Not The Way Grandma Used To Make It...

The first time I sold the World's Best Fudge at our local suburban market, I severely underestimated the power it had to change lives. Selling and marketing has never been my strong point, so I merely stuffed my product in some very ordinary brown-paper lunch-bags, and used my daughter's fairy stamp to mark them. Always a fan of alliteration, and for lack of a better brand-name, I dubbed myself the “Fudge Fairy”(I think I might have even worn a patched pair of kid's fairy wings so I looked the part), and then meekly sat in a chair behind my stall table, smiling weakly at passers-by. Needless to say, fudge sales were rather meagre that day.

Eventually my husband took over the job of hawking the fudge on Saturday mornings. Being a rather outgoing character, and with numerous sales-jobs under his belt, he was much more comfortable calling out to potential customers to advise them of the once-in-a-lifetime taste-opportunity they were being presented with in the form of our home-made fudge. He had a little container with small samples that he proffered as evidence of this truth - a “try before you buy”, guarantee – and we soon learned that once tasted, the Fudge held it's own in convincing people that they truly were in need of a bag, or two, to take away with them.

Before long my husband began proclaiming for all to hear in the vicinity of the Saturday market that our fudge was in fact the World's Best Fudge, and challenging anyone to prove him wrong. One day a man claiming to be a fudge-connoisseur happened to be perusing the wares at the market and declared he would accept the challenge. He said he had travelled the world tasting fudges in many locales, far and wide and was interested to see how our fudge compared. My husband agreed to set up a blind taste-test with the traveler, who arranged to return the following week with a selection of fudge samples from around the local region. True to his word, the following week he returned with the samples, which my husband took and removed from their packaging and arranged in a random order, including our own fudge in the selection line-up. The man then closed his eyes, and tasted each in turn. Finally he declared one to be the absolute winner.

He opened his eyes to meet the triumphant grin of my husband. Our fudge had lived up to it's new title.

“It's good,” he said. “It's really good. What is your secret?”

And this is the part where I feel like I have been hiding a terrible secret. Indeed, I write this in part as a sort of confession in order to rid myself of the guilt of keeping something inside for far too long. You see, when people see and experience “home-made fudge”, it conjures up images of a grandmother in the kitchen, wearing a frilly-edged apron over her pleasantly plump middle, stirring a pot full of bubbling, sugary goodness, and laughing a jolly laugh that lets you know that somehow the love involved in the making of the treat will completely counteract its caloric load. When they read “Guilt-and-gluten-free” on the lip of the bag, and subsequently bite into the soft, smooth caramel squares, they are sensing that this experience is doing them some great good on the emotional level, despite the fact that their sweet-sensitive teeth are screaming for mercy. And I tell them that they are right, the fudge is good, and they should just relax and enjoy. I do not mention that my husband's cholesterol level went absolutely through the roof during the first six months of selling the fudge, from eating the leftovers, and the occasional half-a-tray-full when my back was turned in the kitchen. I do not mention that the nutritional content is comprised of two simple items: Fat and Sugar. But most especially I do NOT mention one thing. One terrible, awful thing...

That the World's Best Fudge is cooked... in a microwave.

Blasphemy! Shock! Treason! Murder! You might cry, and your sentiment would be just. It feels so wrong on such a deep level to be making one of the most beloved sweet-treats in Western culture, with a recipe undoubtedly steeped in centuries of tradition, in a modern appliance reported to 'nuke' the nutrients out of any and all food that have the misfortune to be placed behind its door, and to inflict brain-tumors on innocent bystanders who fail to move themselves behind the lead sheeting at the other end of the kitchen.

But just before the gavel strikes, I'd like to murmur a few quiet words in our defense.

The first argument I would like to put forward is simply that fudge is not a food with a high nutritional rating to begin with, and that this effectively nullifies any concern with regard to “lowering” or altering it's “nutritional content”. For all we know, microwaving fudge might in fact increase it's nourishment value, given that the mechanism of a microwave is to zap food with high-frequency radiation, no doubt increasing its molecular “vibration”. Given that there are many people today trying desperately to “raise their vibration” through all manner of means, be it meditation practice, climbing mountains, spending time in nature, or getting away from emotional vampires, what harm to get a little extra boost by eating something yummy whose molecules are still humming at a wonderfully high rate?

I am convinced that there is, in fact, something to this argument. During the time we were running our little fudge business, I was one day inspired with a song, as if it were sent to me from On High. I had a vision of a world-wide union, of people coming together in friendship, and sharing Fudge with one another in the spirit of joy and Love - and the words of the song, under the title “Life is Sweet” came into my mind as follows:

I have been around, I've seen town after town,

And it seems to me that people are the same.

No matter where you go, and no matter what you know,

A rose is beautiful no matter what it's name,

So take a little time to smell the flowers,

And feast upon the wonder that is everywhere!

Life is sweet, and it's such a treat,

To live and love each other,

Come and see just how sweet it can be,

When we learn to share and care for one another!

I was so moved by this revelation, that I set the words to music and taught the song to some children in a local choir that I was at the time directing. We made a music video of the children singing the song, whilst sharing around a plate of the World's Best Fudge. Unsurprisingly, the kid's didn't manage to sing all that well with their mouths crammed full of fudge, but by golly they enjoyed themselves, and the spirit there was sweet that day!

And this has been my ongoing experience with the World's Best Fudge, that it lifts hearts and brings smiles to faces, despite it's caloric load. Only once in many years have I ever seen someone refuse to even try our fudge, and that was a remarkably dour individual who claimed not to be remotely interested in partaking of anything sweet. (*I think it highly suspicious for someone to claim to not even enjoy the experience of sugar, natural or otherwise, and I think that if I learned that a political candidate did not like sugar I should immediately rule them out as someone for whom I might vote. It seems almost to indicate a complete relinquishment of the inner-child nature, and to hint at a hidden psycho-pathology, though that is neither to be proven nor spoken of in all but certain select circles.*)

Lastly, our fudge does require one certain special, secret ingredient, and here I must swear you all to secrecy. Unlike the fudge all our grandmas used to make back in the day before microwaves even existed, the World's Best Fudge must include one whole block of white chocolate as a final ingredient after the last nuking, and before the ultimate beating. Not just any old “brand X” white chocolate, mind. It has to be Dream. I have tried it with many other brands, and I'm telling you, it simply does not work. And I know why.

BECAUSE: for the world to ever come together in the spirit of sharing and love, if we are to ever get to the place where we can break open a bag of fudge and eat it with our enemies, we have to Dream it's possible. We need to collectively hold the vision of such unity in our minds before it can ever hope to become a reality. And that's what the World's Best Fudge does. It reminds us to dream, and to remember to enjoy the good, and not to spend so much time sweating over the bad, whatever our cholesterol level might be.

For truly, Life is Sweet!