Burnt sugar...

Sign of the times

Scene of the crime

In my 50-odd years of baking I have often had to find a way to soften a brick-hard bag of brown sugar.
Despite my efforts to keep brown sugar soft — I've put in a ceramic bear that is supposed to keep the moisture in, I've double-bagged it, I've kept it in the fridge, I've kept it in a pantry, I've kept it in the dark downstairs, I've kept it tightly taped shut in plastic, I've even massaged it to bring the softness back — it still goes hard once the bag has been opened.
So I sometimes warm it in the microwave.
In the past five decades I've never had a problem.
Usually it takes only a few seconds and, voila!, the sugar is ready to use.
I can spoon it out and make my chocolate chip cookies.
I was warming some a week ago and admittedly, I was distracted by all the "good" news on the TV, the computer and in the newspapers.
It didn't take the first time through.
So I ran it again, 30 seconds, I think.
This time, though, I reached in to fetch the bag and my fingers sank into molten brown sugar.
Yikes!
Oww!!!
It hurt immediately.
And it hurt a lot!
I peeled the pieces of melted plastic bag from my fingers and plunged them into a stream of cold water from the tap.
Ahhh! Better.
For the next few hours I kept my hand in an ice bucket as much as possible. It kept me from crying.
I basically heated ice with my two injured fingers. 
The blisters bubbled up.
The burns were on two of my essential fingers on my right hand.
It made everything harder, cooking, cleaning, driving the car, holding hands.
It's now been long enough that the blisters are reduced to beautiful, colorful, crispy scabs.
But hope is coming back and in light of all the misery, fear and chaos in the world right now, a couple of burnt fingers don't really matter.
They will heal.
Life will return to normal for me.

It actually puts things into some perspective.