There is one Christmas-Nom that I will pass up all chocolate-dipped noms for. It’s peanut butter fudge. But not just any peanut butter fudge, oh no. Certainly not that microwave peanut butter chip/condensed milk melty crap that should be illegal to try and pass off as peanut butter fudge! ~snooty sniff~

Only *this* peanut butter fudge. This one is so good that it’s getting its very own entry all to its self. With step by step pictures, Pioneer Woman style, because if any of you like peanut butter fudge, you must make this.

The Best Peanut Butter Fudge Known To Man.

Believe it or not, I don’t particularly like fudge. Fudge doesn’t really taste like chocolate, it tastes like, well, like fudge. Fudge, sludge, mudge, blech. But this is not your average fudge. This is orgasmic.

I only make this at Christmas because if I made it all year I’d not fit through my front door. This could also be known as Badonkadonk Butt Fudge, but that doesn’t sound nearly as delicious, does it?

Okay. Enough babble. I have peanut butter fudge to eat.

What you’ll need:

Sugar, flour, milk, butter, marshmallow creme and peanut butter.

What you do:

In a large saucepan, heat 1/2 cup butter, 1 cup milk and 4 cups of sugar over low to med heat.

Bring to a boil and cook for 5 minutes. You don’t have to stir it constantly but I don’t go too far away from it, either.

Remove from heat and stir in 1 jar of marshmallow creme and 1 and 1/2 cups peanut butter.

You’ll stir–

–for a long time.

You may need to switch arms. There is no shame in having an underdeveloped stir-muscle.

Sometimes it helps if you sing in your best Dory voice. “Keep stirring. Juuust keep stirring!”

Eventually, it’ll look like this: Smooth and creamy peanut butter goodness. MmmmMmmMmm.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll be tempted to scoop up a fingerful and taste it right now.

Don’t.

It’s hot. Reeeeally hot.

Trust me here. It’s hot and it sticks like glue (plus you’ll burn your tongue) and you’ll have bandaged fingers which will make creating (and taste-testing) the rest of your Christmas-Noms very difficult.

Gradually stir in 2/3 cup of flour.

And by “gradually” I mean dump in 1/3 of a cup, stir it in, dump in the other 1/3 cup. By this stage of the game, “gradual” is more of a guideline than a rule because I r hungry.

Pour into a buttered 9×13 pan and smooth it out. Let cool and harden.

Get prepared. Unbutton the top snap of your jeans. Or, hell, take them off. Fudge does not care if you’re naked! Set out a plate. Pour a mug of coffee. Turn off the phone. Have a cigarette ready for that post-orgasm smoke.

Slice into squares and have a party in your mouth.

*nom nom nom nom nom*

Your personal trainer will thank me. :-)

Ingredients:
4 cups white sugar
1 cup milk
1/2 cup butter
1 (7oz) jar mashmallow creme
12 oz (about 1 and 1/2 cups) peanut butter
2/3 cup all-purpose flour

Grease a 9×13 pan, set aside. In a saucepan, combine milk, sugar and butter. Bring to a boil and cook for 5 min. Remove from heat, stir in marshmallow creme and peanut butter. Gradually stir in the flour. Spread into the prepared pan and let cool.

In the fridge is chocolate covered chocolate (aka fudge).

Those yellow things are pineapple pieces. I don’t remember where I read/saw about dipping pineapple in chocolate, but it isn’t half-bad. The best part is that no one but me will eat it. (*beams* My momma didn’t raise no dummies!)

I feel all kinds of chef-y when I carve up a real pineapple. Imma be on Food Network. Chocolate Dipping with Kaya. ;-)

The litte round things are mini peanut butter Ritz sandwiches dipped in white chocolate and sprinkled with christmas sprinkles. They are so. good. So good.

The only semi catastrophe (so far) is one of the sprinkles that I bought that I thought was just red and white sugar crystals is actually peppermint flavored. Peanut butter crackers, chocolate and peppermint? Blech. Not so full of the yum. So everything that I sprinkled before I tasted (cuz I was being SUCH a good little candymaker and not eating everything as I went)- Is nasty.

Oh well.

So all of this, minus what me and the kids eat, plus the fudge and a couple of other things I still have to make, is going to Master’s work. I have to do another batch of everything to mail to my mom and another batch for us to have on Christmas day.

And cookies! Must have cookies. And peanut brittle. Maybe.

There is not one uncovered inch in my kitchen. I have egg noodles drying on the counter, too. I made some really yummy chicken stock from boiling the chicken for the enchiladas yesterday so we’re having homemade chicken noodle soup tonight. Maybe with grilled cheese, bacon and tomato sammiches. God love comfort food (to balance out that chocolate!)

I have a little plaque in my kitchen that says “if you want breakfast in bed, sleep in the kitchen”. I am so there. I feel like I haven’t left the kitchen in days.

It’s all behind the cut because I’m too lazy to crop the pictures properly. :P

Before Master’s mom passed away, his parents used to give him an engraved ornament for Christmas. This one is dated 1979. When we got married, He started that same tradition with our kids and now we give each of them one gold ornament, engraved with their name and the year. They kind of think it’s a bit silly right now, but someday (we hope), they’ll look at these ornaments with the same fondness that Master does with this one.

I bought this when Jes was just a week old. Next year, maybe I’ll pass it back to her for her baby’s first Christmas.

I are the crazy chocolate queen. I have the ornament to prove it. :D

When my kids were little, reading bedtime stories was a nightly routine. They almost always picked Dr. Seuss’s The Foot Book. At some point in the story, I’d attack and tickle their feet. They’d lay in bed, watching me read, all tense and excited, big ol grins on their faces. The closer I got to the tickle part, the more wiggly and giggly they’d get. And when I’d finally grab feet and tickle, they’d squeal loud enough to rattle windows. This ornament was one they picked out for me on a shopping trip because they remember those nights of stories. :-)

This one was not given to me because of the German Pickle Myth, but because I was pregnant (again) and craving pickles (again). I don’t know why but I love this ornament.

