What's For Dinner, Mountain Mama? Tootsie Roll. Take Me Home.

(The title is what I thought--when I was a wee lass--the lyrics were to Country Roads by John Denver.)

Even then, I was obsessed with food. I love it! It is my goal to have Hudson love everything as well. Expect for maybe hot dogs. And McDonald's. And jellybeans.

I always like to have something crunchy with whatever I'm eating, which I why I'm usually on the All Toast Diet (This reminds me of the time in college I went to the grocery and while I was in line, I decided to check my list to see if I'd actually purchased anything I'd gone there to get. My first item on the list: Toast. I was so embarrassed. I thought what if I'd dropped this list and someone came over the loud speaker and announced "Could the dumbass who is wandering the store looking for toast please come and pick up your list at the service counter? P.S. We only carry bread. Toast you make at home." Of course, now they have Texas Toast in the freezer section, but I'm not sure what makes it all Texas-y.) Then after dinner (hell...after lunch and breakfast, too) I like to have a bit of chocolate. In college I would always walk right outside the cafeteria and buy a bag of M&Ms or a Skor bar or one of those jumbo Tootsie Rolls or a handful of Hershey Kisses or sometimes one of all the above mentioned items. I lurve me some Tootsie Rolls. My mommy keeps them in a candy jar at her work station because she is the best mommy in the whole world and now the best grammy in the universe. I can't wait for Huddy to raid that candy jar. Gramma will probably steer her away from the Tootsie Rolls and force her to love Mary Janes or Bit-O-Honeys.

When I was little, I would go to the Five & Dime across from where my parents worked (they worked across the street from each other) and stock up on Now & Laters, Sixlets, Candy Cigarettes, and malted milk balls. In elementary school, we would get Black Cows if we had perfect attendance. That had me wondering years later, how many kids broke their record after having ripped out a filling or four eating those things. They were like Sugar Daddy but chocolatey. They were bargaining tools for us city kids. We traded them and horded them in our desks.

In high school, the cheerleaders would sell candy bars as a fundraiser. Crunch bars. Caramel bars. Almond bars. My mom would see me coming from a mile away, all the while knowing she'd have to just buy the whole box and take them to work to sell them for me. The whole damned school was selling them, from the basketball team to the shop class. We'd eat what we liked and when we ran out, we'd trade with someone else. I'll give you a crunchy one for your caramel. And so it went....

In NYC, I have a friend who allowed me to help kill a few Entemann's chocolate Halloween themed cakes. We were still buying them after Halloween. I believe we ate three of them together. I particularly liked how he'd cut a small piece for each of us as if that was all we'd have for the night. Good times. Same friend liked the Bounty bars in the blue wrapper, while I prefer them in the red. (Bounty is the Mars version of our Mounds, sold internationally, but can be found at stores that know their shit.) No competition between us. That's a good friend.

I knew a girl in NYC who said her mother ate so much chocolate when she was pregnant and said girl cannot stand chocolate. I nearly cried when I thought about how much chocolate I'd been eating and how I'd probably singlehandedly ruined it for baby before she'd ever had a chance to enjoy it. Then I widdled a little voodoo doll of said girl out of Toblerone and ate her.

I have been doing a lot of food replacement since I've had to give up dairy whilst nursing. Can't have cocoa? Will have 1 lb. bag of Twizzlers. Can't have cheese? Will have whole box of Annie's Bunny Grahams. You get the picture.

I'm sitting here thinking of this tonight, because I didn't know what to eat for dinner, so while I was feeding Huddy I made some wild rice. I went searching for something crunchy to go with it and nearly opened the rice cakes. Hello!! I did something like this once before. I made chicken for dinner and corn on the cob and I thought, Hmm...I need another side. As I was plating up my dinner, I looked down and realized, I'd opened a can of Mexican corn. I had chicken with corn and corn!! I do love all things corn, but come on!

So I didn't have anything crunchy to eat tonight, hence the rice went pretty much untouched. And no chocolate in the house. : ( And I forgot that I poured a cup of hot tea to make myself feel better and now I have wasted a bag of Twining's Naturally Decaffeinated Earl Grey. So sad. I really just want a Snicker but thereisdairyinitDAMMIT.