Where my Peeps at?

How was your Valentine's Day?  Did you get all the chocolate and candy and diamonds you hoped for?  Aww, that's wonderful.  Now that that's over with, we move into my favorite candy season of the year - time for Peeps!

For the record, I am a chocoholic.  Chocolate cake, hot chocolate, chocolate chip cookies, chocolate covered strawberries, chocolate ice cream, chocolate crepes.  And did I even mention just plain ol' chocolate and chocolate bars?  (The new Snickers with almonds is delicious.)  And I eat it all year long.  If someone would invent a zero-calorie chocolate, I'd eat it every day.

But the candy that I only eat once a year?  Peeps.  The Easter ones, the pink and blue and purple chicks and bunnies.  Just the other day in the candy aisle, I was so happily surprised to find that it was already time to push those red hearts aside for the pastel, sugary-coated spring parade.  Peep season has opened and my first catch is a box of pink chicks.

Yeah, I know there's marshmallow-y hearts and ghosts and Christmas trees, Peeps for almost every holiday.  I never get them, I can't even imagine what they taste like.  And yes, I've been to the Peeps store at the National Harbor - and in the midst of all those Peep, I bought ducks and bunnies, even a box of chocolate covered ones.  My family, on the other side of the store, tried to see who could eat the hottest Hot Tamale and sourest Mike & Ike's; none for me, thanks (on the complete opposite of the spectrum from my love of chocolate is my not-love for candy that is spicy or sour).

Part of the specialness about Peeps is that they aren't available every day, just on certain holidays.  You got to get them while you can.  Kinda like Girl Scout cookies.  And it just occurred to me, glancing at the 100's of cases of cookies in my dining room.  Wouldn't it be oh-so-sweet if Girl Scout cookie season and Peep season didn't overlap, because between the marshmallows and the Thin Mints - whew!