The very word "fudge" makes me quiver with delight. Originally it meant "to hoax, cheat, manipulate clumsily." Legend has it that the candy we adore got the name because someone was trying to make caramel and ended up with fudge.

The candy first came to public attention in 1886 when Emelyn Battersby Hartridge, a Vassar student (and now in my pantheon of heroes) discovered it in a Baltimore grocery (at 40 cents a pound, a lot of money in those days) and made it popular at college. It became such a craze that the girls endangered their lives by making it in the middle of the night using the gas lights as heat.

The fudge capital of the US (and probably the known Universe) is Mackinac Island MI, non-tourist population 500, where they produce up to 10,000 pounds a day. They tell us it can last up to a year in your freezer. In my house, it doesn't last an afternoon, let alone a year.

It's hard to focus on bridge with visions of fudge dancing in our brains, but give it a try.