Fudge Day

Posted on June 16, 2025 by arwenbicknell

I wish I were better read and better traveled and could regale you with tales of Bloomsday, but you’ll need to go elsewhere for that. I struggled with Joyce and the trip to Ireland ain’t happening til the kid is out of college.

So instead, I will tell you about my great-grandfather Glenn, who despite being very much a man of his time, also made excellent fudge.

Grandpa Glenn was a tough old Midwestern guy. He spent his younger days repairing taxi cabs in Chicago; he moved back to southern Illinois and ran a car dealership, farmed, played the stock market. He was one of those guys who was apparently just good at whatever he did—he was also a crack shot and a champion checkers and rummy player.

The man was also a chocolate fiend. Candy bars were stashed everywhere in his house, including the bathrooms. My first experience with making myself sick came at his hands when I was four or five: In the course of just a few hours he fed me a pile of fudge, two Hershey bars, and a chocolate milkshake.

So I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise that when he decided he wanted fudge, he went for it. I’m not sure how he chased my grandmother out of the kitchen for this; maybe she didn’t like sweet stuff as much as he did. My mom says he wasn’t perfect at this; she does remember times he dished up stuff that was quite gooey. This makes me laugh because my memory is of stuff that was pretty dry and crumbly. But the smell—oh, my god. When he was boiling up Hershey’s, his entire house smelled like heaven.

And he’s pretty much the only one in the family who came close to success on a regular basis. My grandma and I tried a few times and the results were only fit to pour over ice cream. My mom refused to even try. When I grew up and had the internet to guide me, I still couldn’t pull it off—I always wound up with soup or concrete. Plus, my family wasn’t big on the candy, which made it a terrible waste of sugar and cocoa; that; in turn meant that my opportunities to experiment were pretty limited.

My sister-in-law makes some pretty amazing peanut butter fudge. Someone else in the family told me she “cheats” by using marshmallow fluff, but I reckon if it comes out right, it ain’t cheating. I don’t know if she’s ever made chocolate fudge; if she has, I’ve never gotten any.

All this talk is making me wonder if I should try it again. But first I’ll need to figure out how to get rid of the results, whatever they may be!

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Foam Party Day

Posted on June 15, 2025 by arwenbicknell

I have actually been to a foam party!  The kid and I did a “Foam Glow” event at RFK Stadium in 2016.

I occasionally get to wondering if I can still walk more than a quarter-mile without dying, and events like these let me find out in a low-stakes way.

The kid, who was 13 at the time, thought it sounded like fun and said he’d do it with me. So we prepped for a couple weeks by walking around our neighborhood listening to various playlists and fighting over whose turn it was to pick a song.

The night of the event, the hubs drove us wayyyyy over to RFK Stadium and watched as we got our gear, donned our white shirts (the better for blacklights) and run bibs, and then shook “liquid glow” stuff all over each other like it was a shower. Then he waved us off.

It was a balmy July night for a long walk on a slanted track, and we had a lot of fun. We got blasted with foam cannons at regular intervals and spattered with that liquid glow stuff at irregular intervals from folks who were smarter than we were and brought squirt guns to spray the stuff around.

After the “run,” there was a party with blasting loud music and dancing. The kid had a blast, but after the walk, I was just ready to sit. Thomas says he remembers a big stage and a “don’t be that guy” lecture from the DJ. I remember being sopping wet even for the (long) ride home and wearing a bandana to keep the color out of my already dyed hair.

But what was really great about it was doing something outdoors with the kid and a billion other people. 

All in all, it was a lot of fun, and I might actually be up for doing this again. But it looks like the group that ran the one I went has gone belly up, so I’m glad I got to do it once. If anyone gets wind of something like this happening again, let me know! I’d be willing to travel!

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Bourbon Day

Posted on June 14, 2025 by arwenbicknell

My grandmother was not a big drinker, but when she drank, it was bourbon all the way. Old fashioneds, Manhattans, you name it. As a kid, I was anti–maraschino cherries, which is too bad because I bet I would have gotten her bourbon-soaked ones with one pleading look.

My first experience with bourbon was when I was 16 and in New Orleans with my parents. I thought I should order something geographically appropriate and got myself a mint julep on Bourbon Street (which in point of fact is not named for the booze but for the French royal family on the throne when New Orleans was founded). I was sorely disappointed. I thought it would be this cool, light, refreshing boozy slushie, but my teenage palate was accustomed to sodas and juices (and, to be honest, vodka and gin when I could get it). I was definitely not ready for bourbon. My mother laughed at me. I should have gotten a Pimm’s Cup.

