Happy Fall!

I'll admit it, I don't like Halloween. I know I'm going to sound like a loser, but I don't think I've had a fun Halloween since I was 10. My Halloween memories are full of being left behind at frat parties by drunken friends or having to fight Japanese subway style onto the third bus that has passed at 2 am Boston for an hour long ride home. Besides, every Halloween since college I've moved into a new apartment, and we all know how much fun it is to move.

I do, however, love candy and always will. I'm going to reach back to one of my earliest Halloween memories and name a girl I knew growing up, Katie S. In kindergarten one day she brought in a singly wrapped orange pumpkin candy for a snack. It caught my eye when she bit into it to show our teacher, Miss Colton*, it was actually a marshmallow. Katie S. would grow up to speed through life and master karate and buy a house and have a baby by the same age most of us are proud to rent an apartment with 5 roommates, but I didn't know any of that then. I only knew I wanted that marshmallow pumpkin. I wanted it so badly I had a dream around then where I had one of my own and when I held it up to show my classmates they all accused me of stealing it from Katie S. (Yes, I really remember all of this).

Every other Halloween or so since then, I remember that Marshmallow Pumpkin and wonder where it came from. Of course, marshmallow peeps are always prevalent, but it couldn't have been a peep since they're not individually wrapped. Was it possible I imagined the whole thing?

Then the other day I saw these in a Duane Reade:
I promptly forgot the toothpaste I'd set out to buy as the memories all came rushing back to me. It had been awhile since I'd last thought about them, and I wondered if I still wanted them. Plus, I'm trying to be Eco-friendly, I don't really think individually packaged marshmallows are necessary for someone who lives by herself. But, if I didn't buy them, I'd always wonder about what might have been. So, against all odds I picked them up and set them on the cash register counter. They rang up at a startling $4.32, but I convinced myself that $4.32 is a small price to pay to indulge youthful dreams.

They were TERRIBLE! They weren't marshmallowy at all, they were chewy and weirdly vanilla flavored. I stuck them in the freezer where I stick everything that I don't know where else to put in my kitchen, and there they'll stay indefinitely. Halloween had made a mockery of me again! Boo Halloween and all its eternal disappointments! I'm just going to hole up and wait for Easter, the only holiday that produces candy worth acknowledging (besides Christmas and Valentine's Day).

In other food news, I'm going to the Big E this weekend, and everyone else should too! It's the greatest fair in the world, ask any carnie.

*I normally refer to women who are not Mrs. as Ms., but we actually called her Miss Colton (it was the eighties).