TheSnackHound

I have been told that I am easily entertained, and I also love dark chocolate.  Not only is it delicious, it has many health benefits, too.   Of course, that is null and void when you eat a bag in one sitting and then end up in a bad state of affairs and are confined to a certain small room of your home for several hours. Since this is a food blog, I will not mention the name of said room.

All segue aside, if you go to Coupons.Com, you can score yourself a two for one coupon.  Buy one 8.5 to 9.5 ounce bag of Dove chocolate and you will receive one free.  I was so psyched about that, that I was not prepared as to what happened next. 

We went to Kmart before the grocery store, and I had coupon in hand. The Dove chocolates were 3.69 instead of 3.99 at the grocery store.  At the register, I discovered the pleasant surprise that the current Kmart offer was 3 bags for 6 dollars!  NOT 3.69 as marked.   This, of course translated to $2.00 per bag.     When you consider that I had the coupon, it was like getting 2 bags for only a buck each!

I rattled on about my awesome bargain all the way to the car, into the grocery store, and halfway home.  By that time, my husband did not want to hear about it anymore because I was acting like I was the first person in the world to ever get a good deal, or maybe the chocolate addiction was talking and it was the ramblings of a junkie.

Either way, I was not selfish, and am relating my experiences here. Go to Coupons. Com, then get thee to Kmart!

There are many websites devoted to the preservation, mutilation, and transformation of Peeps, but not much to say about Skittles.  Yes, Skittles; the candy that announcers so haughtily demand for you to “TASTE THE RAINBOW.”

This command was a little more humble when Skittles were first introduced during my childhood.  Someone was probably just HOPING we wanted to try them.    To be accurate, Skittles were originally a British candy that was introduced in the United States in the early 70s, which was slightly before my time, but they were not made in the US until 1981, or 1982.  Thus, the marketing that went in to targetting children who would want to eat them did not commence until then.  My brother and I were some of the children who were sucked in by those various ploys.  I do believe they hit the drugstores counters of rural Wisconsin long before the commercials did, however.  Click Here to enjoy an 80s Skittles commercial.  What a dull world we would have lived in without them.

I always knew that my brother would have some sort of culinary destiny.  What his creations lacked in artistic “plating,” they transcended many levels of daringness and creativity.   In 1984, I think it was, on a snow day, a sick day, or a vacation day - my memory is foggy now - he first set his mind on the idea that Skittles could be so much more.  It perhaps was not until 1986 that his idea became a reality.   When our family got a microwave oven, his true muse was found.

I think the microwave was a JCPenney brand, if I am not mistaken.   Perhaps the last in our extended family to jump on the trend bandwagon,  we had been spared from owning the most giant of microwave ovens of earlier years (which really defeated the purpose of being smaller than a regular oven).  At any rate, that dial was turned to thirty seconds and the rest was history.      Little did we know that there was shellac in the American version of Skittles, and if we knew we probably would not have cared.

There are many recipes floating around on the web and in books, involving making M&M cookies or cupcakes, and then  substituting Skittles.   To my brother, that would have just been amateur hour.

The tangy smell of melted skittles mixed with the heady aroma of chocolate is still in my mind to this day, for better or for worse.   It all occured on top of several paper plates.   Luckily, there was no incident of fire or destruction, other than destroying his inhibitions of combining tangy, tart, and chocolatey all in one creative expression.

I have to admit, in editorial honesty, that we never actually did eat the creation.   The Skittle “shells,” if you call them that had cracked and broken and the gelatanous innards had oozed together with the chocolate.   The effect was similar looking to ”melted crayons and chocolate.”    I think we were a little afraid it was all quite radioactive.

When we lived in the Boston area, we went to the cutest candy shop. It not only had the traditional brittles, fudges, and bars, but all sorts of novelty chocolate for just about any wish. After we moved, they levelled the historical building and made it another donut shop (bad move! that donut shop didn’t last!.) Since, we have not been able to find any place in our new town that was the same feast for the eyes as well as it was the scourge of the digestive tract or the wallet. The prices were good, we just bought a lot at once.

I just found the bestest and cutest chocolate gifts at Gertrude Hawk Chocolates online that gave me the same sort of nostalgia!  How could you not want to buy a little firehouse with firefighter and firetruck shaped chocolate in it?  I think that the fire truck would taste better than the dollhouse themed chocolates as I was more of a tomboy who played Tonka trucks. In fact, I know that certain shapes taste better than others.

I couldn’t remember where I had heard the name before, and then I recalled a candybar fundraiser for my basketball team when I was in high school that we did using their bars! The profit amount was better than any of their competitors and the taste was much better too. I will say that if we sold the chocolate petshop or dollhouse chocolates, all the girls that were with me on the team would have bought them up and stockpiled them.  We would have worked it off on the court.

RollerKaty at the Rollerblog reminded me about Wacky Packs. For the uninitiated, they were stickers that sported messed up versions of household products.   Who could forget such “Darn, I wish they were real!” products like Fang: The Drink for Vampires?

If you are one of those children who later moved on to Garbage Pail Kids when the whole Wacky production screeched to a halt, you might be interested, thrilled, or shocked to know that now there is a coffee table book on the very subject. All the Wacky Packages and the corresponding history are presented in their full glory, finally!

If this thought intrigues you, read more about it HERE.  Do I smell a Christmas present?   I know that it will definitely be on my list.  It is never too early to shop.