Friday, February 24, 2006

In case you were wondering, my makeup looks fabulous today - I just had to say that

My dad is retired and has a lot of time on his hands, most of which he spends in the kitchen. He's got 14 million* muffin recipes, 12 trillion** scone recipes and several really delicious Danish recipes. His time to shine, though, is really at the holidays - he makes over a thousand*** pieces of candy (peanut butter cups, chocolate mints, chocolate covered cherries, boubon pecan bonbons, etc) and distributes them around the country to pretty much everyone he's ever met, concentrating on inundating close family members with hundreds of of pieces (seriously, I still have boxes of them in my refrigerator from Christmas).

Apparently, he's been bored lately, because he's taken to experimenting with different flavors in candy and he sent the family a big box yesterday...

Let me stop right here and tell you that I like candy. I mean, I LIKE candy! (seriously, have you seen my ass? It's pretty obvious... my love of candy, not my ass... well, perhaps my love of candy makes my ass pretty obvious... whatever, can we stop talking about my ass, you're making me uncomfortable...) But I'm sort of a candy snob, I prefer dark chocolate to milk chocolate and I prefer plain chocolate to chocolate with all kinds of bells, whistles and fillings. Honestly, I don't so much like boxes of mixed chocolates, they're too much of a crap shoot (I'm not saying I won't eat them, just that I don't really like them) And if chocolate insists upon having a filling, I prefer that it be something like peanut butter or caramel, with nothing fruity or spicy.

So, the last time my dad had decided to experiment with candy, he made chocolates with rosemary and lemon in the middle... I think that candy and the spice cabinet should be kept separate... at all times. And I had to break it to him that I wasn't crazy about them (okay, they were so bad that I couldn't even lie and say that I liked them.

Yesterday, the box of candy we got contained several small boxes of peanut butter cups (yay) and several boxes of "experimental candy""

Canadian maple pecan chocolates - not bad, a little maple-y for my taste, but not bad.

Cinnamon cranberry chocolates - good in theory (sort of), but it was sort of like eating a Yankee candle.

Lime chocolate with a fruit punch filling - it was sort of like eating a renuzit roommate.

and the piece de resistance... in a bad way

Chocolate with a filling consisting of vanilla, lime and curry... wait, what? You almost had me up until the curry. It was sort of like he was clearing out his cabinet. In addition to tasting like... I don't know, I can't even explain the horror that took place in my mouth after I took a bite. Then I looked down at the candy and was further horrified by the sight of green slime oozing out of chocolate - it looked like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle shit - observe:

Let this be a lesson to any aspiring chocolatiers out there - chocolate + green slime does not = appetizing.

I'm just sayin'.

*slight exaggeration
** another slight exaggeration
*** no exaggeration