As it was, I did not develop a taste for it until my 20s, when I was scouting around for a drink of my own that was not a rum and coke or a screwdriver or Zima. Thinking of my grandmother, I started ordering Manhattans. The bartender at the place I went to on the regular with the rest of the copydesk made fun of me for being a granny—and then the swing revival hit and he thanked me profusely for making him learn how to make them before EVERYONE started ordered them.

I am not, however, a bourbon connoisseur. I have never had Pappy Van Winkle, and although I’d love to try it, I worry that it would be wasted on me. My go-to when I go out is Maker’s Mark, which makes me distinctly average and dull at the top of the bell curve. I have a half-bottle of Bird Dog in my pantry that my bougie snob expert friend tells me is “OK for mixers.” (I just liked the Irish setter on the label and intend to give the bottle to my mom as a decoration when it’s empty.)

I had another friend who took the bourbon tour through Kentucky and loved it. My husband is a teetotaler, so I’ve been hesitant to consider this. Although he enjoys seeing me soused, I can’t imagine this would be much fun for him. (To his credit, he did seem to be amused sitting through a moonshine tasting at the Mob Museum in Vegas. I’m probably selling him short.) We have talked about doing a combined bourbon/bluegrass thing. Maybe the time has come!

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Golf Cart Day

Posted on June 13, 2025 by arwenbicknell

I didn’t know from golf carts as a kid, which is (probably a good thing but) too bad because they look like they’d be a lot of fun for the kind of 10-year-old that I was—looking for something more exciting than a bike but intimidated by the idea of an entire car.

A lot of kids in the town where I live now are shuttled around via street-ready golf cart (small town, a lot of older people). Every Halloween, at least five of these open-air buggies trundle up hauling various amounts of kids. It looks cold, but fun. Every summer I’ve been here, I have ridden with the librarian in her family’s golf cart for a town festival parade. Last year there was also a Fourth of July golf carts–only parade, but I didn’t take part in that since we don’t own one.

So most of my golf cart experiences take place on—wait for it—golf courses. Since I golf exclusively with my husband, who hates airplanes and probably trains and every other vehicle he’s not driving, he generally has the run of the thing. Occasionally, the kid will come along for an outing, and then he and I trade off.

But my best golf cart story comes from when I was just dating my husband and he had just introduced me to golf and I felt I needed to practice more than just the few times a week that I saw him. There was a teeny public course about 3 minutes from my house in Florida where I’d go a couple times a week. I got what is likely to be my only hole-in-one for my entire life at that place, which was truly a case of a blind squirrel getting a nut, and only a stranger was there to see it. We were both flabbergasted, since I did literally everything else wrong that day. It was enough to make me go back the next time… which I am pretty sure the day my roommate Heather and I got stranded.

To this day, I’m not sure if it was our fault or that of the maintenance guys. What I do remember is that it was a cloudy morning when we started out, but we took our chances. Heather was an even worse golfer than I was, if that was possible. (It probably wasn’t; we were equally awful.) She didn’t even have clubs; she shared mine. So we spent a lot of time handing off clubs, wandering around in the rough looking for balls, hitting them farther away from the hole, etc. With the threatening weather, nobody else was out, so we were dawdling.

And then it started to rain. It started to rain HARD.  One of those Florida cloudbursts, with thunder and lightning and awful, pounding, can’t see in front of you rain that is surprisingly cold. I don’t remember, but it would not surprise me that we were as far from the clubhouse as one could possibly get on the course. We turned tail and headed for the clubhouse. I think we made it about halfway and the cart just … died. Rolled to a stop, wouldn’t go. Naturally, Heather asked if I was crazy and why I had stopped. Tried the key. Tried reverse. Nada. We both sat there for a moment, weighing whether to sit or go. Should we push the cart under a tree? Should we wait it out? We were already sopped, but Heather was worried about the clubs being a lightning rod. I was worried about the cart being a lightning rod. (Unlike automobiles, the metal in golf carts isn’t enough to disperse a charge, even if the tires do ground the box—which I’m pretty sure is a myth.)

Finally we decided to ditch the cart and head out. We sprinted. Heather howled that she was going to die. She tells me that I howled back that she wasn’t special enough to die in such a freakish way that she’d get in the newspaper. I do not remember saying this, but it does sound like the sort of backhanded encouragement I would dispense, so I believe her.

