A lot of memories from my childhood are centered around food. I think that's normal for a lot of people (right?) but I'd go so far as to say that 90% of my memories contain food somehow. Perhaps that's because I'm the oldest of five kids, so mealtimes were always massive undertakings, but nonetheless, food conjures up a lot of nostalgia.
For instance, my parents used to load all five kids into the minivan once a month for a trip to the grocery store. We'd fill two carts to the BRIM, and spend nearly $800 (and this was in the 80's!) at one of those discount grocery stores. This food was supposed to last all month, supplemented only by weekly trips for milk and bread, and our own beef and eggs from our little farm.
After spending what felt like hours carrying groceries into the house, unloading, putting away and folding paper sacks, we were rewarded by getting to eat whatever we wanted out of our freshly stocked kitchen. Most of the time, it was something like a frozen bean burrito, or a bowl of some new cereal, or one of those instant-ramen noodle things - or any one of the items that we begged our parents for. But once, my Mom turned on the stovetop and whipped up some homemade hot fudge sauce. She poured it over a big bowl of newly-purchased vanilla ice cream, because she'd "been craving it for the longest time."
I remember that moment like it was yesterday.
When the girls wandered into the kitchen today, (which was, coincidentally, right after we got home from the grocery store) and asked what I was doing (making hot fudge sauce), I was taken back in time to that seemingly insignificant moment in my past. The sudden revelation that the summation of those insignificant moments in time are the building blocks of our lives - it made me stop and change course. Instead of shooing the girls out of the kitchen so I could clean up, I stopped and let them stick their little fingers into the jar of hot fudge for a taste-test. That unexpected little mid-day treat? Who knows - maybe that will stick with them.
Yep, hot fudge did that. I'm telling you guys, food does that to me.
The point is that these days I feel like we are so busy just trying to get through the day and meet all of our deadlines, get the kids where they're supposed to be, keep the house clean, dinner on the table, throw the right parties, wear the right thing, say the right thing, do the right thing, that we actually forget HOW to do the little memory-making things. Like sharing hot-fudge sauce with your kids for no reason at all.
So. Enough of the philosophical stuff. We have hot fudge sauce to tend to, after all.
There are three reasons you should make this hot fudge sauce. The first two are that it takes exactly three ingredients and six minutes to make. You can spend more time actually enjoying it than you spend making it. The third reason?
It's phenomenal. It takes like hot fudge should taste. Thick, creamy, fudge-y...PERFECT. It slides over the top of the ice cream and pools at the bottom of the bowl in big thick ribbons of chocolate. So just when you think you're done with your ice-cream sundae, you're rewarded with a few more bites of pure chocolate.
You can stir it into a glass of milk, too. You know, 'cause it also makes the best chocolate milk ever. It makes a pretty fabulous hot chocolate, too.
Or, you could just eat it with your fingers.
Hope you love this one guys.
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