If you’ve ever wondered how long fudge can stay in the freezer, I have the answer.
Not sixteen months.
Have you ever seen those giant teeth at the dentist’s office? You know the ones that are about a foot tall, which open to a cross section of the different parts of a tooth? 
Well, it’s a life-size model of my sweet tooth.
When it comes to chocolate fudge, there are two different types. There’s creamy fudge; the kind with marshmallow cream—quick and easy.
Then there’s traditional, classic fudge cooked in a pot on the stove until it reaches a very specific temperature. Then it’s beaten vigorously. It can go wrong much easier than right. 
At the state fair, All-American Fudge makes a stellar example. It’s better than any old-school version I could make, so I let them do it. Every year I buy two pounds, bring it home, triple-wrap and freeze it. I then ration it like it’s the very last pizza at a Super Bowl party.
Well, last year I rationed it too well, and when the fair rolled around, I had about a pound left, so I didn’t buy any more. Thus, sixteen-month-old awful fudge that broke my heart and left me without fair fudge for Eight.More.Months.
But.
There are two fudges of the easy, marshmallow cream variety that are close to my heart.
The first is a PB&J fudge. I shared my recipe with Lisa Prince, who along with Brian Shrader does a segment every Friday on WRAL’s noon news, called Local Dish. This was last Friday’s dish.
Peanut Butter & Jelly Fudge
1 7-ounce jar marshmallow cream
1 11-ounce package white chocolate chips
¾ cup creamy peanut butter
¼ cup crunchy peanut butter
¾ cup butter
2 ½ cups granulated sugar
pinch of kosher salt
1 cup heavy whipping cream
¾ cup jelly, jam, or preserves of your choice
Line 8-inch square baking dish with parchment paper. Set aside.
In large mixing bowl, add marshmallow cream, white chocolate chips and peanut butters. Set aside.
In large saucepan, combine butter, sugar, salt, and whipping cream. Bring to boil over medium-high heat. Boil for 4 full minutes.
Pour boiling mixture over ingredients in mixing bowl. Using electric mixer, beat for 1-2 minutes, until completely smooth and creamy.
Pour half of mixture into baking dish. Drop spoonsful of jam. Using a knife, lightly swirl into the fudge. Top with remaining fudge and dollops of the rest of the preserves. Gently swirl again with knife, just until marbled.
Refrigerate 4 hours, or overnight, until set. Cut into bites. Store in airtight container in refrigerator up to a week.
The other fudge is a long-time favorite; chocolate peanut butter. It’s easy and tastes so darn good.
Chocolate Peanut Butter Fudge
3 cups sugar
4 tablespoons cocoa
1 tablespoon butter
¾ cup milk
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup marshmallow crème
*When measuring peanut butter and marshmallow cream, spray measuring cup and spatula with cooking spray to facilitate removal from cup.
Mix together first 4 ingredients in saucepan. Bring to rolling boil. Boil exactly 3 minutes. Remove from heat and add marshmallow creme and peanut butter. Stir until melted then pour into buttered 8X8 pan. Let cool.
The secret to this is to boil exactly 3 minutes. Use a timer. I’m not joking.
I’m sad and disappointed about my fair fudge.
But.
When I get my next fudge stash, I can’t bear to get less than two pounds, and I know it doesn’t last forever in the freezer. So, like it or not, to avoid wasting food, I’ll be forced to eat more fudge more often. 
What a bummer.
Thanks for your time.
I am a woman of great enthusiasm, slightly above-normal persuasive powers, but minimal forethought.
A normal human might ponder such pain-inducing side effects well before the piercing and rethink the whole enterprise.
In the first grade, I was obsessed with getting holes poked through my tender little earlobes into which I planned to hang sparkly bits of metal and/or stone. My poor mother bore the brunt of this unbridled obsession. I brought it up and argued in its favor multiple times a day.
Finally, on the very last day of school that year, Mom said yes. A man was coming from away to our local Belk Tyler’s for ear piercing.
When we got to Belk’s, there was the piercer, a dapper, charming man in the fanciest suit I’d ever seen in Elizabeth City.
So, imagine my surprise when he wiped my lobe with some alcohol, put an actual cork, like from a Gunsmoke whiskey bottle, behind my ear, and stabbed me with the sharpened post of an earring.
My eyes and mouth were three perfect O’s in my face. I wanted to cry and run away, but I also wanted both of my ears pierced, so I remained silent.
“What is wrong with you? How could you do that? Take your hands off my daughter and get away from her!”
The swank disappeared from the man as he spun around to face her and growled, “So, whaddya want lady? You want the kid to walk around with one ear pierced? ‘Cause I don’t care, you already paid.”
When you get your ears pierced, you must leave the original earrings in for six weeks. Wearing those sharpened golden daggers and being continuously stabbed by them bred a loathing for post earrings deep inside my soul.