My mom bought me this one the year I got divorced and found myself on my own with 2 toddlers and a baby on the way. The legend of having a nest in your tree is that it’s supposed to bring you good luck and good fortune. It took a number of years, but it worked!

Stockings that my kids’ great-grandma made for them before she died. It’s hard to see, but the stockings have sequins and beads sewn all over them. I no longer use them for gifts, I have other store bought ones that I use. These I’m keeping back to give to the kids when they’re older.

My stocking. I heart the Cubs.

Our first Christmas ornament. :-)

The tree is up. I have to redecorate it every morning because the cats think I put it up for them to destroy while I sleep. But, meh, it’s up.

I’m an aetheist yet I set up a manger scene just because. Because it’s Christmas! Other than the 3 main figures, baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I have no idea where the rest of the figurines are supposed to be placed. I change them just about daily; it’s like having a dollhouse.

As a child Christmas wasn’t a spectacular gift-giving event. Jeez, there were 9 kids in the family and by the time I was even old enough to start remembering Christmases, there were already a passel of grandkids as well. So you can imagine that even buying 2 or 3 presents for each of us totalled up to a lot of presents and a lot of money that my parents just didn’t have.

But somehow they still managed to make Christmas special and fun. My mom baked everything imaginable. She made crack candy and peanut brittle and egg nog. Sometimes they made things for gifts. I remember one year I got a wooden kiss-shaped coat rack for my room that my dad carved out and painted, another time my mom wrote and framed a poem that she’d written especially for me. It was during that awful period of my teen years when I was pretty convinced that life would never be anything but a bleak and useless venture. I still have it. It still makes me cry. It goes like this:

If Love Alone

If love alone could mend your heart of all the hurt inside-

If love alone could fill it with hope which somehow in time has died-

If love alone could rid your mind of the dark and evil things-

And fill it instead with wonderful thoughts of love and magical things-

If love alone could give you the will to live and want to greet each day-

If love alone could do these things we’d have no need to pray-

For both of us love you very much, more than these words can say-

And our special gift to you this year on this quiet Christmas day-

Is all the love we have inside, nothing to see or touch or smell-

But if love alone can do all things, use our love to make you well.

All our love this Christmas and hope for Christmases to come,

Love, Mom and Dad.

Another year, as an adult and on my own, my dad made me a knife – a really sharp and dangerous knife – that he told me to stick under my pillow or under my carseat so I could protect myself if I needed to.  I didn’t stick it either of those places because I could just picture myself stabbing my own hand. But I did treasure the thought in which it had been crafted.

Just a couple of years ago, they made us this.

I erased the names though I suppose I probably didn’t have to. Anyway, my dad carved it, my mom painted it. The matching star ornament has a poem on the back, a poem about God and snow, but still, I think this is just about the neatest thing since sliced bread.

We were poor, me and the kids. I mean really really poor. The kind of poor where often times my dinner consisted of what was left on their plates when they were done (course I was a lot skinnier then too. I might do well to be that poor again.) Keeping the lights turned on came at the expense of letting the cable get shut off or hoping the gas company would hold off another month.

At one time, the kids were going to a daycare and while I never was on welfare, I did qualify for and get accepted into a program designed to help low income families pay for daycare so that they could go to work and NOT end up on welfare. I remember that my babysitter, through this program, was getting paid more an hour to watch my 3 kids than I was getting paid per hour at work.

I’m not nearly as crafty or artistic as my parents are, but I still dived into the Christmas spirit with my own kids. I would move heaven and earth to make Christmas magical and special for them.  I would pick up hours at work, I’d take out one of those ridiculously high interest short term loans that would take me six months to pay off; I’d beg, borrow – but not steal. But I made sure they always had a terrific Christmas.

Christmas day was the one day of the year when I made sure they didn’t feel poor.  They didn’t feel left out or forgotten. Good ol’ Santa, stepping in where mommy couldn’t.  Even my own mother, who thinks my kids poop gold and deserve life handed to them with a pretty bow would tell me I did too much. But all year long I had to deny my kids things. All year I’d have to watch their faces light up over commercials and watch them wander the toy aisle, all wistful and sad.

And really, I’m only talking about $300, *maybe*, per kid. It was only extravagant because I really couldn’t afford even that much. It’s a paltry amount though. I mean, it really is. I know parents who buy cars for their kids for Christmas, who spend a grand or more per kid. But for my kids, after a year of not getting anything, $300 worth of toys was a windfall. A magical dream of a day.

It was worth every single extra hour of wiping old people’s asses to watch them on Christmas morning.

This year though.

I don’t have it in me. Not the money and not the magic. I can’t even listen to the Christmas music that I used to love.

I don’t have any decorations up. No tree, no snowman family. Not a single gaudy light.

I know I’m cheating them and I know it’s not fair. I told them that we might have to skip the Christmas hoopla this year. My kids, those rotten, spoiled, selfish heathens of mine? They comforted ME. 

It’s not the presents. Although there is certainly more to be careful of money-wise, considering what we’re facing, it’s the spirit that I’m missing. None of us are so materialistic that we’re upset over the “stuff” of it. But the magic… I wish I knew how to recapture that.

I mentioned that maybe we should put up a tree, and I think probably we will. We’re still a family, one that’s intent on healing somehow, someway– someday. I don’t think a Christmas tree is quite the bandaid we need but it can’t hurt, right?

Maybe it’ll spark a little magic anyway.

~Tess