Candy for Mom?

OMIGOD IT'S MOTHER'S DAY AND I FORGOT TO GET MOM SOMETHING!

Is that your problem today? Boy howdy, it's a bad one. Fortunately there is hope. All you need to do is pop into your local supermarket or gas station and get Mom some awesome chocolate.

No, not a Whitman's Sampler or those awful Cella's chocolate cherries! Skip the Dove and Godiva and Perugina and Ghirardelli! If Mom likes a good strong cup of coffee, and if she raised you she probably needed it, then she wants these:

Yes, it's another of the apparently endless series of M&M's variations, this one Crunchy Espresso. (Note to New Yorkers: It is not Expresso. There is no such thing.) Crunchy Espresso is one of the flavors in the current vote for new flavor, along with Crunchy Raspberry and Crunchy Mint. All of them have that riceyness that gives the Crispy M&M its crunchiness. Last time M&M's went to a vote, peanut-based Coffee Nut was elected to be a regular flavor, so I guess Crunchy Espresso might be considered the favorite here.

Going the crunchy route for the espresso flavor makes it sort of a junior-varsity chocolate-covered espresso bean. If you liked those but you hated the bits of coffee bean in your mouth, this could be the M&M for you.

Here's is a closeup of the three Crunchy Espresso M&M's:

They all taste the same -- like dark chocolate with a strong instant-espresso taste. You might think one tastes like a twist of lemon peel and the other a glass of sambuca, but this is not an Italian restaurant. I find them to successfully portray their flavor, but I'm not sure how much America will go in for that. When Starbucks sells espresso, after all, they usually have all kinds of other crap in the cup along with it. That's how we got "latte," which I think is European for "can barely tell it's coffee."

Definitely not the case here. These M&M's have a very strong taste, very bitter -- so very, very bitter. Bitter, bitter, bitter. Bitter like a mother who realizes her beloved child forgot to get her something nice again this Mother's Day and wound up getting cheap candy at the Quick Chek. That kind of bitter.

Maybe you'd better see if the jeweler is open.