Tag Archives: spicy

Friends and friends and candy bars

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Happy new year, everybody! An entire month and change late!

Apologies for the hiatus; life’s been a bit of a whirlwind lately: I left a job, went on a Christmas vacation to the California coast and a New Year’s vacation to the California mountains, found a Lady Bar, worked at a fashion convention and lost a 1-on-1 basketball game for $100.

As I’ve navigated the highs and lows of the past few months, one of the great constants has been the support of my friends, who, in addition to being overall swell people, have also supplied me with more than my fair share of candy bars to sample.

A very genuine thank you to all of those who sent bars my way, including:

The friend who goes to visit a candy factory and knows you like silly hats

Many thanks to Jacki Bar, who not only sent along some delicious treats from her tour of the Hammond Candies factory in Colorado, but also sent this sweet-ass hat, which I immediately put on, because attention:

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Great hat. Why don’t you see more of these nowadays?

Of course, she also sent some sweets:

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Hammonds Whoopie Pie bar was, well, not exactly a whoopie pie facsimile, but, instead a dark chocolate bar with vanilla creme. It was definitely a tasty chocolate bar, but given the whoopie pie billing, I can’t say it completely lived up to my expectation (me and the whoopies go way back).

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Gimme more of dat creme, yo.

More than anything, the bitterness of the dark chocolate overpowered the gentle vanilla in the creme, and anyone who’s had a whoopie pie knows that the creme is paramount. If Hammonds had adjusted the ratio ever so slightly, this would have been a knockout. Continue reading

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Trader Joe’s: Checkout Gals, Dogfriends, Pop Rocks and Percentages

IMG_3584 IMG_3585Last Sunday afternoon, I walked up to the checkout aisle at Trader Joe’s with a handbasket full of sweets, cinnamon rolls and two boxes of cookies. The gal at the aisle smiled at me, then we had this exchange:

Me: “Oh hey der. Are you open?”

Checkout Gal: “Yup! Did you find everything you were looking for?”

Me: “I did. Mostly candy bars.”

Checkout Gal: (forced chuckles) “Well, we do have those.”

Me: “I know!”

(She picks up the box of cookies for scanning purposes, revealing the 15 or so candy bars at the bottom of the basket)

Checkout Gal: “OH SHIT you weren’t kidding.”

Me: “Uh, nope.”

(Checkout Gal looks at me inquisitively.)

Me: “I, um, have a bit of a sweet tooth. … And my New Year’s resolution is to eat a candy bar every day this year.”

Checkout Gal: “That’s a good resolution, I guess.”

(I smile.)

Me: “Better than most I’ve made, I must say.”

Checkout Gal: “That will be $35.[whatever the change was].”

Aaaaand scene. Continue reading

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