who knew?

I have a thing for foreign candy. More specifically, candy of the British variety. This is almost entirely due to the fact that my dad was born in England, so there is this heady nostalgia surrounding all things Cadbury, Quality Street, and Wine Gum related.I think I may have gotten heart palpitations when I saw the Cadbury machines in the London Underground. My best friend's father is randomly from the same town in England as my father, so this affection is even further amplified. Some of her first memories are of getting wine gums from my grandpa in church. Her uncle designed the first Quality Street tin.So for all of these reasons, trips across the border to Canada always involve hauling lots and lots of English confections. There are,of course other venues to purchase these goods. Indian Grocers can be successful as well as fancy grocery stores and places like World Market, or even better, when we lived in Cincinnati,Jungle Jims. But then, an ordinary candy bar costs like $2 bucks, making it something special, and thus the reason why I put off eating them until they are way,way past their prime.

So, you can imagine how I felt when I spotted a Coffee Crisp recently. First it was in a vending machine in Dr.'s office. Really strange, I thought.Maybe the vending company got an odd lot from Canada. It is just across the lake. Then, today, There they were at Discount Drug Mart 2/$1.00. I resisted my inclination to stock up on them and bought just one. In case you've never enjoyed one, a Coffee Crisp is much like a Nutty Bar,only instead of peanut butter cream it is coffee flavored cream. It makes it seem a little more adult and legitimate that way. When I sat down to write this entry,I went looking for a Coffee Crisp webpage, and low and behold, there has been an entire campaign devoted to bringing the Coffee Crisp to the states. Seriously, it was incredibly successful and you can read about it here. It's kinda crazy and a little cool to know that across the country people were being mobilized to demand the right to buy this candy bar.Of course, we all know that scarcity creates desire and once they are at every gas station and drug store, their elusiveness will only be legend. My future children may never know a world without Coffee Crisp.