Give someone a tangerine (and some fudge) for the holidays: 2

As my regular readers know, some of my personal essays and a poem were published recently, along with those of 11 other writers, in a great little book called Tangerine Tango. Great, because it’s the perfect size holiday gift for a hostess, mother, stocking stuffer or just because. So I thought I’d share some of the pieces with you between now and Christmas. The book’s available at Amazon in either paper or digital form.

The writers represented in Tangerine Tango come from different parts of the country and have different outlooks on life, which is what makes this book so much fun. Since the holidays are approaching, I thought I could do worse than to give you a taste (Ho. Ho.) And today’s topic is fudge. At least three of the items in the book mention fudge.

Along with writing her blog, Friend for the Ride: Encouraging Words for the Menopause Roller Coaster, Barbara Younger is the author of 21 books for adults and children. She lives in a 180-year-old house in Hillsborough, North Carolina with her husband Cliff and collections of everything from old toys to hat boxes. Here’s one of her contributions to the book.

Fudge Prayer

Dear God,

I can’t decide if fudge,

Is good or evil.

Cocoa beans, sugar, rich butter,

Confection of good delight

Or calories of evil to the body temple.

The fudge is gone,

Swallowed,

Not unlike the cat and canary.

And now I offer this

Grateful Prayer of Thanksgiving

Or this humble Prayer of Repentance.

Amen and Amen.

You can follow Barbara on Twitter and Facebook.

Patti Winker , author of an online cookbook  Memory Lane Meals tells the story of how she came to own a fudge store, and what happened once she started making fudge:

I learned how to make beautiful pans of fudge.   I made sheets of pecan turtles, lovingly constructing each one with my own hands, decorating each with a little “S” swirl on the chocolate top for “Sweetie’s.”  Chocolate-covered cherries and fudge-filled chocolate cups.  I mixed batch after batch, late at night, and lined them up attractively in the display cases.

Then came the morning,  time to open the shop. And in came the customers.

I couldn’t deal with sending my creations, even if I was paid, away, to be eaten and destroyed.

My husband, in contrast, loved seeing the boxes and bags going out the door every day. He became puzzled at my increasingly sullen mood as business improved.  The more fudge and turtles I sold…(buy the book to read the rest!)

And our editor, Lisa Winkler, included her favorite fudge recipe. (Buy the book etc…)

Bon appetit!

The internet yields pumpkin bread and a face-to-face friend

One of the great things about the internet is the people you meet there. One of the downsides is that one almost never gets to meet them face-to-face.  I follow several blogs, and certain of them have produced people of like mind, with whom I share values, comments and all-around goodwill. It was through one of my internet friends that I was asked to contribute to Tangerine Tango, an anthology of women writers. Lisa Winkler, otherwise known as the Cycling Grandma and author of On the Trail of the Ancestors: A Black Cowboy’s Ride Across America asked me to contribute some of my writing.

The book was published last Monday, and we still hadn’t met, even though Lisa edited the writing, and produced the book. So imagine my delight when I had an unexpected email from her saying that she’d be passing through my part of Connecticut and would like to get together for coffee.

Lisa Winkler and I – having fun!

She came yesterday, bearing a scrumptious loaf of pumpkin bread, and turned out to be even prettier than she looks on her blog, and just as much fun. We talked about the book, and how the promotion was going. (Please buy one!)  She told me about the Scandinavian woman in India who’d designed it, and we mulled over the question of what we might call Volume 2. My son, who happened to be around, came up with a few suggestions, including Pomegranate Papers, Mandarin Memoirs and Kiwi Chronicles, in line with the idea of fruit whose name has become synonymous with a color.  While trying to do this, it struck me how many of the fruit-whose-name-is a-color are in the orange range. See what I mean? Orange, pumpkin, pomegranate, mandarin, persimmon, and papaya, for starters. Lisa fancies the Kiwi Chronicles because she has a yen to produce a green book next time. This is probably because she’s a redhead, and green would suit her perfectly. Even so, any other suggestions are most welcome.

You can tell that we covered a lot of ground over a cup of Turkish apple tea (one of the things I brought back from a recent trip to Istanbul) and I was sorry when Lisa had to leave to get back to New Jersey. But the fact that we managed to meet at all has given me the hope that someday I’ll meet my other internet friends – just let me know if you’re passing through…