As puberty crept up and I became a passive passenger on a roller coaster of hormones, there’d be days that I just couldn’t shake the blues. It was a Jekyll-and-Hyde scenario that would haunt me for most of my fertile years. I never thought to look at the cause; my body was gearing up for a wham-bam of reproductive activity. I only saw the symptoms, which were moodiness and the ability to bite someone’s head off. My mother, Champion of Chocolate, held the key to my happiness. We were driving in her car one night, a flame-red Cadillac sedan DeVille, when she turned to me and said, “How’s about a hot fudge sundae?” They were words of salvation.We pulled into Turner’s Ice Cream Parlor. That old building, near Hyannisport, with its clapboard siding and rickety double-hung windows, had been written about by JFK. A yellowed-with-age note signed by the former president hung in a frame on one of the “if-these-walls-could-talk” walls. I don’t know if the gray-haired woman who sat behind the counter, in her starched man-tailored blouse and apron, was Mrs. Turner. I just assumed it. Both the building and the woman were relics of the “olde Cape Cod,” sung about by Patti Page. It was decades before Ben met Jerry. Imported ice cream just didn’t exist. This was honest-to-goodness, homemade stuff, with flavors like penuche pecan, fresh summer melon, and the unicorn of all delights, frozen pudding -- a concoction of cream and dried candied fruit that seemed like a cross between holiday eggnog and cannoli filling.
We’d sit in that quaint shop, which had never been renovated to look the part, and be served hot gooey chocolate fudge. The kind where you can almost taste the sugar granules between your teeth, rather than the pasteurized goop that floats over soft serve today. A young girl, working her summer job, would open a refrigerator and pull out a large stainless steel bowl with a spatula stuck right in it. She’d give the contents a few turns and top the heavy glass sundae dish holding our overflowing desserts with a healthy dollop of the freshest whipped cream on Earth.
We made outings to Turner’s a weekly event. Mom always went for the fudge. I experimented with ice cream and topping combinations, growing particularly fond of ginger ice cream with claret sauce. The spicy bits of candied ginger were tempered by the sweet red sauce that tasted more like jelly apples than wine. I introduced many of my girlfriends to Turner’s -- girls that hadn’t yet found a food outlet for their hormonal highs and lows. It was hard to convince some of them that this was the real deal. Their palettes were dulled by too many air-filled shakes from Friendly’s.
My senior-year science teacher wouldn’t accept my thesis titled, “The Science of Ice Cream and Emotions.” I suppose it was too far-fetched a topic for the times. In 1972, PMS was only an acronym for “public message system.”
Over thirty years later, Mom’s remedy for the blues, i.e. hot fudge, along with its curative powers, still has the ability to pull me out of the lion’s den of emotion.
Mom’s Remedy for the Blues Hot Fudge
4 ounces unsweetened chocolate
1 cup sugar
4 tablespoons butter, unsalted
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla
Directions:
1. Melt chocolate, sugar and butter in top of double boiler over low heat, until sugar is dissolved.
2. Stir often to avoid burning.
3. Slowly add milk. Stir till blended smooth.
4. Add baking powder and vanilla. Stir till thick
Makes about 1 cup.
