It only looks like grandma candy

I spent half the flippin' day following a recipe I thought would be easy enough for a sickie to put together. Apparently I didn't read the recipe carefully enough to make that call because I ended up using three large pots, one cast-iron pan, three big bowls, two kitchen appliances, knives, cutting board, spoons, forks, and measures, everything but the toaster, just to create a soup that was three and a half hours late for lunch and made me yawn when we finally got to eat it. Now the kitchen's a wreck and I don't want to know. I can hear my grandmother clucking her tongue at me for "messing up every dish in the house." I should have stayed in bed today and watched Jane Eyre.

We could have lived on these instead.



Are you thinking what I thought when Rob first showed them to me? That's grandma candy! Well, my friend, don't be fooled. This is lovely stuff. Addictive. And I can actually taste it, which is more than I can say for anything else I've eaten today. Thin dark chocolate wrapped in a delicate peppermint. Mmmmmmmm.

They came from Mary who, after spending a little too much quality time with an undisclosed amount of them, gave them to Paul, saying, "Get these away from me." Paul was eager to oblige her but soon realized he was also going overboard. He drove them down from Salt Lake and passed them to Rob, who liked them very much but likes me more, and proved it by bringing some in for me after The Big Soup Disappointment. I was so relieved to discover it wasn't hard, stale, filling-yanking Christmas candy from somebody's grandma. That would have been too much.