Sweetness

I save up my sweet tooth until the weekend.  That's when I indulge in my longest love affair -- the one with chocolate.  And there's no better time of the year for chocolate than Halloween.

With the big night falling on a Sunday when I was away, this weekend was the first time I got to dip into the kids' haul.  Cady Gray had already made the accounting: The most treated candy was M&Ms, of which they received a stunning 82 fun-sized packets.  (Archer won the contest with a guess of 82.)

When I was a kid, we used to dump out our bags on the kitchen table on Halloween night and make sure everybody got an equal share of the most desirable items.  Chocolate came first, with Hershey's miniatures at the top, followed by Reese's cups, kisses, Snickers, M&Ms, and other lesser candy bars.  SweeTarts were the best of the non-chocolate treats.  At the bottom were Smarties.

In our house, we put the chocolate in one bowl, the rest in another.  The kids get their dessert from whichever they choose after dinner.  And on the weekend, I raid the chocolate bowl for the choicest bits.  It's pretty much the same priority as thirty years ago.  I still can't figure out what a serving is of these little mini-candies, so I eat too much, I'm sure.  And I'll be just as sad when the good ones are gone and I'm left scrounging through the off-brands hoping there's a stray Dove nugget that I've overlooked.