Happy Easter!

I hope the Easter Bunny was good to everyone this year. In the House of Yum, the Easter Bunny went kind of easy on the candy since he knows that the Sugar Baby has a second appointment this week to get some cavities filled. Apparently he did a lot of shopping at Trader Joe's, too, as there were TJ's gummy bunnies, malted milk eggs, peanut butter eggs and jelly beans in the basket, along with some Lindt chocolate carrots. And with that, we say good-bye to candy season as things start to wind down. From here on out, our holidays are mostly candy-free and more focused on burgers and potato salad. It's the circle of life, folks.
But what about you? What was in your Easter basket?

Starbuck's Jelly Beans

In Starbucks the other day, I almost didn't see the little box of jellybeans on the counter. For $1, I grabbed this little packet of assorted-flavor jellybeans and tucked them into my bag. I totally forgot about them until I picked the Sugarbaby up from camp one day and he was starving. As you can see, he had no problem devouring the whole package before I even had a chance to take a picture. The flavors were strawberry, peach, fruit punch and I think lemon and orange. From the few that I tried, they were good but a little too sweet for my tastes. They made my teeth hurt.
I don't know if Jelly Belly is the maker of these beans, although I suspect they probably are. I've compared the Starbucks package next to a Jelly Belly sample-size package. I still haven't tried the honey jelly beans, but they've been given good reviews across the board. Needless to say, there were more jelly beans in the Starbucks package than in the sample bag, which is a good thing, especially if you're the Sugar Baby.

An Easter Basket Primer

(The Easter Bunny paid an early visit to the von Schokolats' this weekend)

I thought I'd write up an Easter basket primer for those of you who may be creating your first-ever basket. There are three types of baskets for you to choose from: Old Skool, Contemporary and pre-packaged.

Let's start with the easy one: pre-packaged. These are the baskets that are sold at drug stores. They usually contain cheap candy and even cheaper toys. These are a travesty and should be banned from the earth forever. Under no circumstances should you ever buy one of these, unless you are Eastern Orthodox and your Easter happens to fall a week later than everyone else and they're the only things left on the shelves.

An Old Skool Easter basket must contain at least three of the following:

• Plastic Easter grass that gets everywhere
• Chocolate bunny (hollow is fine; bonus points if it's driving a race car or holding a carrot)
• Big fat jelly beans-- a bag of mixed colors and a bag of black
• Peeps
• Those weird eggs that have a candy shell and mysterious marshmallowy-type center
• Foil-wrapped chocolate eggs
• Malted milk eggs
• Panoramic sugar eggs
• Paddle ball
• Stuffed bunny
• Play Doh, chalk or bubbles

Contemporary:

• A really good quality bunny, definitely solid
• "Gourmet" jelly beans
• Homemade marshmallows
• Truffle eggs
• DVDs

So ... what's going in your Easter basket?

Mr. Green Jelly Bean!

I love how last week's Sweet Treat Kris mentioned the joy of sifting through your Easter basket grass to find one last treasure. Just the mere mention of that brought me back to my childhood, when I'd sit on the floor with my basket and just look at everything. I'd arrange it-- jelly beans here, chocolate rabbit there, malted milk eggs in a pile-- and then I'd rearrange it. The big coup was always finding one more black jelly bean hidden in there somewhere. It was the only flavor I liked.
I have a feeling that the Easter Bunny has been kind of negligent about the Sugar Baby's basket because there's just so much candy around here all the time. I'd better send him an e-mail and make sure he remembers to hippity-hop this way.

Where Jelly Beans Come From (Albi the Racist Dragon)

Mr. Chops, Sue MKAFFGGF's husband, casually threw in a reference to the Flight of the Conchords yesterday, as if I should be cool enough to know what that was. Thanks to YouTube, I am now ice cold. Warning: This will make you laugh so hard, you'll cry.