Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Catholic
Spoon Fudge in the Mountains

Spoon Fudge in the Mountains

Last updated on: January 14, 2022 at 2:19 pm by Mary Pezzulo

Spoon Fudge in the Mountains 2022-01-14T14:19:40-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

It wasn’t all bad.

I talk so much about how strange and terrible my childhood was, and I’m right. But you’ve got to understand it wasn’t all bad. There’s something wonderful about being buried under a pile of eccentric relatives who hold family reunions in the mountains. I will miss that togetherness for the rest of my life.

Here I am in January, the darkest time of the year, homesick for city life in Columbus but also homesick for summer in Pocahontas County, in the state park in West Virginia where we all used to play together. We did the most exciting things: putting on stage plays for the grown-ups, baking enormous sheet cakes and decorating them with candy, our escapades with the crawfish in the crick, before they turned violent. One year we had a wedding shower for Aunt G, the youngest of my grandmother’s daughters, the one who had been a teenager when I was in preschool. She was the last lady of that generation to marry. The wedding was going to be two days after Thanksgiving. We held the shower in August at the family reunion.

It was going to be a wonderful party– no men or little ones allowed; they would all be banished to another cabin to do something else. All the adult female relatives, my aunts and great aunts and second cousins, would come and shower Aunt G with gifts. I was allowed to come because I was almost grown up, and so were my next two younger female cousins, as long as we helped by making the refreshments and decorating the largest cabin ourselves. This didn’t seem like a raw deal to me, because I loved decorating and baking. Baking huge batches of diverse cookies quickly was one of the only things I really had a talent for.

The day of the party, we got to work in the early afternoon. I made a batch of “plain” dough and a batch of “chocolate” dough as the sky outside grew hazy and the humidity got worse. The two next youngest female cousins helped me stir chocolate chips and white chips and butterscotch chips and nuts into different mini batches from the doughs, and form them into circles. Some of the “plain” dough we left without mix-ins and just rolled in cinnamon sugar, and some we sprinkled with white sugar to be sugar cookies. We kept snatching trays of cookies out of the oven and putting in more, over and over, a nice efficient assembly line. In between batches we decorated the main room with pink streamers and little dollar store candles. The younger cousins played outside in the crick. The teenage boy cousins were off doing whatever noisy things teenage boy cousins did.

Eventually, we took some of the chocolate chips and threw together three disposable pie pans of chocolate walnut fudge, and put them in the fridge. My teenage female cousins got their suits and went to take a break at the state park pool, to get a break from how humid it was getting in the kitchen, but I kept baking because there was still dough left. One batch and then another. In and out the oven door. Checking on that fudge to see if it was setting up. Fussing with the decorations. Setting out a pile of sparkly tinsel crowns.

The air was oppressive, like swimming through soup.

And just a moment later, the sky went black.

Have you ever been in a thunderstorm in the mountains?

Being in a cabin in a small hollow between mountains is like being inside a giant cup. The mountains rise up and block your view, so you can’t tell a weather front is forming until it’s on top of you. So it went from humid and sultry with a hazy sky to pitch black with high winds in a matter of minutes. The trees outside whipped sideways, loud, insistent. Thunder pealed. And then all that terrible humidity turned to liquid water, and it rained.

It’s one thing to be in a severe thunderstorm in a residential neighborhood with only a few trees. But a thunderstorm like that in the middle of the woods is an air raid. Branches go down everywhere. Trees go down. Debris blows. You absolutely have to take shelter.

The noisy young cousins fled to the other cabin across the crick from the one I was in. The boys fled elsewhere. My teenage cousins came running back inside carrying sopping wet towels, laughing in shock, telling stories of the branches that had dropped across their path as they ran back.

And then the power went out.

We sat in front of the fireplace in the dark, waiting it out.

It all cleared away in less than an hour, but by then it was nearly evening. My cousins and I had a party to put on, but the power wouldn’t be back for at least a day. It takes a long time to get a truck up into the mountains and find all the places the lines went down.

We started a fire in the hearth. I don’t think we’d originally planned to light all those ornamental dollar store candles in the jars, but we did after the fire was started: about ten little flickering lights. My uncle went outside with his great big Y2K lantern and set it on the picnic bench so the children could play outside in a halo of light while the women had their party. Another emergency lantern went inside on the mantlepiece. I got out the cookies and arranged them on platters. We made lemonade.

The fudge had not set up, because the fridge was warming up from the power failure. I scooped the thick gooey liquid into bowls and set a bowl in the middle of each cookie platter.

The ladies arrived one by one, carrying flashlights; each was presented with a tinsel crown at the door. Aunt G got the most ornate one, because it was her special day.