We got to the clubhouse, threw the keys at the poor kid standing in the doorway watching it rain, and told him where he could find the dumb thing. Then we slogged to my car, tossed the clubs in the back, and went home.

I’m pretty sure my car seats were wet for a couple days after that. But I was back at the course the next day. Gorgeously sunny, a nice breeze, a great day for a walk. But the cart didn’t die that day, and I’ve never been in a cart that died since. Go figure.

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Seersucker Day

Posted on June 12, 2025 by arwenbicknell

Anyone who has seen Sophie’s Choice probably knows my favorite quote about this particular fabric. I won’t share it here for the sensitive among you, but you can Google it.

For those who don’t know, seersucker is a thin, striped, puckered fabric. Usually cotton. The source I found said it was developed by a clothier in the US South, but its name comes from the Persian for “milk and sugar” for the smooth-bumpy texture. You’ve probably seen this fabric in movies; it’s a staple worn by Southern Gentlemen. Oliver Platt wears a seersucker suit in A Time to Kill. I had a seersucker shirtdress once. It was comfy AF. But it wasn’t very sturdy and once it ripped I didn’t replace it. Same with a seersucker bedspread, although that one hung on for a couple years of steady use.

My grandfather had a suit made of this stuff that he wore every so often. My grandmother hated it because she thought he looked like an unmade bed.

The fabric was out of vogue by the time my dad had to wear work clothes. He was strictly a polyblend guy who worked in air conditioning his whole life and sweated it out only on his commutes—and not even that once he finally got an air conditioned car in Florida in the 1980s.

When I worked for a publication that covered Congress, I learned that this was a Day. Trent Lott resurrected the tradition of dressing for the season even though concrete and air conditioning had long since made DC less swampy and more tolerable. At least one of the editors where I worked also made a point to wear his suit on the given day. The hubs and I did not participate—largely because he’s not a slave to fashion and I never knew the day was upon us until I showed up at the office.

Anyone out there own any seersucker garments? Do you love it or hate it?

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Corn on the Cob Day

Posted on June 11, 2025 by arwenbicknell

I love eating corn on the cob. I loved it even when I had braces and had to shave the kernels off after their butter/salt/pepper bath. My corn-eating experience was enhanced at the age of 29 when I watched my Hoosier husband butter a slice of bread, sprinkle it with salt and pepper, and then use the bread like a glove to rub his ear of corn. It was like watching someone invent fire.

The down side is that I hate cleaning it. I can pull off the husks with no problem, but if you leave me to it I’ll still be sitting there picking silk out of crevices when everyone else has eaten dinner and dessert and shuffled off to bed.

Living in Illinois and having a mom with a farm that she pays variable attention to means I see a lot of corn—but only know a fraction of what I should. (I really ought to sign up for an ag extension class one of these days before my mom croaks and leaves me to figure things out. But that’s not why we are here today.) 

Here are two easy things to share: First, “knee-high by the Fourth of July” is a crock where we live. It might have been true once, or maybe it’s true farther north, but corn here is knee-high by mid-June, even if you’re not short like I am. And second, not all corn is the same. Field corn might keep you alive, but you do not want to eat it as a rule (unlike livestock). If you are paying super close attention and watching development every day, there’s a window of maybe five days where you can bust off a few ears and eat them at dinner. But that stuff loses its sugar and gets tough and tasteless pretty fast. You don’t want that on your dinner table any more than you want a big platter of Indian corn—also called flint corn, because it will break your teeth (not really).

So what kind of corn are you eating? Well, the overall category is sweet corn, but beyond that, I don’t actually know. The majority of my corn knowledge came from my grandmother when we talked about it in the late 1970s as I was tasked with stripping husks and picking off every last strand of silk for what was going on the dinner table. And even then there were probably things she hadn’t kept up with.

I know mine was a Silver Queen family from its time of development in the 1960s—none of that yellow stuff for us, unless it was coming out of our own field in that narrow window. Silver Queen doesn’t last long—like most vegetables, it loses quality starting the second you pick it, which is why this is such a seasonal thing. My mom and grandma grew Silver Queen in their vegetable gardens for years. I know you can eat it raw and fresh picked standing there in the garden, but none of us ever did that. We weren’t savages, after all.

Nowadays, you are more likely to find other varieties on store shelves, but most of the packaging won’t give you a name like Silver Queen; you have to look at seed catalogs for that. And seed catalogs tell you more about growth times and yields and less about the actual product. Sometimes they will tell you which of the three varieties of sweet corn you’re looking at: standard, sugary enhanced, and supersweet.

