Heat and stir sugar, syrup and water in a heavy 3-quart saucepan until the sugar dissolves. Add salt. Cook over medium heat to soft ball stage (234 degrees). Add peanuts at 250 degrees. Cook to hard crack stage (290 degrees), stirring often. Remove from heat.
Quickly, stir in butter and soda. Beat to a froth for a few seconds. Pour at once onto 2 well-buttered 15-1/2x10-1/2x1-inch pans, spreading with spatula. If desired, cool slightly and pull with forks to stretch thin. Break up when cold.

I’m not fond of the taste of it, and cooking it is a beast. The temperatures have to be dangerously hot for the sugar and corn syrup to properly harden.

If desired- cool slightly.
Break up when cold so they say.

It’s what old people eat. Brittle people. Mostly grandfathers with if-y teeth drool and gnaw at it. Kids from other neighborhoods go door-to-door selling it at a 300 percent mark-up out of huge Tupperware containers, and those cheap lonesome farts reach for it every time. When my father reached for it a few months ago, I saw his mortality flash before my eyes. Hair rushed from his ears and nose and he started shamelessly flirting with teen-age restaurant hostesses with dork-ass jokes. It’s only a matter of time before the mothball cloud starts following us all.

A typical timeline as told through purchased milestones:

star wars trilogy
Pocketknife
truck and/or sportscar
lazy-boy recliner
peanut brittle
casket