Thursday, November 10, 2011

Top 5 Halloween Candies


I know, I know. It's almost 2 weeks after Halloween. But I live in an apartment building, so I don't see trick or treaters and I don't have any kids to take trick or treating. I didn't see my first piece of halloween candy this year until 4 days ago when someone in accounting brought in all of their leftovers. Some would say I went a little overboard on the first day, but if you space out the amount of candy I would have eaten in the average 2 weeks after Halloween, I was way below the line.

Allow me to begin by saying I have some of the best parents in the world. They are very supportive of me and are always there to help me to do the things that I want to do. That all being said, I’ve been wondering something lately. Does anyone out there think that having more restrictions on foods when you were a kid leads to an unhealthy adulthood? Anyone who would look at photos of me as a child would question the restrictive nature of my diet when my parents were paying for my food. Yes, I ate a lot of food that wasn’t that great for me, but I don’t think that’s really what made me fat. I was fat because I liked to play Mortal Kombat in my room while the other kids were pretending to be Mighty Morphin Power Rangers on Randy’s trampoline. I preferred to spend those few years of adolescence before getting my driver’s license burning incense, writing in my journal, and listening to Our Lady Peace while the others rode their bikes and got into trouble. I was an indoor kid. Cut to adulthood. I pay for my own cereal now and I find that I always choose the sugary stuff that my parents wouldn’t let me have over the corn flakes or cheerios (both of which I do enjoy.) My fiancĂ© and I always swing by the candy aisle when we grocery shop. We don’t always get something, but it’s rare that there isn’t at least a bag of pretzel M+M’s in our utility/menu/candy drawer. What I’m getting at is, I’ve developed quite a sweet tooth. I do pretty well at keeping it in check, but when it hits hard, it can’t be ignored.

Candy can fall into a lot of different categories for me. You could do a general candy list, a movie theatre candy list, a driving candy list, and a Halloween candy list. How I choose that something winds up in the Halloween. For now, since we’re still within an acceptable window, let’s go with Halloween candies.

What qualifies something as “Halloween” candy? I’m going to lay down the following qualifications.

1. Must be available in bite size
2. Must have been available when I was trick or treating age (up the age of 13 I think).
3. Should still be available today.

All that said, please leave some comments with your thoughts on my list and your own list. I’m trying real hard to keep writing in this at least 3-4 times a week and knowing that others are reading will definitely keep me driven. Here we go.

Top 5 Halloween Candies

1. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups

I’ve always loved peanut butter. I don’t eat it as much as I used to and I think it's because I burned myself out on it as a kid. However, Reese's has always been a staple in my candy eating career. I've always loved Peanut Butter Cups. When you dumped my candy bag into the communal candy bowl (which was great for me because it allowed me to dip into my brothers collection as well) you would find only wrappers for the Peanut Butter Cups. I would grab them out of the bag in between each house.

2. Whoppers

I think my love of Whoppers is genetically inherited from my father. Every year when we would go trick or treating, he would search our haul for the Whoppers and I think I just grew to love them as I became protective of them. Man, they are great. OH! AND DID YOU KNOW THERE'S A VERSION WITH REESE'S PEANUT BUTTER INSTEAD OF CHOCOLATE! They are so good, but don't come in Halloween sizes.

3. Dots


My teacher is second grade was the worst. She was mean, especially to me. A favorite story around the family table when reminiscing about childhood is the time when she said something hurtful to me in front of the class and I began to cry. Since I was wearing my cub scout uniform at the time, she saw a window to get a second jab in by saying "Oh class, look at the girl scout." I have to imagine the girl scouts in the class probably took offense, as they probably didn't want me in their ranks any more than the boy scouts did.

Anyway, she loved Dots. Her desk would be littered with boxes of them on her birthday and in a rare show of compassion towards her students, she would share. Despite the horrors of being her student, I really like Dots. However, unlike the previous two, I only eat Dots at Halloween. They are never a choice any other time.

4. Sixlets

I forgot all about these little guys until this week when I saw them in the bowl of candy. I noticed something odd about these little balls of candy coated chocolate. I think the candy that is used to coat them is also the same ingredients that are used to make gumballs because every time I emptied the entire tube (the only way to consume sixlets) into my mouth, I thought they might be little weird gumballs, but shortly after, my mouth was filled with chocolate. One of life's great surprises. 

5. Candy Corn


Look, there are some things that just can't be explained. I love candy corn and I don't know why. How dare you judge me?

1 comment:

  1. hmmm. Tough question. My parents didn't really restrict my diet when I was a kid. I wasn't allowed to drink pop after a certain time of night so I could actually go to bed, but I was allowed to have the bad cereals like Cap'n Crunch. I had a sweet tooth and since I was very active, I didn't gain weight but I had a hell of a lot of cavities for the dentist to fill!

    When I was a tween and a teen, I also liked to write in my journal and listen to Our Lady Peace, but my parents really pushed me to play team sports. It was something that was pretty much always expected of me, but I was lucky that I enjoyed it early on and didn't want to quit. I know people who did Sports in Jr High but gave up in highschool. I didn't give up, but I switched from basketball to running because I wanted to still do a sport but basketball no longer made me happy. I can't remember if you said whether or not your parents made you do sports.

    I now have a crazy, uncontrollable sweet tooth, but I usually try to burn off whatever I consume with insane amounts of exercise. The sweets are usually a reward that I give myself if I've earned the calories. Of course there are off days with exceptions to that rule!

    So who taught me to do that? I have no idea...did it just naturally happen? there are sooo many factors. I think your parents influence it to a degree but as an adult you will eventually have the tools to decide what you want the future to be like. I have emotional issues with food and have no idea if my parents influenced it because it has always been there!

    ReplyDelete