Conversation Hearts

One candy I look forward to every year is the conversation hearts. Specifically, the Necco brand conversation hearts.

I was thrilled when I went grocery shopping today and they were on the shelf and on sale! I bought 3 packages.

I am not sure if they changed the flavoring this year or not, but I am not digging them as much this year. The purple ones are great. There are no white ones (which were peppermint-y). The rest taste like fruity flavors (orange is orangey, yellow is lemony, etc.). The pink ones taste like strawberry flavored chap stick. I do not care for them at all.

I think I'll just eat all the purple ones and move on. Any ideas on what went wrong? The Necco web site says the recipe has not changed!

Licorice

Just in case it ever crosses your mind, the answer is YES: Children do think chinchilla poop is little black licorice candies that would be delicious to eat. I just fished one out of String Bean's mouth.

Current score:
Chinchilla - 1
String Bean - 0

It's a Trick for us.

Halloween, that is.

As I've mentioned before, our Peanut has Prader-Willi Syndrome. (Yes, I'm going to link every time.) The biggest health risk for those with PWS is life-threatening obesity. The obesity stems from a very slow and different acting metabolism and is coupled with an insatiable appetite. In other words, people with PWS will grow morbidly obese on a normal diet and always be hungry besides. Peanut has just started to gain weight quickly and we are in the process of changing our family's nutritional outlook.

When it comes to the candy holidays, we parents already have a problem, and then comes Halloween, the worst of the candy holidays. The whole celebration revolves around candy, even the alternative events. Trick or Treat? bags of candy. Trunk or Treat? entire cars full of candy. So what are we to do? Walnut is well versed in the joys of Trick or Treating and has been talking about this Halloween since last Halloween, nearly salivating at the thought of so much candy. But, we can't have it in the house. We just can't. We can't let Walnut and Cashew have what Peanut can't have and there is only so much sneaking that we're comfortable with. Some one suggested to Filbert that we only keep a 1/4 of the candy we collect, but that is still too much for Peanut to have and we need to break the candy tradition sooner rather than later.

So to that end, we are going to an apple orchard for Halloween. Royal Oak Farm. We hope to make it a yearly tradition. Walnut, Peanut, Cashew and I went there last fall with my co-blogger Mandie, the unblossomed String Bean and our friend Fancy Aimee, who totally rocks on car trips with small children.