Chocolatey Goodness

Daily writing prompt

Describe your dream chocolate bar.

Like all food related questions this one has two answers. One from before weight loss surgery and one from after.

Before the surgery I weighed 450 pounds. It shouldn’t take any difficult math to prove that chocolate was a huge part of my life. My love for chocolate was deep and passionate and a little weird. I just loved me some chocolate. I am also a very picky eater so I can’t say I devoured all chocolate bars, but I did eat massive quantities of those that I liked… and there were a lot of them.

Snickers, Milky Way, Nestle Crunch, 100 Grand, Fast Break, Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, plain old ordinary Hershey Bars, and many, many more. I could eat them by the truck load and I had the waist line to prove it.

Post surgery things are different. My gutted, rewired digestive tract can no longer process more than the smallest amount of sugar. That means my chocolate bar devouring days are pretty much over.

Or are they?

I thought so when I agreed to the surgery, but since then I have found a lot of sugar free chocolate options. There are all sorts of no-sugar protein bars that I eat happily. Atkins makes some, Quest makes some, there are a couple of others as well. That’s cool. Possibly even sanity or (dare I say it) life savingly cool. Did you know, however, that both Hershey and Reeces make sugar free bite sized candy? Oh yes they do, and Robbie has made very good use of them. Oh yes, he has. If I had to pick one as a favorite it would probably be the plain old sugar free Hershey Bites, but the Reeces Peanut Butter Cup Bites are pretty amazing too. Do they taste like the real thing? Maybe. Is it close enough to not matter if they really don’t. Yup. Close enough for me at least.

So there you have it. Before surgery I ate chocolate like my life depended on it. Since? I still dig mme some sugar free chocolate. Life is good.

No Sugar for Me

Daily writing prompt

What’s your favorite candy?

View all responses

There are two answers to this question for me. Favorite candy before weight loss surgery and favorite candy after weight loss surgery. When I had my insides rewired by Gastric Bypass I lost the ability to digest sugar. If I eat more than the tiniest amount my guts will reject it and I will get seriously sick for hours. Basically I will expel everything out of both ends at the same time… so just imagine that and accept that I will never eat sugar again.

So what was my favorite candy before having my guts carved up back on May 4, 2022? That’s a tough one. There are so many options. I think Snickers bars might be the traditional answer as they were often my go-to candy. M&M’s could be the answer as well. I ate a lot of plain, milk chocolate M&M’s over the decades. One other possible answer would be more of a dark horse in the race. I really liked Reeces Fast Break bars. They were fantastic.

All of those choices could have been my favorite candy, but there was one other that probably wins out over everything. I didn’t have them often because they were only available during the xmas season. Cadbury Mini Eggs. Imagine M&M’s on steroids. Bigger, better candy shells, way better chocolate. They were like a delicacy. I had a couple of friends who felt the same way and we all used to stock up on them every holiday season. We horded them and were not ashamed to admit it. They were candy perfection to me.

Then we get to May 4, 2022 and my gastric bypass surgery. No more sugar for me. No more candy for me. Or was there? There are a few sugar free candies out there. I find myself drawn mostly to sugar free cookies and pudding cups, but I have been stock piling a couple of candies. Reeces makes a sugar free bite sized peanut butter cup and they are wonderful. Are they as good as the real thing? Probably not. Are they good enough for me in the new world? Yes, yes they are. I think they get my vote for my current favorite candy. A very close second is bite sized sugar free Hershey bars. They are excellent too. There is also a caramel filled sugar free Hershey bites that are excellent but my digestive system sometimes expresses displeasure the day after I eat sugar free caramel. It’s not bad and I am not going to boycott caramel, I just try to make sure I only eat it when I am going to be home the next day. I don’t think things will get that unpleasant, but I’ll error on the side of caution, you know?

Hey Google Bard, generate a photo of a Jedi Knight eating candy.

Blasphemy!

I fell off the weight watchers wagon during the holidays. I clawed my way back on in January. Then the weather went to hell in a hand basket in February and I fell off hard again. I am back to my old junk food ways. The plan is to get back on the wagon when life calms down a little in a week or two. I will be just as militant in my weight watchers as I was in the fall, don’t worry about that.

That’s not what this post is about though. This post, as the title suggests, is about Blasphemy with a capital B.

Seeing as Spring is coming quickly upon us, the world turns its junk food eye to the Easter holiday. That means one thing and one thing only. Cadbury Mini Eggs. The single greatest junk food ever created by human brilliance. The genius of the Mini Eggs cannot be overstated. Word on the street though is that Cadbury will soon be stopping all operation within the United States. That means that Mini Egg lovers like me need to get them while they can! Fortunately for my sweet tooth (singular. There is literally only one tooth left in my rotten head. Well… not literally, more like figuratively… for now) I’m off the weight watchers wagon and can indulge my love for the heavenly decadence of Cadbury’s finest confection.

I bought two bags at a CVS last night. When I came home I eagerly opened one, dumped the contents into a bowl, and prepared for junk food bliss.

But wait…

What’s going on here?

The colors are all wrong! Did Hershey’s screw things up on us?

I popped one into my mouth, not even worrying about the huge red flag that should have been waving in my clueless, unsuspecting face.

Wait a tic…
What’s going on here?

This is dark chocolate! What What What? Dark Chocolate?

BLASPHEMY!!!!

I checked the bag I just opened. Sure enough, it says dark chocolate. I am insulted. I am offended. They took the greatest thing on Earth and took a giant crap all over it. Dark chocolate? No. Mini Eggs must be only the finest milk chocolate. Only the best will do! Not some faux chocolate kick in the balls. Never! Never, I say!

I said I bought two bags last night. The other one is milk chocolate. That means some clueless rouge of a CVS employee mixed two different products into the same bin. Damn his or her eyes!

Dark chocolate mini eggs. How dare they? How Dare they!

Cake

My company is celebrating it’s 45th anniversary today. There is a cake available in every building and each member of staff is entitled to a piece.

They started serving it nine minutes ago. A group of people just walked past my desk, all with their own little slice.

It is chocolate.

Oh the temptation. Oh the pain! Oh how I want that effin’ cake!

I want it, but I don’t need it. It’s not on the weight watchers plan (I’m not counting points, I’m on the simple start/simply filling plan where they give you a list of foods that you are clear to eat). I must resist. I will resist. I will fight the temptation. I will rise above it and lose, like, one extra fraction of one ounce today. Damn you, chocolate corporate anniversary cake! I am better than you! I will defeat you!