I have many fond memories of my mother, but few of them had to do with her cooking. She didn’t cook very often. I remember spaghetti, chicken and yellow rice, and fudge. There were always mushrooms and onions in the spaghetti sauce (“I cut them up big, just pick them out!”), and the chicken and yellow rice had green peppers and tomatoes (the only acceptable cooked tomato to a kid is ketchup). But the fudge…I remember all-out battles over the fudge. The whole family was like a pack of wild dogs that had just taken down a gazelle. We kids were the runts of the pack, sneaking in and snatching a piece, then running off before someone bigger took us down.

Once a year at Christmastime, my sister attempts to make my mother’s fudge. Made correctly, it’s hard, dark and slightly gritty, not the soft, marshmallowy Americanized version. If you’ve ever made fudge, you know that timing is everything. If you only make it once a year…well, that timing can be hard to perfect. So it usually takes 2-3 batches before she gets it just right, and it’s a precious commodity once she does. Last visit, she decided to give it her annual college try.

The difference between my sister and I is that I would have given up after the first batch. It hardened to the pot like cement toffee. The kitchen is an enigma to me and I plan on keeping it that way, so I wasn’t around to see whether she had to sandblast it off or whether there’s an easier route. But the next day, she greased up a 13×9 pan and was at it again. And this batch came out pretty perfect, except that it only filled up half the pan. Her fudge is rarely pretty (we usually break it up into chunks instead of squares because it sets too quickly to cut) but the taste of it…oh man. It brought back the good times, hiding behind the couch gobbling down my fourth piece before they did a fudge count (“And how many pieces did YOU have? Two? Go to your room!”). This time, my sister really nailed it. I had fudge for lunch, fudge for dinner, and I planned on having fudge for breakfast. Except when I got up the next morning, the fudge was gone.

I tore that kitchen up looking for the fudge, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. I had slept late so it could have been a case of “you snooze, you lose” – maybe someone else had my fudge for breakfast. The hollow feeling in my stomach wasn’t hunger…no more fudge until next year. It’s a sad, sad thing to have your once-a-year fudge stolen out from under you. That afternoon, as I was fudge hunting for the third time that day, Nanny came into the kitchen.

“Looking for something?” She asked this like someone who already knew the answer, and she had a devilish glint in her eye.

“Yes, I can’t find the fudge. It’s just gone.” I was shoulders deep in the Tupperware cupboard, hoping that I had misplaced it there (I’ve been known to do things like that sometimes).

“It’s not ‘just gone.’ I gave it to my friends this morning.”

“Oh, that’s nice. They probably…wait, you what?” I backed out of the cupboard.

“Yes, we had Bible study and I took it and gave it to my friends. I was SHOCKED when I got up this morning and there was over a half a pan already gone. So since you all already ate over half of it, I took the rest of it and gave it to my friends.”

I closed my eyes. Justifiable homicide, that’s what it would be. No chocolate-loving jury would convict me.

“There was only ever half a pan, Nanny. There wasn’t enough to fill up the whole pan. We’ve only had a few pieces. I get my mother’s fudge once a year, I can’t believe you gave it to your friends.” (Yes, I really can be that selfish sometimes. Just ask anyone who’s ever had to share my stepmom’s Caesar salad with me.)

I rooted through the pots and pans again. No luck.

“Seriously, you gave it to your friends?”

“Yes, I told you. I gave it to my friends.”

I ransacked the pantry.

“Really? Really, you gave it ALL to your friends?”

She relented…a little. “Okay, I didn’t give it ALL to my friends. There’s some left, and I put it somewhere you’ll never look.” And no amount of begging could persuade her otherwise.

I could barely function the rest of the day. I broke the news to my sister that the fudge she had labored over was either gone or hidden, and she would probably have to make a third batch or leave me heartbroken. My cousin, knowing what the fudge meant to us and having witnessed the debacle of the first batch, was equally horrified. With The Girls, we reconvened at a local Italian restaurant and plotted our next move over cappuccinos. We decided to “hobbit” her, a term that in our family has since come to mean ganging up on someone in slow stages, one by one, so that they hardly realize the situation until the very end. (If you’ve read The Hobbit, you’ll understand.) We would simply approach her in her room, one at a time, demanding to know the exact whereabouts of the fudge or whose house we had to burgle to get it back, until there would simply be too many people in the room for her to hold out. If she wanted her room back, she’d have to give up the goods.

We headed home to carry out our plan, but once there The Girls broke rank. They ran into her room and shut the door. All hell broke loose. There were loud crashes, glass breaking, cats squawking, the smell of smoke, and then someone shouted, “Give up the fudge, old lady, or the kitty gets it!”

No, not really. They were quietly in her room for two minutes and then came back out.

“It’s in a Tupperware in the back of the fridge.”

The fridge. Didn’t think of that. Yep, somewhere I’d never look. Because frankly, I’m afraid of the back of my refrigerator. But somewhere in the stacks of old, expired, and possibly moldy containers that I was reluctant to open, I found my fudge. And except for a couple of pieces that were snatched up and gobbled behind a couch, I ate every last bit.