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.
It happens every year. About a month before Christmas, I buy at least a couple of boxes of little candy canes. I have plans to hang them over the edge of cups of hot cocoa. I place a large bowl of them on the kitchen island, ready to be snatched up and chewed. There are all kinds of ways I use them during the holidays. But, it never fails. I always buy way too many. And, every year at this time, I pull out the leftover candy canes and begin to stir them into cookie dough. This year is no different. But this year, the cookies are Italian-style twice-baked cookies – biscotti.
Wednesday was a special day in my house when I was a child. My father was (and still is) a pharmacist. To help make ends meet, he worked a second job on Wednesday evenings and Saturday afternoons at a local drug store instead of his usual 9-5 gig at the area hospital. Thirty years ago being a pharmacist didn’t bring in the big bucks it does today and with four kids, he had his hands full. He was never home until long after dinner on Wednesdays and we were always excited for his return, partly because he brought with him our weekly chocolate treat – plain M&Ms.
Audiences loved the romanticized fantasy version of Paris to be found in the movie Amelie. It was saturated with color, filled with quirky personality and a timelessness that made it seem charmingly old-fashioned and modern all at once. If Amelie was a candy shop, it would be Miette Confiserie. 
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. 