Last night, at about 2:00 a.m I woke up and couldn’t go back to
sleep. Normally I give myself an hour of trying to go back to sleep
before I give up and go downstairs to watch TV. Last night I knew it
just wasn’t gonna happen.
It was warm in the living room and our two Portugese water dogs,
Stachmo and Gabby followed me, hopped up on the couch, and snuggled
close. After five minutes of channel surfing, I landed on a documentary
with the intriguing title: The Chocolate Wars. It was about the rivalry
between the altruistic Milton Hershey and the odious Forrest Mars, son
of Frank Mars, the founder of Mars Candy Company.
I go to Pasadena often because my younger daughter’s cheer team practices there. Yes, I spawned a cheerleader because my parents don’t have enough to laugh about in heaven. It’s given me a chance to explore Old Pasadena and I’ve been loving it. But the fact that “Of all the Gin Joints” so to speak, I mean that Little Flower Candy Company just happened to open a bakery in Pasadena was just dumb luck for me. The building is an art deco cubby that reveals itself as you’re zooming along what looks like a residential area. Pasadena is funny that way. 
Here are three little words that might give the staunchest snacker pause: Chocolate-covered bacon.
My husband Mike points out that the room goes silent as I watch a quivering gooey strand of icing bridge a hunk of pastry being pried apart by delicate hands in an Entenman's commercial. And when a pool of thick, rich Dove chocolate swirls around and folds itself magically over a brick of vanilla ice cream, my eyes glaze over. Then, when the caramel and chocolate of a Milky Way is fully exposed in delectable close up, my jaw goes slack. He tells me to face it: these commercials are, for me, like watching porn. Yes, I embarrassedly admit that I have fallen prey to the sexualized enticements of sugary things. 
Candy has been a bond between me and my pal Joy since we first became
best friends in sixth grade at Beverly Vista Elementary School in
Beverly Hills, California. Sure, there’s been humor, loyalty, shared
heart-throbs, and tears…but from the get-go, there were shared Nestle
Crunch candy bars filled with crinkly chocolate that we bought every
day as we walked home from school together. It became a ritual,
peeling off the blue and white wrapper, then the foil, and eating the
crunchy bar while hysterically laughing over some inside joke that was
funny only to ourselves. But it was better that way.