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Mama’s afternoon snacks

When I was a kid, my brother and I would get off the school bus about 4 in the afternoon and by the time we walked in the back door of our farm house, we were starved. Lunch had been four and a half hours ago. Mama would have a snack ready for us: brownies with pecans from the trees just outside the kitchen door, or parched peanuts from the fields of the family farm. Sometimes in late summer she would fix us tomato sandwiches from the tomatoes just gathered from the garden out back of the house.

When my mother’s parents became older and their health began to fail, Mama would travel the 35 miles to their house once a week to help them. Those days meant slim pickings for us at home. But Mama was always home when we got there. If there was nothing to snack on, she and I would get in the kitchen and make those brownies, or a pan of homemade chocolate fudge with lots of chopped pecans, or peanut butter fudge. Sometimes we made our own peanut butter.

Here is the recipe for that peanut butter fudge. My grandmother taught me how to make it while she was sitting in her wheelchair across the kitchen table. I can remember the ingredients to this day and that was many, many years ago.

Peanut Butter Fudge

3 cups sugar
1 cup evaporated milk (undiluted)
1 1/2 cups creamy peanut butter
1 teaspoon vanilla

Mix sugar and milk in a saucepan over medium-low heat and bring to a slow boil. Cook until a soft ball stage. (Drop a half teaspoonful into a cup of cold water. When it settles to the bottom of the cup, and you can pick it up in your fingers in a small soft ball, it is ready).

Stir in 1 1/2 cups creamy peanut butter and 1 teaspoon vanilla while the mixture is still hot. Pour into a well battered 9-by-13-inch dish and cool. Cut into squares and enjoy.

Phyllis Johnson, Colerain, Roanoke Electric

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