Oh, Fudge!

As I write this, we are still several days before Christmas, but as the song says, “We need a little Christmas now.”

In an attempt to start the holiday a bit early, Kathleen and I, with help from the grandkids, have made the inside of the house a sparkling display of Christmas lights. Then, in anticipation of a visit from Kristin and Kevin (daughter and son-in-law), we decided to make fudge over the weekend. We had never attempted this culinary treat before, but, I thought, as in the oft-quoted last words, “How hard can it be?” So confident were we of our success, that we opted for a double-batch of the chocolate delights. Kathleen carefully prepared and measured out all of the ingredients ahead of time, so my job consisted primarily of mixing it all together in a large pot and stirring constantly as it slowly built to a boil. Stage one went well, and a fascinating chemical process unfolded as the heat liquified sugar, butter, and other solid ingredients into a smooth, gooey concoction. So far so good.

Then, we added a massive amount of semi-sweet chocolate chips and miniature marshmallows. The going got tougher for your intrepid stirrer, and the liquid slowly morphed into a solid mass as those final ingredients were added. The plastic cooking spatula soon proved inadequate to the task, with the handle bending uselessly. I asked for a big, plastic spoon, but it, too, failed to make much of an impression on the huge, brown globule in the pot. Likewise for the metal spoon. Then a bigger plastic one. By this point I was dripping sweat and panting with exertion, so Kathleen pronounced it adequately mixed. She returned to her recipe and read, “Pour the contents into a shallow cake pan.” We burst out laughing, as “pouring” was clearly not an option with our volleyball-sized mess.

It was at this juncture that we realized something had gone terribly wrong, but we soldiered on. I placed the coffee-colored ball into the pan, and, with some considerable effort, mashed the malleable substance until it sort of resembled a one-inch-thick pan of fudge, albeit a bit lumpy. I was tired, but triumphant, as I slid the pan into the refrigerator in time for the kickoff of the SEC championship game. At halftime, we were ready for a tasty treat, so Kathleen pulled out the pan and tried cutting it into small squares. At least that was the plan. The knife she chose had little impact, so she called me over, and I gave it a shot. I tried for several minutes. Sounding like Chief Brody in Jaws when faced with his own great white shark, I said, “We’re gonna need a bigger knife.” After trying again with a larger implement, I chose a knife with a serrated edge. Then I tried a bigger blade that had teeth like a carpenter’s hand saw. By this time, we had tears in our eyes from laughing, but only an eighth-of-an-inch groove in the top of that cut-resistant substance. I found a knife with a sharp point on the end and tried to pound perforations into the fudge, hoping to break off pieces like plastic. No dice. I was heading downstairs to get the chain saw when Kathleen waved the white flag. So, the result was an inedible block of cement, and we didn’t get any fudge that night. We later determined that, when the recipe called for 5 ounces of evaporated milk, a number “one” in front of the “five” had been partially obliterated, and we missed it. It should have been 15 ounces. So, when we doubled the recipe, instead of thirty ounces, we used ten. That explains it.

Meanwhile, outside of our kitchen, the world remains a bleak place. Several times over the past couple of weeks, we have had more deaths from Covid in one day than died at Pearl Harbor (about 2400) or on September 11^th (about 3000). As people are driven indoors by the colder weather, the Covid crisis continues to spiral out of control. The first doses of the vaccine have been administered, but it will still be months before we can start to feel safe again.

And the President . . . does nothing. He doesn’t even mention the virus in his increasingly rare public appearances. The only thing we have heard from him involve his self-absorbed and dangerous attempts to steal the election. He packed the federal courts over the past four years, counting on his hand-picked judges to vote his way should he lose the 2020 election. In terms of his law suits, his record thus far, however, is 0 and 50. Even the hapless New York Jets won once this year. Most of these efforts have been laughably inept, once being turned away by the Supreme Court with a one-sentence rejection. The problem is that courts want evidence, and Trump can’t understand that concept, since he has gotten his followers to believe everything he says without evidence for four years. Now that it’s clear he has been decisively defeated, most his efforts have been focused on trying to figure out how to pardon his friends and family for crimes they committed on his behalf.

While all of this has been going on, the most serious breach of our defense system during the computer age occurred, with Trump’s pal Putin hacking our top-secret security systems and obtaining access to everything from phone numbers to nuclear codes. And the President . . . remains silent. Thousands of jobs are disappearing by the day—and he does nothing. Congress is—finally—doing a little to help the people being destroyed financially by the crisis, but the President provides little or no assistance.

While the world crumbles around him, Trump has, for all intents and purposes, abdicated the office and retired to the golf course. In terms of leadership, during this crisis that has more aspects than a Swiss Army Knife has blades, we will have to wait until Jan 20 to see if anything can be done.

When I was a kid, I saw the 1957 comedy Auntie Mame, which was a tour de force for lead actress, Rosalind Russell. I liked it so much, that I read the Patrick Dennis book on which it was based. Then in 1974, I looked forward to the musical version of the book, simply called Mame. It was terrible, and Lucille Ball captured none of the flair of the original film. However, there was one shining moment in the musical version. That was a joyous Christmas song that sprang up right when the characters were at a low point in their lives. If you are not familiar with the story, Mame Dennis is a rich, eccentric woman raising her nephew in New York. When the Great Depression of the 1930s hits, she loses everything but her apartment. She and her loyal servants have sold off most of her furniture and everything of value to stay afloat, but Mame can’t hold a job and things look increasingly dire. So one day, Mame announces that Christmas is coming early this year because they need it so desperately. None of the actors, including Lucy, are singers, but the song captures the idea that we should never allow ourselves to be defeated by circumstances. We need some of that indomitable spirit for the final act of 2020.

So, like Auntie Mame, I’m declaring Christmas a few days early this year, because “we need a little Christmas now.”

Click on the link to see the song.