
{"id":14303,"date":"2010-12-02T10:50:08","date_gmt":"2010-12-02T15:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=14303"},"modified":"2010-12-02T10:51:53","modified_gmt":"2010-12-02T15:51:53","slug":"friday-holiday-traditions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2010\/12\/02\/friday-holiday-traditions\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday holiday traditions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>RECENTLY . . . <\/p>\n<p>By Valarie Schwartz<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Bill Friday started a Christmas tradition in 1986 after retiring from 30 years as president of the UNC system. A decade or so later, local publications started writing about his December avocation \u00e2\u20ac\u201c making peanut brittle.<br \/>\nThus begins an annual story about an annual gift that Bill Friday provides our community.<br \/>\nAs has long been the Friday tradition, holiday gift-making is a family affair \u00e2\u20ac\u201c everyone present has a job.<br \/>\nAll ingredients and materials are on hand before he begins, laid out on appropriate sides of the range. The three-basin sink stands ready with one basin filled with warm soapy water and the tap dripping water at the correct temperature; the marble slab has been well-buttered, and two 12-inch cast iron skillets \u00e2\u20ac\u201c key instruments \u00e2\u20ac\u201c are on the stove.<br \/>\nThis brittle is really about the peanuts. They must be fresh, raw \u00e2\u20ac\u201c not blanched or roasted \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and shelled with husks still on. The Fridays prefer those from the A&#038;B Milling Company of Enfield, N.C., which come in a cloth bag. They use two-and-a-half cups in each batch.<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Unlike most, theirs is more peanuts than brittle,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d wrote Jean Anderson of Chapel Hill in her 2007 A Love Affair with Southern Cooking, in which she included the recipe, courtesy of Ida Friday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s South Carolina family.<br \/>\nLaVerne Candelori, who works with the family, has been part of the production line since 1997. Others required to finish the job know their responsibilities: Daughter Mary Leadbetter, in town from Singapore, monitors the brittle and when it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ready, wipes off the butter, cracks it into pieces and places it in plastic bags;  daughter Fran Mullen wraps and decorates the packages; wife, Ida, reads The Carrboro Citizen when not needed as taster.<br \/>\nWhen Bill was president, Ida and their three daughters (their youngest, Betsy, who adored the holiday season, died in 2002) made two other family recipes every year: fruitcake and pulled mints (taffy). The girls grew up in the president\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mansion, where the holidays were filled with baking and candy-making \u00e2\u20ac\u201c when they weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t helping decorate the house, as Mary and Fran were this day when not needed in the kitchen.<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I always assumed that giving a homemade gift at Christmas time was a Southern tradition,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Mary said.<br \/>\nNow it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Bill\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time to run the homemade gift-giving, which includes providing batches to local nonprofits with requests for an auction item.<br \/>\nLaVerne starts each batch by cooking the sugar, corn syrup and water until the sugar dissolves, then adding the peanuts just before moving the skillet over to Bill, who completes the cooking process while LaVerne prepares to start the next batch.<br \/>\nTwo hours from start to finish, Bill placed the skillet from the final batch into the suds and began wiping down the stove top. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153If it hardens on the stove it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a real mess,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Friday says as he erases every dribble.<br \/>\nOnly those who have attempted to make peanut brittle know the art form required to accomplish it successfully every time. Bill waits for the colors of each stage and prompts neophytes to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153use your eyes. Can you see how the peanuts have softened? Watch that color,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he says as the peanuts change from white to golden under his constant stirring. Then, as he adds the baking soda at the end and it bubbles up blonde and frothy, he knows it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ready to be poured onto the marble.<br \/>\nHe also knows his limit: five batches a day, which he plans to repeat 20 more times this year.<br \/>\nTwo of the batches made on the day after Thanksgiving will be available at the Orange County Rape Crisis Center Annual Auction on Sunday beginning at 5 p.m. at the Chapel Hill Sheraton, hosted by Patti Thorp with Chancellor Holden Thorp on the keyboards with the jazz and blues band Equinox. See OCRCC.org for tickets.<br \/>\n<em>Contact Valarie Schwartz at 923-3746 or valariekays@mac.com <\/em><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_14305\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-14305\" style=\"width: 400px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/2010\/12\/02\/friday-holiday-traditions\/fridaybrittle\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-14305\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/Fridaybrittle.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\" class=\"size-full wp-image-14305\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/Fridaybrittle.jpg 400w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/Fridaybrittle-113x84.jpg 113w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/Fridaybrittle-150x113.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/Fridaybrittle-360x270.jpg 360w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/Fridaybrittle-106x80.jpg 106w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-14305\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">PHOTO BY VALARIE SCHWARTZ. Bill Friday scrapes out the last bit of his fifth batch of peanut brittle of the day. He'll make it all month to gift loved ones and local nonprofits.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bill Friday started a Christmas tradition in 1986 after retiring from 30 years as president of the UNC system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":14305,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,9,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","category-features","category-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14303"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14313,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14303\/revisions\/14313"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}