It was my job to direct everyone to the refreshment table.

“This is dip,” I told my great aunt Tate, my grandfather’s sister, pointing to the bowls of failed fudge. “To dip your cookies in. It was supposed to be fudge but it didn’t set up.”

“Raised on the stuff,” said Great Aunt Tate. “Aunt Vossie used to try to make fudge, it never worked, but then she’d put the pan on the table and give us each a spoon. It’s delicious.”

We huddled around the lantern and watched Aunt G open her shower gifts. Some were conventional shower gifts of nightgowns and dishes. Some were knicknacks bought at the state park gift shop by people who forgot about the party. Great Aunt Tate presented Aunt G with a papier mache giraffe painted in bright colors.

“You don’t remember this,” said Great Aunt Tate. “But when you were a baby, your mother brought all you girls to visit me when I was working at the library. It was my day to make the window display. I was trying to make a giraffe but I didn’t have a frame for the face. You came with your bottle and when you went home, your mother left the plastic cap that goes on top of the nipple. So I used the cap to make the giraffe’s nose. It’s still in there.”

Aunt G cried.

At the end of the party, after the real guests had finished their fun, my grandmother opened the door and called. My little cousins who had been playing in the lantern’s light ran inside; so did my teenage boy cousins. They descended on the refreshment table like locusts until all the cookies and fudge were gone.

The next morning one of the park rangers showed up with a portable generator in a truck, so we could have light and brew coffee for breakfast. “My gracious,” he said with his thick West Virginia accent. “I couldn’t have you goin’ without coffee.”

By evening, the power was on.

That is one evening I’d like to have over again.

I wish it had all been like that.

Image via Pixabay

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.
Steel Magnificat operates almost entirely on tips. To tip the author, visit our donate page.

Previous Post

January 13, 2022

Another Word on the Tragedy of Alana Chen

Next Post

January 15, 2022 The Winter Tin Cup Rattle

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category abortion Abuse Advent America American Christianity angel angels Annunciation Appalachia apparition apparition chaser apparition chasers apparition culture art art review babies baby baby Jesus Bad Lip Reading bad statue contest bath beauty Bible story blog blogkeeping blood book review Brandon Sanderson breastfeeding bus Catholic catholic conspiracy alarmism Catholic Oppositional Disorder Charismatic Renewal Charlie the Cat chastity Christ Christian idenitity Christianity and Judaism Chronic Illness clean clothing COD piece comedy compassion conscience conspiracy theory conversion cop-on-black violence Crucifixion cry of the poor culture Daesh Daily Saints death death penalty devotional diaconate diaper diapers dirty disability Donald Trump Dorothy Day dream drugs Eastern Catholicism Eastern Christianity education election election update Elsewhere on Patheos empathy environment Fear feminism film review fish flashback fluffy buns food Franciscan University of Steubenville Friendship Room fun Gabriel gardening gospel hair-splitting Heaven hell heresy Hillary Clinton history Holly the Witch Holy Spirit holy war Homeschooling homosexuality horror human dignity humor Icon idol immigrants infection inter-religious dialogue Interpretation of Scripture Islam Jesus Jihad Joseph joy laity and lay vocations lamb dinner laundry lent lgbtq literature love manners Mary Medicine and Science Meditation mercy mess milk misogyny Missouri monasticism monster motherhood mourn with those mourn movies movis music mystery nature neurodiversity New Pro-Life Movement news nonsense nostalgia O antiphons obituary objectification Ohio Valley Ordinary Time ordination Ordo Amoris parable paradox Passover peanut butter personal beliefs pets philosophy Planet Charismatic poetry politics polls poop Pope Francis Pope Leo power in the Church prayer prayer request prayers preferential option for non-violence president presidential election priest primary private revelation pro-life prophecy Public face of Catholicism Pure Flix Q and A race racism random rape rape. sexuality reader's request Reckoners refugee religious trauma ressurrection Right to life Saints saints and celebrations same-sex same-sex marriage satire scandal secular feasts seder Seven Joys Seven Last Words sex sexual ethics sexuality silencing six months skid row slavery social justice Speculative fiction spiritual abuse spoon stain story suffering suffrage suffragette Sunday Gospel temple Tenebrae Responsories Terror the exorcist The Friendship Room The New Pro-Life Movement Things I Learned on the Internet tin cup traffic true story tv review Uncategorized USCCB vice and temptation violence Virtue virtue and vice war Way of the Cross whimsy whole life women's ordination work of mercy Year A

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

There is a season for everything under heaven—a time to be born and a time to do what?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Rest Live Sing Die