Easter candy thoughts.

I guess by this point in the week the Easter baskets have all been emptied. Any little toys have been broken. All the candy has been consumed, maybe even the black jelly beans.

I could never stand those. Any licorice candy turned me off. Mom would eat them. She said she liked them. Maybe it was the only candy in the house she knew she could enjoy in peace.

My aversion to black licorice has lasted from childhood until this very year, when I tried some Gimbal's Scottie Dogs, which were purchased along with dog food at the Tractor Supply. But even though Gimbal's Scottie Dogs are shaped like dogs, they are not dog food.

This is black licorice that tastes good. Not mean and bitter and astringent, but delicious, a perfect balance of the anise flavor with the sweetness. I have always found black licorice to taste like anise seeds and wallpaper, with the consistency of the latter, but these are really tasty. Unfortunately for me, or fortunately for my waist, I must forgo them as they will pull every filling out of my face.

I guess I've always just eaten cheap, lousy black licorice before. But I never minded cheap, lousy chocolate Easter bunnies. They always were a mild disappointment, though.

Having grown up with pretty good Hershey's and the like, and even sometimes really good chocolate, the cheap, waxy Easter bunny was not too exciting. But I found the secret to enjoying it -- get the jar of peanut butter and make your own Reese's. The quality of the chocolate is almost irrelevant when mixed with PB. You can even break up the chocolate and make a sort of Reese's Peanut Butter Sandwich for lunch. This is what we used to do before Nutella was all over the place, children.

But back to the Easter bunnies. If you were really lucky you got a solid chocolate bunny, but of course most of them were hollow. This has led many people to use an Easter bunny for a metaphor for their lives -- cheerful and appealing on the outside but completely empty on the inside.

See, my life is not like that. I'm grumpy and scared on the outside, and it goes straight to the bone,