I love chocolate. I have always loved chocolate. I have lived my life
by the principle, So much chocolate, so little time. The expansiveness of my love of chocolate is such that it would be impossible for me to name a favorite – it would be like asking me to pick a favorite among my children. (Or maybe not exactly like that; after all, I only have one child).
On the other hand, if you asked me to name three of my favorite chocolate moments: Life begins with Hershey's kisses and chocolate bars, in my case, Nestle's Crunch, Three Musketeers, Milky Way, Cup-O-Gold (a chocolate shell with embedded cocoanut, filled with a gooey white cream that was supposedly marshmallow but tasted like the residue of some lab experiment gone terribly wrong) and, most significantly, the Mounds Bar.
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.
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.
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?
Here are three little words that might give the staunchest snacker pause: Chocolate-covered bacon.