The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Music.... and the Taste of Fudge??

I know that this puts me in the geeky, nerdy and uncool category but I must confess, my favourite movie of all time, is The Sound of Music. I don't know whether it was the family who became united by the love of music and became the Von Trapp Family Singers, or the fact that the governess stood up to the strict Captain father or the romantic ending, but it was DEFINITELY about the singing, dancing, playing and having good clean fun. N-E-R-D!!

When I was in Standard 9 (Grade 11) our school held a Debutante's Ball (Deb's Ball). The ball was our first real "bring a date" dance, the girls had to wear formal white dresses and it was held at an outside venue (how exciting!) The Deb's ball was a charity fund raiser and the cost per couple was R400 (which is probably like R2 000 today.)  R400 was the minimum amount, we were expected to raise as much as we could for the cause. The money needed to be raised by each girl, not donated by a wealthy relative. I raised R800. How did I raise that kind of money?  I hear you asking.......

I made and sold fudge. Tons of fudge. Tons of the most deliciously rich, mouthwateringly divine creamy, sweet fudge that anyone had ever tasted.  (I'm not just blowing my own horn, hundreds will attest to that glorious tasting treat).  Every break time I would sit in the quad and sell my goods. 20c a piece. The sales started slowly, but when word got around (that is the retro form of social media, we used to just tell our friends when we found out about something awesome) I was swamped. I became popular overnight, not because of my awesome personality and stunningly gorgeous good looks (as I'm sure you'll all agree) but because of my stash.

Customers began to stop me in the corridor to get a quick fix between classes and to make sure that they didn't miss out at the mainstream break time sale. Pretty soon I was selling out before first break, even though I had doubled my quantities! For four months I became the dealer to an addicted, sugar-starved bunch of teenagers who could.not.get.enough.

Every afternoon I was cooking like a mad woman. I would stop at the shops to buy ingredients for that afternoon's batches and then I'd go home, do homework and make 2-3 batches of fudge each day. When I think of it now, it must have been exhausting but I didn't care, I was having fun.

[Confession time]

Although I didn't get any money donated from a wealthy relative, but I never paid my parents back for using electricity or any of the, what I like to call "peripheral ingredients" because we had them in the kitchen anyway! So here on a public forum, I'd like to thank my mother (and father, although I'm sure he's not losing sleep over it) for all the electricity and peripherals which I never added into my profit calculation. Hee hee.

Quick and Dirty Calculation
R800 / .20c = 4 000 blocks of fudge sold  [OMG I've never worked this out before!!]
Each batch makes approximately 45 pieces so:
4 000 /45 = 89 batches of fudge (excluding cost of goods) Thanks Mummy!!

An estimated 120 batches of fudge were made and sold by yours truly!!

You may be wondering if I've lost the plot of this blog post because what on earth does The Sound of Music have to do with fudge? Well, I'm glad you asked :-)

Each batch of fudge took an hour of preparation and mixing - lots and lots of mixing. Dorothy, my brother from Oz felt sorry for me, looking so bored, while stirring away, so he rigged up our state-of-the-art *not* VHS player in the kitchen for me to watch movies on a portable TV (which always looked like it was snowing) while I produced the drug, for the fellow inmates of my high school. In retrospect, knowing now that Dorothy was not always the kind of brother who put my needs before his own while we were growing up, I think he was just keeping on my good side because I was producing free stash for him!!

I only had a tape of the Sound of Music, so I watched it incessantly until my family went bananas! I watched it a total of 42 times in a very short space of time. I knew (and still know) the entire cast's lines, intros and songs. I got the music and played the songs non-stop on the organ, piano and guitar, I was completely and utterly addicted.

[Fast forward to 2014.....]

I have been very good and I have not watched The Sound of Music for many many years, nor did I make fudge for many years, although I must confess that I taught Hubby all about "These are a few of my favorite things" but only after he had married me and I forced hime to watch it with me! We only watched it once. Ooops!

The reason that this is all top of mind, is because The Sound of Music is now showing on stage, which is conjuring up memories of those school years, where I watched this show "on repeat" while stirring up the most magnificent batches of sugary goodness, where I went to a beautiful ball with a great guy who danced every dance with me (in case you didn't get it before, I love dancing and guys who dance all night are a rare breed), where I participated in school musical productions, where I sang my heart out, feeling just like Maria on those Austrian alps. Ahhh those were the days........

My children are getting older, so I showed them the movie a few months ago and they were not impressed. I was devastated. It was too soon. I then showed it to them again a week ago and they were enthralled along with me. I only showed them up to the wedding scene, which debatably could have been the ending because the later scenes may be a bit much at this stage (I don't want to scare them off this movie!!)

So the indoctrination of these young minds has begun......... funny I feel like a piece of fudge.....hmmmm no idea why :-)

*Special Offer*
If you are one of those teenagers who were addicted, I apologise for cutting your supply, making you go all cold turkey, but the sugar rush sadly, couldn't last forever.  However....... if you want the coveted, secret recipe that I have held onto tightly for more than 20 years, become a follower of this blog (on the right hand side of this blog), give me your email address and viola! It's yours!