Chocolate-Covered Cherries

During the holidays, my postage stamp-sized mailbox gets crammed with a gazillion mail-order food magazines.  Harry & David, New Braunfels Smokehouse, Chukar Cherries, Hickory Farms, and a couple of others of which I have never heard of (Wine Country Gift Baskets??  I don’t ever remember ordering from this place).  I like leafing through these while eating, of course.   Holidays equal food and eating.  And not just any food.

While driving to work, I’ve been listening to a continuing NPR story From Chompsgiving To Chew Years Holiday Dishes about favorite foods people eat only during the holidays and at no other time.  During those episodes, I wracked my brain trying to think of a favorite food that I only eat during Christmastime and no other time of year.  I have a pretty healthy appetite and generally don’t let a single holiday keep me from eating the same thing all year long.

And then, while in Walgreens picking up a prescription, I passed by a particular candy display…..

Chocolate-covered cherries

But not just any kind of chocolate-covered cherries.  They have to be the Queen Anne-brand chocolate covered cherries, and they have to be milk chocolate; not dark chocolate or burgandy chocolate (whatever the hell that is).  You know the ones I am talking about – a fake-red maraschino cherry floating in a pond of red syrup and encased in a tasty (but definitely not Belgian) milk chocolate covering.  When you bite into the chocolate, the syrup and cherry practically pop out and the super-sweet syrup oozes down your fingers.  Nom nom!

Christmas isn’t Christmas without these candies!  While I may not be able to remember what I ate for breakfast yesterday, I can still remember getting excited because my mother sent me a holiday care package including a box of Queen Anne Chocolate-Covered Cherries while I was in college….27 years ago.  Hell, I just now polished off two of these little chocolate-covered jewels while typing this post (having to stop periodically to lick my fingers and then wipe them off with a Kleenex).

That walk past the display in Walgreens prompted me to post a little write-up about these things.  A good excuse to take out my camera and do a little photography .  The photos you see here were actually taken with my point & shoot Canon Powershot G11, which I carry at all times in my purse.  It does a pretty decent job macro-wise and I use it mainly for photographing things I want to sell on eBay and to have for those “just in case” moments.  I try to never be without a camera, be it my iPhone, my SLRs, or this point & shoot.

So, what do you all eat only during the holidays?  Any holiday.  Do you buy it ready-made or make it yourself?  You can search on www.NPR.org and get the recipes about which they talk on that ongoing radio news article.  Some of them sound tasty, and others sound so odd that they are probably really tasty.

Ok, time for just one more chocolate-covered cherry.  Maybe with a little coffee….or milk…..or beer (hey, it’s Friday and I’m home from work).