Candy

Here are three little words that might give the staunchest snacker pause: Chocolate-covered bacon.

It sounds so wrong. But it tastes just right, says Joseph Marini III, a fourth-generation candy maker who is selling the bacon bonbons at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk seaside amusement park.

"It's not just for breakfast anymore," he says with a grin.  And this isn't just a wacky West Coast thing.

This year, Famous Dave's at the Minnesota State Fair is rolling out Pig Lickers - dark chocolate-covered bacon pieces sprinkled with sea salt.

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A few months ago I discovered that my friend Jane keeps a tall glass jar in her kitchen filled with chocolate candies – bite-size Dove bars, Mr. Goodbar, Hershey's Golden Almond, Snickers, all my favorites.  Personally I've never understood how anyone could keep chocolate out in plain sight without consuming it. Unless you're Willie Wonka.

Although I don't keep any chocolate visible in my house, I love it when other people do.  I have selected physicians based on the selection of candy in their waiting rooms.  And once I discovered this treasure trove in Jane's house, I always stop by the jar on my way out like a trick-or-treater on Halloween, and toss a few chocolate candies into my purse.  Just in case of emergency.  Which could happen on the drive home.

As if Jane's house weren't already my favorite place to visit, she also owns a great piece of exercise equipment called a Power Plate.  At some other time I can possibly explain this machine but not right now when my attention is focused on the candy jar.

Trick or treating in Maine in the 60's was lovely...Simple costumes that we worked diligently on for at least a week. planning, using scraps of material from the tailor's discard bin at our parent's dry cleaning business. Stapling and glueing, borrowing our mother make-up when she wasn't looking because she didn't appreciate her red lipstick being used to cover such a large area of our face that it suddenly was only 1 inch tall when she opened it to use the day after Halloween.

We never had warnings to not wear dark clothes or have to check our bag of candy for dangerous anything. All we had to worry about was which house would have the best candy and goodies. We carefully planned it out by the street, starting our canvasing just as it was getting dark with large decorated grocery bag in hand and always a costume that was overly long and easy to trip over. We crossed street after street or passed piles of burning leaves that everyone always had burning eerily in front of their house.

I am addicted to chocolate. I don't mean that I just like to eat chocolate, I have to eat  chocolate. There is no twelve step program, there are no support groups but I know it is genetic. My mother is also addicted to chocolate as are two of my six little nieces. Sometimes the four of us sit around the kitchen table in silence eating chocolate. I am the enabler. I buy chocolate every time I pass through a duty free store in an airport. I stop in every bakery I see to buy anything chocolate they have. I know exactly where all the nice chocolate shops are in New York City. You get my point?

 Tell us your favorite candy...and where we can get it.