because the initial lid is a tube for adding stuff – in place. Flip the toggle. Down, not up, because it stays on when down.

There is a sound.

This thing does eggshells to powder. This thing does grain to powder. This thing does not even consider the possibility of failure. Hearing protection is required, in the same way hitting the range on anger management day means mistakes equal data transfer loss. It varches the candy to chunks in under a second. I think, “Granulated, or powder?” And decide on powder.

Mistake number three is not parsing that it’s all kinds of humid, and after I peeled the sticks, they sat out for a few hours. Powder I get. Just humid enough to be the tiniest bit sticky. Which means the sticks go from stick to chunks to grains to powder to heat-via-force lightly caramelized doom in under thirty seconds.

It’s not a lot of caramelization, but it’s enough to moisture and energy transfer to warm the entire container body of the Vitamix up enough to notice radiant heat. And it smells good in that, “Oh crap, this is gonna be hell to clean,” Way you learn from baking things wrong when the oven thermostat goes ape. Thankfully, most of the powder is still powder.

Big orange oil funnel time. For oil, except I use it to feed spices and lentils and whatnot into mason jars. And powders, such as sugar, which I proceed to do. A quart of peppermint sugar. Success. A not insignificant amount of polymerized joy remains behind. As in, “That’s gonna be yum,” But also, “That’s gonna be hell to clean.”

Enter mistake number four. This one’s only half a mistake, I tell myself. It’ll be fine. I have the sneezes from working at chipping branches for a couple hours in the evening, and I seem to remember someone mentioning peppermint coffee as a thing that helped. As well, I seem to remember as a youth adding sugar and flavor to coffee and enjoying it. Conveniently, I have both a cup to use as a ladle, and the two gallon stock pot I keep my boiled coffee in right there.

Two pints of coffee into the peppermint sugar encrusted Vitamix. Lid on. Second lid on. Bwarm. Even using coffee as the agitated agent, the Vitamix is self cleaning. The smell is delightful, a call-back to rose-tinted sugar crashes of yore. Which is why there’s a TMNT mug of peppermint coffee next to me that I’m ever-so-carefully sipping my way through. It is a delight, a grievous bodily assault. The sneezes, thankfully, are mostly pepperminted away.

I have reached Edgar Allan Poe’s little slices of death stage of not sleeping, and this is OK.