Awww, fudge!

Christmas, for me anyway, is an interesting mixture of nostalgia, melancholy, and stress. It wasn’t always like that. For quite a few years Christmas was nothing but family gatherings, great food, and an absolute obscene amount of gifts. What the wise men brought the Christ child paled in comparison. We never received gold, frankincense, or myrrh (other than last weeks Wordle answer, that eluded Meg, I’m not sure what what that actually is). Our wise “men” were mom and dad and they brought Lincoln logs, train sets, and Tinker toys. Each year, despite evidence to the contrary, all three of us boys made it on the nice list. Which could only mean we were either graded on a curve or Santa wasn’t actually omnipresent. We suspected Santa only checked in on us between Thanksgiving and Christmas. So we tended to tighten up during that month.

The stress didn’t come until I had kids of my own. Turns out, there’s an interest rate on all those toys and many of them needed assembly.

After the stress came the melancholy. Mainly from remembering when the girls were little and innocent, without boyfriends or oppositional streaks.

Later, the melancholy came from remembering those who are no longer with us. And from remembering that I am no longer the same person I was. This week, as in years past, I’ll find some time to sit alone and watch our home movies. I won’t be in a turban in the attic (if you don’t get the reference, we probably wouldn’t be friends anyway), but I’ll shed some tears anyway.

However, there have been a couple of constants through the years. The movies and the food have been pretty dependable.

Required movies include Christmas Vacation, Planes Trains and Automobiles, Frosty, Charlie Brown Christmas, and A Christmas Story.

Required food includes Cheese balls, fudge, and Critchfield steaks on the grill. Sausage balls and shrimp cocktails are less essential but still welcomed. And of course, cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning. I would absolutely change religions if cinnamon rolls somehow became a sin.

Let’s talk about fudge for a minute. Mom passed a year ago, and with her passing, so did one of our constants. For decades one thing was certain: If it was Christmas week mom was making peanut butter fudge. Mom loved a lot of things: She loved her husband and her boys. She loved cigarettes and Little Debbie. She loved music and she loved to laugh. And she loved making fudge. I was her sous chef on many of those years. She would approach the cooking of the fudge with absolute joy. She knew, as we knew, that shortly after we did the work our mouths were going to explode in ecstasy. It was better than sex. And yes, I’ve had both, and I stand by that statement.

She and I would get everything out and ready, making sure all the parts were covered. It takes two people to make fudge, at least the way we did it. I’ll go ahead and give you the recipe:

Get a heavy bottom pot and a wooden spoon and a metal deep dish 9x13 tray. Gather your ingredients: sugar, butter, carnation milk, peanut butter, marshmallow cream, and vanilla extract.

In the pot put four cups of sugar. Put in 1 3/4 sticks of butter. Then, smile a wry smile and toss the other 1/4 stick of butter in. Don’t be a barbarian and put all the butter in at the same time.

Turn your stove on medium. Pour in a can of carnation milk and start stirring. Stir constantly until it reaches a rolling boil. Then continue to stir (being sure to scrape the bottom and sides as you do) vigorously for 9 minutes and 15 seconds.

Turn the burner off and move the pot to a cool spot on the stove. Stir in one small container of marshmallow cream. Then stir in 3/4 jar of peanut butter. Continue to stir until smooth. Don’t be slow about this. Work up a little sweat.

Then pour the contents, using a spatula, into your pan, smoothing out as you go.

DO NOT TOUCH IT FOR AN HOUR. You won’t follow this, and you’ll cut into it early, because you won’t be able to stand it. Forgive yourself. Eat a couple of pieces too early. THEN let it rest for an hour. Cut into squares. Reserve half of your squares for yourself and share the other half with family and friends.

This recipe works also by substituting the peanut butter with a bag of chocolate chips (white is my favorite).

Enjoy!

Something pretty neat happened the other day. My younger brother, Marty, told me something I found hard to believe. Now, Marty has a lot of talents. He can write, he can dance, he’s a wonderful drummer and piano player. He’s a fantastic photographer. He’s a great dad. He makes great movies. He’s a pretty good tennis and pickleball player too. But he is an incredible cook. He bakes his own bread. He uses words like “Ramekin” and “Truffles.” His cooking is legendary around family circles. So when he told me he’s never made fudge before, I waited for the punchline. But he insisted, of all the family recipes, the above recipe had never been tried. And so he asked me to come over and teach him how.

So this past weekend that’s what we did. I brought the ingredients and we got to work. Like mom, I put in 1 3/4 sticks of butter, then I smiled at Marty and put in the other 1/4 stick. Like mom, I lusted over the top of the pot as we stirred it into oblivion. Like mom, we cut it too soon to sample it. Then we let it rest like you’re supposed to do.

So many things have changed about me and my world since I first learned the intoxicating effects of fudge. So many people gone or fading. So many more gray hairs. So many regrets. But for that hour with my brother, none of that came to mind. Only the joy of being with someone who loves me without conditions, making something so good I’d pawn a tool just to get my hands on some of it. I’m not sure what the recipe is for that. And I’m not sure I’d share it if I did.

For those of you old enough to know the stress and melancholy of the season, I hope you find a few moments of peace this time of year.