It was like a logjam broke that day. My mother was never again hesitant to speak her mind in public. Which is very honest and extremely healthy. But sometimes, for her daughter, a bit less than comfortable.
When is a convertible not a convertible?
But, one would be wrong.
Fortunately, even though there are laws about baguettes, as far as I know, none of them prohibit us non-French rubes from enjoying them. And, unlike your average loaf of Sunbeam, baguettes are sublime at every stage, from fresh out of the oven to old, hard and stale (just not furry—that’s no good for anybody).
So fresh it’s still warm: break off a hunk, and smear it with a big scoop of runny, buttery brie. You eat enough of this and you will acquire a French accent. You’ll also acquire a butt so big that you need two seats at the movies, but that’s a whole other conversation.
Super fresh but room temperature: sharing a large piece with a friend on a veranda with butter, strawberry jam, and coffee (French press, of course) or thick creamy hot chocolate. On this side of the Atlantic, the very best place to do this is Caffe Driade, in Chapel Hill. Honest, it is one of the few supreme joys in this life that cost less than $20.
If you cut the bread into cubes, and toast them in a skillet with oil, herbs and salt and pepper you have croutons that will make you wonder why you ever bought those sawdust squares in the bag.
And one of the greatest uses for any bread: pain perdu. What a North Carolinian calls French toast, a resident of the Loire Valley calls, “lost bread”. You make a custard with eggs and milk, flavor with brown sugar, vanilla, fresh nutmeg, and a pinch of salt. Heat the oven to 375 and melt a dollop of butter in a skillet while you soak both sides of 1&1/2” slices in the custard. When the butter’s foamy, cook the slices on both sides until golden. 
As they finish, lay them on a sheet pan you’ve fitted with a cooling rack. When they’re all ready, bake in the oven until puffed and the custard’s cooked through, about 5-7 minutes. Dress and devour.
If you have a baguette, and can’t get to it while it’s fresh, freeze it. When you’re ready, dampen the entire loaf, and cook in a 350-degree oven for 13 minutes. Right before you put in the loaf, splash ½ cup of cold water into oven to bring up a burst of steam. It will come out as fresh and crusty as day one, I promise.
The first one stunk.
I’m not sure if you know this Gentle Reader, but one of the aims in my writing is to amuse. And, to me at least, this subject is not funny.
True to my morbidly geeky soul, I framed my column as a science fiction story set in the future. The characters looked back from a time where the issue had been solved many years ago. They’d look at 2019 and feel the kind of bemusement and shame we in 2019 feel about the Salem witch trials, or new Coke.
I wanted to write the piece without offending or alienating a single pair of eyeballs. Writing that, I cringe at how utterly deluded and smug that ambition was. Stratospherically better minds than mine understand that a subject that doesn’t arouse passion is not a subject of import.
Here is the evolution of one of my columns: I choose a topic. Then the piece starts writing itself in my head. Usually by the time I put finger to key board I have a pretty clear idea of where it’s going. 
But I can’t begin the actual process of writing until I come up with an opening line. And, Petey and The Kid will sadly attest that often this step is torturous for all of us. I wander around like an especially hammy silent film actress, bemoaning my lack of inspiration and proclaiming that I’m not cut out to write anything more than a grocery list, and I should’ve become the guy at the circus that follows the elephants around with a broom.
Walking the dog and showering are the activities that are the most frequent opening line maternity wards. Some weeks I log more dog walking miles than a long-haul trucker and take so many showers that I start to look like the creature of the Black Lagoon’s mother-in-law.
But, once I start, my trouble is not finding things to write, but finding a way to stop writing. Brevity is not a familiar companion.
And it showed. It was a mediocre essay written by a self-effacing yet nauseatingly earnest middle schooler. In my heart I knew it; I couldn’t admit it, but I knew it.
So finally, I admitted its awfulness and begged my kind, patient and accommodating editors to pull the original column.
Thanks for your time.
Jennifer Jetpaque was taking her eleven-year-old daughter Jillian to summer camp in the mountains of southern Venus. She considered the time a gift. They had some of their best talks during this type of enforced togetherness.
“I’m reading a book about Jane Doe, and how she became president. Do you remember that?”
“Well, there’s some stuff in the book that I don’t understand. It says that her opponents talked about her appearance; that she was old, and not very attractive.”
Jennifer answered the question honestly. “I have no idea, Jilly. To many people back then, the most important thing a woman could be was beautiful—like an ornament. Women who weren’t conventionally pretty were discounted and pitied. Beautiful women were celebrated, but not respected, because women weren’t allowed to be both attractive and smart.”
“What does one have to do with the other? And why did it matter what other people thought? Why didn’t women just do what they wanted and not listen to other people?”
Jillian’s forehead was crinkled, and she was tugging her left earlobe, her familiar tells of frustration. “What if a woman had the right answer? What if a man hurt a woman and then said he didn’t? Did they not believe the woman?”
