Peanut Butter Fudge

This is what our friends and neighbors are getting this weekend from us for Christmas (recipe folowing)! It's my Aunt Brenda's peanut butter fudge! It was always a favorite of ours as kids and now as adults, it tastes like Christmas. mmmm. We'd go up to New Hampshire, where my Aunt Brenda lives, at least once a year to see my Mom's Mom, siblings, and our cousins up there. We'd usually go near Christmastime, so there would be 3 or 4 feet of snow! A few of my Mom's 8 siblings lived on the same two streets in Stratford Hollow. Every other house seems like it belongs to an aunt, uncle, or cousin. This is the place where my Mom was born and raised. She LITERALLY walked in the snow uphill both ways with bread bags on her feet to keep the wet snow out of her shoes when she was a kid!


Imagine a small country lane lined with 100 year old farm houses, mountains on either side, tall beautiful green trees everywhere you look. Imagine cows, pigs, chickens, and goats in their barns lined with hay and smelling like warm manure :). Imagine stepping out of your car and the snow being as tall as you are! Coming from suburban Virginia, New Hampshire was like a snow-covered, freezing, and breathtaking farm wonderland! I learned so much about real life up there among my family there in New Hampshire. And there were always peanut butter fudge, blueberry pancakes, whole milk, and whoopie pie cakes in abundance.


I remember walking from my Aunt's house to my Uncle's with my hair wet (what was I thinking in 20 to 30 below temperatures!). I had frozen ringlets of hair by the time I got to the other house. I loved going up there and being with family. Sitting around the wood stove and making the best toast you ever had on it! Oh, and the whoopie pies my Grammy makes, that'll be another post!

We'd go sledding up the road (they live at the foot of some big moutains). My uncles had snowmobiles and they'd attach ropes to the back and pull us up the hill on our sleds! Then we'd sled back down. I still think of those amazing winters often, especially when I smell propane gas! :) Riding behind a snowmobile is really fun, but very stinky! Thank goodness none of us passed out from the fumes!

You might think this all sounds a bit redneck! Well it was, and it was the best! One winter when I was 12 or 13 my uncle got me and my sister's out of bed at 5:30 AM. He told us "city girls" to put on our coats and come on outside, he wanted to show us something. He got a chicken out and placed it on one of his anvils, then took a little knife in the other hand (you can see where this is going right?)! He basically pinched the head off of the chicken with his large hands and that little knife! We all SCREAMED! I had never seen ANYTHING like that! But that's the way it is, gotta have something for dinner, right? The chicken then ran around the yard without a head. Wow, I will never forget that. That night my sisters and I didn't touch our chicken dumplings out of principle... at least until we got really hungry.

Now, who's hungry for some of my Aunt's Peanut Butter Fudge??!

4 cups white sugar
1 cup milk
1 stick butter

mix together:
1 container marshmallow fluff
36 oz. of peanut butter
3/4 cup flour

Boil first 3 ingredients to full rolling boil for 5 minutes (cannot be stirred down). In a large bowl stir first three into the last three ingredients. Stir quickly since the fudge sets quickly. Pour into large greased pan. makes an 11 x 15 pan. To smooth top if fudge set too quickly, place waxed paper over top and press. Cut when cool. Enjoy!