Day 8.2018

Craft Fairs.

Today was a busy day for us here at the old Kinkade house.  It was the final craft fair of Kat’s candy season.  In case you are new, my darling makes fudge and other candies from early fall until somewhere between valentines and easter.  But this time of year, between Halloween and the end of the year is her busiest time.  When the boys were younger they called it fudge  season, since Kathleen’s fudge is the corner stone of her candy business. 

I can’t recall how many times I have told the story that when Kat and I were newlyweds her father Nolen gave her the recipe for chocolate, butterscotch, and peanut butter fudge. Allegedly it is the secret recipe of some famous candy company.  However, there secret recipe is available online and it does not resemble the one Kat uses, so there is that. So from that simple recipe for the three original flavors, Kat has developed 27 different varieties.  She has also added caramels, coconut bonbons, caramel turtles, chocolate truffles and the Oklahoma favorite aunt bills brown candy. 

Which leads us to today.  Kathleen sells these candies at seasonal craft fairs.  This year she did 4 craft fairs.  Every other weekend since mid-October, she is out at these events selling candy and making friends.  Which means the week before the fair she is spending late nights at her parents kitchen making the candy, with Matthew’s help.  Paul and I alternate wrapping caramels and affixing labels.  Then the day of the event there is the early morning loading of everything into the SUV, followed by the set up.  We have a backdrop frame built from PVC pipe that we assemble and hang curtains from, then a banner that proclaims Mama Kat’s.  Three tables with multiple layers of tablecloths to cover from tabletop to floor.  Seven cake stands and small tiered shelf, display the packaged candy, and a giant glass barrel is filled to the brim with wrapped salted naked vanilla bourbon caramels, (naked salted vanilla bourbon caramels? Vanilla bourbon naked salted caramels?)

There is a sample station where Kat, and the boys take turns offering free samples to everyone that walks by.  There is a payment station where I collect the money and sack the purchases in festive seasonally appropriate gift bags emblazoned with a sticker that subtlety screams black aprons, Matthew wears his black and white pinstriped apron from the odyssey culinary program he was involved with this summer, or alternates with his chef jacket from the same event.   And Kathleen, proud graduate of Johnson and Wales University’s Baking and Pastry program sports a ruffled polka dotted apron that looks like it belongs on the I Love Lucy show. It is all about the marketing.  We’ve gotta brand that image!

Then after all the set up, we have 6-8 hours of craft fair shoppers.  If you have never attended a craft fair you are missing out.  So many shoppers; all with their messy buns, infinity scarves, and knee high boots.  They like to shop in pairs, one older and one younger.  When offered a free sample, one of them always claims she is watching her diet, is diabetic, or claims that she doesn’t like candy.  The other one will always sample 2-3 flavors.  50% will say they will come back later, (and most of them do).  Maybe ¼ of them will say they make fudge themselves, or candy themselves, or used to, or could if they wanted to. And then about 8% fall into the What the Fudge?!?!? Category.  These are the shoppers whose response to Kathleen is so off the wall it is hard to classify it.

Take today’s entry in the What the Fudge category, was a young woman who Kat had given a free sample of the aforementioned multi-named caramels.  The woman tasted the caramel, looked at Kathleen and said, “What was that Kick? Did you feel that?” Kat just looked at her and said it was a sample of caramel. The woman walked off.  Matthew was stunned, “what does that even mean?”  I asked if he had noticed that she had a baby bump.  I posited that in the same way when the pregnant Mary went to visit her cousin Elizabeth and Elizabeth’s baby (who turned out to be John the Baptist) leapt in the womb, perhaps this shopper’s baby was jumping for joy at the taste of the caramels.  I mean, it could happen right?  Right?