Jenn continued, “Since they thought of women being less than, it especially upset them when women stood up for themselves or expressed emotions. So, they’d make it into a joke, or declare the offending woman was crazy, evil, or both.”
“Well, Jilly, tens of thousands of years ago, it was ‘might makes right’. And because most men are bigger and stronger than women, they ran things. Men realized they liked this power thing and wanted to hold on to it. So, they came up with rules to keep it out of the hands of women. And if a woman stepped out of line, it made some people very angry. But honey, all that ended a very long time ago.”
“Because,” her wise eleven-year-old said, “The first thing we learned in kindergarten was sharing and cooperation!”
Achingly adorable, but not the chowchow we’re looking for.
Way closer, but still not the chow chow we’re looking for.
This stuff is delicious on its own. It’s a puckeringly sour, crunchy, twisted kind of Cole slaw.
Slow-cooked meats, like brisket and pork shoulder with lots of fat and connective tissue. Mayonnaise-based potato salad and macaroni salad can be served with a small dollop of chow chow that is a perfect foil to heaviness. Stir it into deviled eggs for a briny kick.
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Working in batches, pulse veggies in food processor until finely chopped. Transfer to large bowl and stir in salt. Cover and refrigerate overnight./chow-chow-green-tomato-relish-3059158.Step_6-5b9ef1b7c9e77c0050032caa.jpg)
Transfer vegetables to a large nonreactive pot and stir in vinegar and all remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat; reduce to a low simmer and cook, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool completely. Cover and refrigerate for up to 1 month. Or parcel into zip-top freezer bags and freeze for up to three months.
To country folk and farmers, wasting food is a huge sin. And with no freezers, or produce regularly coming in from warmer climes, one needed to be creative to enjoy bright flavors and crunchy textures in the dead of winter.
Thanks for your time.
I like to think of myself as an intelligent, artistic, cultured soul.
I once watched a TV show where Sir Simon Schama, British historian and art expert broke down and explained Guernica, Picasso’s depiction of the Nazi’s target practice bombing which devastated the village and inhabitants of Guernica during the Spanish civil war.
The difference between my comprehension and the actual things that were going on in that painting was the difference between stick figures and a 3D Imax motion picture. As he spoke, the canvas shifted from dark-ish and mildly depressing, to the visualization of the absolute horror of man’s ultimate, murderous inhumanity to man.
It was a mind-blowing revelation.
Looking at a couple of the photos made me feel wobbly and uncomfortable. It was mightily unpleasant. I was attracted and repelled, in equal measure. I almost felt seasick.
But as I studied them, I began to get the feeling that some ineffable something was seriously off-kilter.
The objects in the photo looked so realistic, they had ceased to look completely real. They appeared to be painted, but in a hyper-realistic style. The colors were too bright, the lines looked both sharp and slightly out of focus. The shadows were either absent or heightened.
I felt like a caveman confronted with a spinning wheel. The photographs confused and unsettled me. Some of them kind of made me angry—not because of the subject, but because of the way they made me feel.
When we left the museum, I just wanted an artificially-colored cocktail and an Archie comic. I wanted some metaphorical hydrocortisone for my irritated psyche. I had that mixed drink, but instead of a comic book, I watched a soothing British baking show.
Thanks for your time.
Have you ever seen a cartoon where a big guy hops on a see-saw with a little guy, and the little guy flies up into space?
My child surprised me with Beasley’s Chicken + Honey (237 S Wilmington St, Downtown Raleigh). Beasley’s is one of Ashley Christensen’s eateries. Chef Christensen is Raleigh’s #1 culinary rock star. Her standards are as high as the quality of her dishes. Her menus are thoughtful, and the food is invariably fresh and delicious.
First, we ordered a couple of their house cocktails. The Kid got a Benton’s Old Fashioned, and I got the American Trilogy. They were both tasty, but oh so strong. Their bartender does not skimp. After one, the world’s cheapest drunk (that would be me) was about four sips away from looking for a lamp shade with which to dance.
We decided to order a few sides to share alongside our entrees. We got the mac & pimento cheese custard, a terrific example of the egg-forward version of the Southern classic.
One word—balance (now, hopefully, the see-saw palaver makes some sense).
It was the grit fries though, which should be required eating for every human who strives to become a skilled cook. It was a graduate degree on a plate.
This dish was a symphony of balance; crispy fries, creamy aioli, and crunchy chowchow. It was sweet, salty, sour, and a little bitter. Each element was delicious but eaten together it was one of the most delicious, complete bites I’ve ever been lucky enough to eat.
I strongly urge you to go to Raleigh and visit Beasley’s for a plate of those fries, but in the meantime, I have an example of culinary balance that’s a bit easier to get your hands on.
It’s crunchy and a touch bitter (toasted rye), crispy and sour (sauerkraut), creamy and rich (mayo and 1000 island), melty and nutty (Swiss cheese), salty and fatty (corned beef). An associate’s degree between two pieces of bread.
Thanks for your time.
bull city mom 