Sitting on the City and Borough of Juneau Assembly takes quite the time commitment. So does making 240 pounds of peanut brittle. Debbie White does both.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t get a lot of sleep a lot this time of year,\u201d she said Monday morning, laughing as she used the dull end of a kitchen knife to fracture a sheet of freshly hardened peanut brittle into bite-sized shards. One batch down, nearly 60 to go. \u201cI don\u2019t do anything halfway. I\u2019ve always been kinda hardcore like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
For more than 15 years, White has spent each December turning 120 pounds of peanuts and 200 pounds of sugar, along with several other ingredients, into more than half a million calories worth of peanut brittle. White began her annual mass production of peanut brittle in 1999 when she became a real estate agent and realized she needed a \u201cclosing gift\u201d for her clients. \u201cI became known as the peanut brittle realtor,\u201d she said jokingly. \u201cIt has kind of become my trademark.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since then, White\u2019s fairly exclusive list of peanut-brittle recipients has grown substantially. It now includes about 150 real estate clients (some of whom have been receiving the candy since the late \u201890s), a handful of charities, political organizations and even a few governors. <\/p>\n
Shortly after former Gov. Sean Parnell took office in 2009, White ran into him at the airport. As she tells it, she had some of her peanut brittle with her at the time and some to him. He liked it so much that she began delivering it to him each year thereafter. \u201cHe has quite the sweet tooth,\u201d White said. She plans to continue the gubernatorial goober giving tradition this year and has already added Gov. Bill Walker\u2019s name to her list.<\/p>\n
Long before she was the governor\u2019s unofficial confectioner \u2014 long before she was the \u201cpeanut brittle realtor\u201d even \u2014 she was a daddy\u2019s girl, which is what started it all. Before White and her family moved to Juneau from Spokane when she was a child, her dad would frequent a specialty candy store where he got the best peanut brittle, second only to his grandmother\u2019s perhaps, White said. \u201cMy daddy loved his peanut brittle.\u201d<\/p>\n
Every so often once they were in Juneau, White\u2019s father would see his favorite candy in different stores. \u201cHe would bring it home, take one bite and throw it away,\u201d White recalled. So when she was 12, she decided that she was going to make a peanut brittle that passed his rigorous taste test. She told her dad she was going to the library to do schoolwork, but she headed to the cookbook section. <\/p>\n
After researching several recipes, she came up with one of her own \u2014 a risky move considering she hadn\u2019t yet tried any of them. It had to be simple enough to memorize because she feared that if she wrote it down her dad might see, and the surprise would be ruined. She used money from her paper route to buy the necessary ingredients (she was cooking on a far smaller scale then) and seized the first chance she got to make the brittle while her father wasn\u2019t home. <\/p>\n
\u201cLooking back, it\u2019s a wonder I didn\u2019t burn the house down,\u201d White said. \u201cIt can be a fairly dangerous process. I\u2019ve ended up in the emergency room making peanut brittle before.\u201d<\/p>\n
Luckily, this wasn\u2019t the case that first time. The peanut brittle came out well, so well in fact that it passed her father\u2019s taste test, and she still uses the same recipe today. \u201cHe took one bite and he was over the moon,\u201d White said. \u201cHe would tell everybody at work the story about how his little girl made him peanut brittle, I heard later. And if he really liked them, he\u2019d even let them try a little piece.\u201d <\/p>\n
From then on, she has made peanut brittle every December, with the exception of a few. Twenty-one years ago today, her dad passed away. She stopped making peanut brittle until she got into real estate five years later. She has since found cooking as a form of coping though. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis kinda pulls me through our dark period,\u201d she said, taking a short break in between batches Monday. \u201cIt helps me get through the hard times. My daddy and I were really close. I was 100 percent a daddy\u2019s girl.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is obvious that White carries the memory of her father into the kitchen with her when it is time to make peanut brittle. She smiles as she shares stories about him while she works. Her 25-year-old son Brian Keeney, a commercial fisher on a break between seasons, chimes in occasionally as he helps stir the boiling concoction, tasting a piece from the most recent batch. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just here for quality control,\u201d he joked. But it\u2019s clear he\u2019s part of something bigger. He\u2019s a part of a grandfather\u2019s legacy, a daughter\u2019s love and a family holiday tradition.<\/p>\n
____________________<\/p>\n
What goes in:<\/p>\n
120 pounds of peanuts<\/p>\n
100 pounds of brown sugar<\/p>\n
100 pounds of white sugar<\/p>\n
20 pounds of butter<\/p>\n
8 gallons of corn syrup<\/p>\n
About 100 hours of work<\/p>\n
\nWhat comes out:<\/p>\n
60 batches (each filling a 18\u201d x 26\u201d pan) <\/p>\n
240 pounds of peanut brittle<\/p>\n
About 580,000 calories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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