Fudge

Last Christmas, Jim Beam and I got together and made some truly awesome chocolate-walnut fudge that I sent off to members of my family as part of the Christmas box and gave to various people here, including our friends Judy and Charlie, and we ate quite a bit of it ourselves.

This year I did not get around to making the fudge because other things forced their way to the top of the list of things to do. So, R went to the local tourist stop a mile or so down the highway and bought fudge from them. They sell a lot of it, and it is OK fudge, but definitely not as good as the homemade variety. Last Friday, he was at the hospital with our son trying to get everything coordinated with hospice and getting him discharged to the local nursing home, so I packed up the Christmas box, put a box of fudge in each family’s bag, called Judy and asked if they could P-U-L-E-E-Z-E help me by taking the package to UPS.

And bless them, they did. Charlie arrived and I gave him $50 and told him I thought it would be about $25. Silly me. It cost $35 to send two boxes to California. We are going to do something different next year, but that is another story.

I had several boxes of fudge left over. Apparently I was supposed to have given each family two boxes of fudge.

We had coffee with Judy and her husband earlier in the week and exchanged small gifts – she gave us a plate of homemade cookies and fudge she had made, and we gave them two doohickeys to keep ants out of hummingbird feeders and a box of the fudge.

When we got back home, we sampled some of her fudge and I sort of cringed with embarrassment because her fudge looked so much better than what we had bought and it certainly tasted a great deal better than the fudge we had given them. I had visions of her offering the box of fudge to someone else, who takes one look at it and passes it on again…. and again…. the perpetual gift of fudge…