Friday, October 29, 2010

Sugar Makes The World Go 'Round

Ever feel like you're moving at warp speed?  I work with a woman who moves like that......constantly!  I don't even need to look up from my desk to see who's coming. If I hesitate looking up, she's gone!  Ever wonder what makes them tick?  Caffeine?  It could be.  I used to think that enough caffeine could keep me going.  When I was younger, a coffee drink in the evening would pretty much guarantee a restless night.  Over the years, however, I've become an espresso affection-ado and 6-8 shots of the thick, rich stuff does nothing to effect my sleep.   On the other hand, give me a piece of chocolate or something laden with sugar and I'll toss and turn all night!

Ah, sugar!  That sweet wonderful stuff! This time of the year I'm wallowing in it, up to my neck in it, rolling in it......get the picture?  I'm already sick of it and the holidays are barely getting started.  But allow me to digress a bit.  My pantry boasts two 25 pound sacks of the white granulated stuff and I'm hoping that'll be enough.  It's fudge season!  When I was a child, my mother stumbled upon a recipe that was touted to be the recipe for See's fudge.  We made a five pound batch for Thanksgiving and that had to last a family of five for the holiday season.  Let's see, a pound a piece for 2 months, maybe more if you had to wait until Easter when you were assured that the Easter bunny would bring a fudge egg from See's Candies.  Needless to say, it was a scramble to get your share.

For me, I take that recipe, which is over 50 years old now, and put it to good use.  I spend my "free" time standing over a pot of bubbling milk and sugar, almost like a witch at her cauldron, stirring it up at the stove until it's just the right temperature to blend with the chocolate, butter and marshmallow cream to transform into the most delightfully delicious fudge ever!  It used to be when my daughters were home, this was a popular time to be around the kitchen.  The privilege of licking the bowl and the beaters had to be divied up.  Now, it's just me and if I had to sample every batch it'd put me into a diabetic coma!  I had to laugh recently when I posted on my facebook page that I was making my first batch of fudge.  I lamented that my daughters weren't around to help "clean up" the bowl.  Now, mind you, I post things all the time and rarely get a response, but all three of them responded to this one!

So, the production is well under way.  By the end of the 'season', I'll probably have made somewhere between 75-100 pounds.  Some gets sold at the Highland Hills Elementary school bazaar in November, some is sold by special order, and some is given (as demanded) by my friends who will not let a year go by without their annual "fudge fix".

A year or so ago I must have decided that making fudge wasn't enough work.  I just couldn't bear to throw the marshmallow cream jars away.  They were re-recyclable, but where I live, recycling is no easy task!  I stumbled across a way to use them for something totally unrelated to fudge, but - you guessed it - more sugar.  I started producing a Lavender-Rosemary Sugar Scrub for the bath and shower.  It was another instant success.  Again, more friends I had gifted it to are clamoring for refills.  On a positive note:  I definitely have my Christmas shopping done ~ fudge for the men, sugar scrub for the ladies (oh and fudge for the ladies, too!)


So if you see me later this season, blurry eyed, incoherent from lack of sleep but wired and moving at the speed of light, it'll only be because I've not only ingested a load of sugar from doing the "quality control" sampling of every batch of fudge, I've also been using the sugar scrub and have it oozing both into and out of my pores!


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