At your average grocery store, labeling doesn’t focus on names or varieties. Most of what’s sold in stores is supersweet because it has the longest shelf life. You can look at the corn itself and see if it’s yellow (as far as I know, that’s just called “yellow” and that’s mostly what you get in bags of frozen corn; it is slightly healthier because it has more beta carotene), white (which is probably Silver King, sweeter than Silver Queen) or a mix of yellow and white (the appetizingly named Butter and Sugar that doesn’t really taste like either but is definitely improved by both). Thing is, the color still won’t tell you how sweet the corn is.

This is why Oreos are better. An Oreo is an Oreo. You won’t get a sweet one on Monday and a bland one on Tuesday. But guess what key ingredient is in Oreos? Yup. Corn syrup and cornstarch.

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Ballpoint Pen Day

Posted on June 10, 2025 by arwenbicknell

Every so often, a conversation starter pops up about “if you were transported to the Middle Ages, what would you miss?” The logical answers get all the attention: plumbing, HVAC, antibiotics, Deep Woods Off. But for a long time, my offbeat answer was the ballpoint pen.

This is less true now, since I am a product of my environment and have given up pens for screens. But as a spaz who grew up hating pencils (they’d go dull; the lead would snap, the erasers were entirely too damn small), quills with ink would have been complete nonstarters, even with blotters. Even fountain pens would have been dicey with all the potential for spatter.

But I loved ballpoint pens. A coveted pen in grade school was the Bic 4-Color Retractable, with its sleek blue barrel and satisfying heft (and of course, choice of four colors). For several Christmases, I got novelty pens in my stocking; one of them was a bulky purple and orange thing with green slime inside you could watch sloshing around. When I graduated from high school, my neighbor gave me a beautiful silver Cross pen and pencil set. I still have it, but the ink ran out and I never bought a new cartridge because I was afraid of losing it.

When I got an office job, pen theft was commonplace. I don’t think it was intentional—pens were free in the office supply closet. It was just that I sat at a desk in a central spot where people made decisions and had discussions, so folks would pick up a pen to make notes and then wander off holding on to it. That meant that I had to keep replenishing at ridiculous rates.

Finally, I decided to ditch the office offerings. I channeled my inner child and went back to novelty pens: Big poofy feathers on top, rhinestones, you name it. People were too embarrassed to wander off with those! It also meant that I had a Thing people knew me for and would bring me ridiculous pens from vacations. I just shared these with friends of ours recently; they were quite taken with the pen shaped like a cheerleader who punches out her pompoms if you press a lever in her back. I also have a mummy pen, a Star Wars stormtrooper pen, and a Vegas pen with a little Boggle-type bubble on top that you push and it pops a pair of tiny dice.

Once I left office life, my need for distinction waned. As I said, I don’t write nearly as much as I used to, but my current go-to choice is the Pilot Precise V5 Stick Rolling Ball Pen—in any and all colors. The hubs is less fussy. As a result, he gets a new bag of pens and a new stack of Post-Its in his stocking every year at Christmas. I’m not sure the kid is aware of pens at all; his entire life is in his phone. I wonder how long until pens go the way of the Middle Ages.

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Strawberry Rhubarb Pie Day

Posted on June 9, 2025 by arwenbicknell

I have strawberry stories. I lived next door to a strawberry field, but only temporarily, not forever. I have written before about working at and attending the Plant City, Fla., Strawberry Festival.

I have rhubarb stories. The first time I heard the word was in a baseball context, so when I found out it was a plant at age 6, I was very confused: Plants, particularly that one, never struck me as particularly argumentative. (I did some Googling but came up with nothing for the origin of this meaning; the consensus seems to be that it was a word extras on stage in the theater would mutter over and over when the scene called for some kind of commotion. Sports Illustrated says a bartender used the term in 1938 to describe a brawl in which a Brooklyn Dodgers fan killed a Giants fan, but doesn’t explain where that guy got it from. Another thing I read said it originated with a writer named Garry Schumacher who got in neighborhood fights involving rhubarb pie that ended messily. Pretty sure Garry’s mom wouldn’t have given him that for ammo that more than once, but what do I know? )

The house we lived in when I was in second through sixth grade had a flower bed and smack in the middle was a big patch of rhubarb that just minded its own business and grew back every year with zero encouragement or attention. After trying it once and deciding it tasted awful, nobody in my family knew what to do with it. But every year a slew of neighbors were more than happy to come filch it out of our yard. I never saw it in California or Florida, so I have always assumed it was a Midwestern thing. I have yet to be disabused of this notion. I have also been waiting to see if it ever takes on a kale-like reputation as a superfood; after all, the Chinese cultivated it for medical use (although to be honest, I don’t know if they ate it or just rubbed it on themselves).

