crazy is in my blood. oh and fudge too!

my mom, lorilee, and i have always had a difficult relationship, to say the least. i praise the Lord that after all we've been through, He is helping to heal us both and build a healthier connection as mother and daughter. i see His grace and love at work all the time in this, and in particular this time at christmas, my mom presented me with an old wooden box with some delicious, dark chocolate homemade fudge/candy inside.

she told me it was a special box to her, because her father, lawrence, (who was killed when she was a baby) had saved up his pennies as a young boy and bought it for his mama (her beloved 'grandma welleye') who gave it to her as a teenager. i want to say it came with some chocolate candies inside, and after they had been eaten up, grandma welleye would make her own and put it in this box. now the box is on my dresser and i use it to put my supplements in, that way i can enjoy using it everyday.

my mom now wanted to pass down the family recipe to me, so we donned our aprons and got to work in the kitchen as she taught me how to carefully make the fudge. along the way, i asked her lots of questions about grandma welleye and that side of the family that lived in mississippi that i have never known. the stories she told were of scandal and hardships, some that would make a really great drama! my mom said that her grandma was very sweet to her, but that she had quite a temper and would get easily frustrated and throw tantrums. she said that welleye was teased a lot as a child for being heavyset ('well-eee, well-eee, big fat belly!' the kids would chant), that she had been sexually abused at some point, and that she was just kinda emotionally disturbed. wow. the apples really don't fall far from the tree! (for my mom AND me!)

welleye's father (last name dunn) had been in prison for charges of killing the sherrif (not sure if he was truly guilty or not, but knowing my family, it probably was!) and his buddies helped bust him out of jail and had a plane waiting to escape to mexico. his wife drove their car to the meeting spot at the plane to join her rebel husband, leaving her kids, including welleye, behind. on the way there, welleye's mom was in a terrible crash, and she was taken back to their log cabin where she died soon after. her husband skipped the plane ride to be at home with his dying wife, when the police surrounded their log cabin home. they began shooting at the house with tommy guns, so welleye's dad ran out of the house and was shot and killed before his children's eyes. welleye and her siblings were then taken in by relatives down the road. no wonder she was a little disturbed.

she later went on to marry 'grandpa lewis' who was a pastor and a gentle, calm man. they had a yin-yang sort of marriage, where he was a rock to her storm. they had trouble having kids and only had lawrence, (my mom's dad), who died young in a bar fight in pasadena, tx shortly after marrying my grandma sandy and having my mom. when my mom was a teenager, she went to go live with them for a couple of years, and fondly remembers those times in Mississippi.

i do remember meeting my great grandpa lewis a couple of times at their mississippi home near philadelphia on dunn road, and remember him being a nice man, but he was very old at that time and i was too young to remember much. funny thing is, i do remember that we opened one of the drawers in his kitchen to find a long molting of snake scales! no one could sleep that night! when he died, kristy and i went with my mom to his funeral, but we didn't know anyone else in the family. apparently my mom was not well liked by those family members and she doesn't have many nice things to say about them either. but that's all a story i haven't heard yet.

oh yeah so back to the fudgy candy. ours turned out good, but not as great as the batch she made for me. i have a lot to learn in candy making i guess! this recipe is not healthy as it is, but maybe one day i'll try and experiment with healthier substitutions. but it's meant to be a treat enjoyed once a year, so i'll just eat the sugar and not complain about it. instead i'll eat it and think of my crazy great grandma welleye and how even though my mom and i may have her same fury running through our veins, we can overcome through Christ our Healer.

-2 cups sugar

-4 tbsp dark cocoa powder

-2 tbsp flour

-1 cup milk

-1tbsp corn syrup

find a container that is wide enough to set your skillet flat in. maybe a wide sink, pan or bucket. fill an inch or two with ice water that is more ice than water. that will later be used to quickly cool the hot skillet of fudge.

also prepare a glass of ice cold water to test the fudge for readiness towards the end.

butter your skillet and a platter or pan to roll your fudge out on when its all said and done.

put your skillet on medium heat. mix the dry ingredients together in the skillet with wooden spoon, then add the wet. you want to keep scraping the sides and bottom, stirring constantly. keep at it until it boils for a little bit. as sugar crystals stay or form on the edge, wipe them off with a paper towel so that you don't get sugar chunks in your fudge.

now when it gets to the boiling point, you want to put a drop of the chocolate into the glass of ice water and see what happens. if it forms a more fudgy, harder mass, then it's done. if it stays pretty liquid like, then keep heating and stirring. modern day chefs would probably say use a candy thermometer but that's not grandma welleye's way!

when it's done, put the skillet on top of the icy water. now use your muscles and keep stirring cause it's about to harden up quick. it helps to have a partner when you need to tap out cause your arm is burning.

when its thickened up into a ball like form, put it on the buttered platter and flatten out with wax paper and a rolling pin. you want it to be about a quarter inch thick. cut into squares.

eat and think of grandma welleye.