Monday when I checked the mail it included a package for me from a far away land.
Packages from far away lands are the only decent things the mail ever delivers and they are very few and far between, so I was elated!
The far away land was the UK and the sender was my long time bloggy friend Mel, of I Speak Melsh.
It was a container of mixed chocolates!
Which is a wonderful thing to receive unexpectedly on Valentine’s Day
FOREIGN CHOCOLATES at that!
+2 points for the exotic nature of the candies.
These were the varieties
The boys were instantly fascinated with them. Though because Snickers is common here it was immediately ignored. They were also somewhat disappointed the different color Milky Way wrapper did not hide a different flavored Milky Way but instead had a 3 Musketeers Bar in it. The Mars bar was the Milky Way.
Two countries, separated by a common language.
But it did taste a bit different. Why?
No high fructose corn syrup. These candies were made with sugar & glucose syrup (which could be every bit as evil as HFCS is supposed to be but is not on US food radar so I have no clue). They were not as sweet, which is good because milk chocolate can get really cloying with HFCS. They tasted like milk chocolate. Not milk chocolate and sweetner.
I snuck all the Truffles out of the bag and am hording them.
The boys’ favorite is the Teasers followed by the Caramel.
I have to show you this photo of the back of the bag. I was tired & my mind was on dinner when I opened the package so I wasn’t giving it the attention I should have.
What I read was “Best Before 18:04 on Tuesday” and I said to DH “Wow, that is really specific. Do they mean 6:04 GMT do you think or will they still be ok at 6:04 EST?" And which Tuesday? What’s the date on the postage?”
While he was looking at me like I was insane I looked closer at the box.
Right. Not TUE but 11UE
But there is no 22nd month. Wait…how do European dates work again? Is this good until 2022? May 11 2022? November 5 2022? May 22 2011? 6:04pm May 22 2011? GMT?
And DH continued to just stare at me in amazement while scarfing down Snickers.
If there was still candy on Tuesday at 6am GMT it would be a near miracle.
There was still candy. But it will be gone long before the first Tuesday in May.
Thank you for the candy Mel. It’s a big hit!
12 comments:
What a nice gift! European dates always make me think twice.
My best friend is English. She is always sending me candy such a treat. My favorite ENglish candy has little bits of chocolate pieces in them and they are all different. They are not individually wrapped, so you never know what tasty morsel you might get. Caramel, chocolate, coffee or orange! YUM!
BTW, the date goes smallest to biggest. day, month, year. I made a baby cup for her last child and he was born sept. 10th 2009 so I had to write it 10-09-09
Hooray! So pleased it arrived safely, I was starting to worry it had got lost! Turns out the timing was perfect :-)
Love the confusion over the dates - I always do that with the American version! Nice to see that you're eating something while it's still in date..... ;-) And it was so interesting to hear about the differences, I hadn't realised that a 'Milky Way' to you is actually a 'Mars Bar' to us. (The truffles are the best. Definitely don't share them.)
So funny! I didn't realise you had chocolates called Milky Way - I wonder why it's the same as our Mars Bar, yet you have a similar sweet that is called 3 Musketeers? Well, just one of the many differences... along with date formats - that so made me laugh, Stacey!
Great little present to get through the mail. Funny that you thought of these as "exotic" - they're just "normal" here!! Nice of Mel to send you these... they come in Big Tins too you know (he he... heaven knows what the postage would be on one of those though!!) I wonder if there are any left now?
Also interesting that your chocolates contain HFCS and ours have glucose syrup. Whatever it's called, it's all sugar, which is still bad for you in high doses! I don't think we use corn syrup much in UK.
Chocolate is always a fun gift but when it comes from a blogging buddy from afar, that is so great!
How fun!
what a fab treat for you :)
Canada has the same configuration as the UK when it comes to Effem foods' chocolate (snickers is snickers, mars is nougat and caramel covered in chocolate, and 3 musketeers is just nougat covered in chocolate).
We however, have the Wunderbar.
We love European candy - it's one of the best things about traveling abroad, although we are all about UK Mars bars! We think they are different and way better than MilkyWays. . .
Rinda
I'm from the other side of the pond and it's weird seeing you discuss our everyday chocs with such reverence! My daughter, who's just come back from NY City, was just talking about about how your choc tasted different (I can now tell her obviously it's the HFCS that makes the difference!). The date business cracked me up!
I've never had chocolate from far away sent to me! Obviously, I need to make a better class of friends.
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