I also don’t know jack about the combination of strawberries and rhubarb. When I started making jelly, one of my brothers-in-law (raised in Indiana, further cementing my Midwestern theory) said that combo was his favorite. To date, he has gone unsatisfied. Still, I’d probably take a stab at making jelly before I tried to make a pie with the stuff. It doesn’t look attractive to me. All that red squish looks like a Final Destination movie to me. The hubs doesn’t like it, and the kid, like me, would not eat it on a bet.

Anyone care to ally themselves with my BiL and sing its praises?

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Upsy Daisy Day

Posted on June 8, 2025 by arwenbicknell

Apparently this day is designated to “encourage everyone to face the day positively and to get up ‘gloriously, gratefully, and gleefully’ each morning.”

Yeah… no.

I can face a day positively. I can maybe manage grateful. The odds of this are better if you approach me after 10 a.m.

But glorious? I don’t imagine anyone who has ever met me in my entire life would ascribe that adjective to any aspect of my being. And gleeful—well, with a side of malice, maybe.

I think this is genetic. My mom is the same way. You just don’t talk to her before 9 and you don’t really expect answers until noon. And my son? He has endangered his grades by sleeping through more than one 8:30 a.m. class despite repeated phone calls, loud alarms, and very grumpy responses to having his sleep interrupted.

I have friends who do seem capable of this—they think getting up at sunrise is sleeping late, and they are almost obnoxiously cheerful about things like coffee and dew on the grass. By the same token, you do not text them after 8 p.m. and expect an answer.

I’m not sure why it’s better to be a morning glory than a night owl. I sniff prejudice!

For this day to really take off, then, I think they need to retool the description. Here’s my counteroffer: “encourage everyone to face the afternoon positively and to go to lunch ‘cheerfully, gratefully, and sociably’ whenever lunch might be on the schedule.” Whaddaya think?

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Chocolate Ice Cream Day

Posted on June 7, 2025 by arwenbicknell

People have all kinds of comfort food. Mashed potatoes, chicken soup, pancakes. Mine is chocolate ice cream.

For years, my family only ate vanilla at home. We used it in milkshakes and ate it with chocolate syrup (which I would stir into a chocolate slurry when I wasn’t too impatient). If we went out to Baskin-Robbins, my mom and I always got chocolate mint and my dad always got strawberry. But at home, when we had to share, it was the white stuff every time.

For some reason, we switched to chocolate when we moved to Tampa and I was in junior high school. The summer between seventh and eighth grade, I was a total latchkey kid. My parents worked all day and I stayed home, left to my own devices.

That might have been the best summer of my life.

Did I improve myself? Not a bit. Did I walk to the pool? Go to the library? Read good books? Learn a skill? Develop a talent? Hell no.

Here’s what I did. I got up at noon, did the dishes, then watched three hours of soap operas (Days of Our Lives, Another World, and General Hospital) and ate chocolate ice cream. Every day. At 4 p.m., I turned off the TV, cleaned the house, and started dinner for my parents. They’d get home, we’d have dinner, and I’d talk on the phone with my friends while my parents monopolized the living room. Then they’d go to bed and I’d resume my spot on the couch to watch Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, and whatever movies til dawn were showing on Channel 44. I’d go to bed around 5, then start over again at noon the next day.

Whenever I would finish the box of ice cream that my parents had bought over the weekend (usually around Wednesday), I scrounged quarters out of the couch, under my bed, our change bucket, wherever, and walked to the corner convenience store and bought another box.

Real life returned with the school year and I gave up the night-owl hours and soap operas. I stuck with the ice cream until college, when ice cream didn’t fit in the mini-fridge, plus roommates snarfed it faster than I could. I fell out of the habit. And when I’d go to B&R, I still opted for more-exotic flavors—not just chocolate mint but also pralines and cream or “gold medal ribbon,” which had streaks of chocolate and caramel.

In the late 1990s, a friend introduced me to Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food, and my love affair with chocolate ice cream resumed.

I don’t eat ice cream as much these days; I try to watch my calorie count and there are other things that fill me up in more efficient and nutritious ways.

But every so often … yeah, that box of Breyer’s chocolate has my name on it. Do not touch.

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