Perhaps caramel is my ketchup

My favorite new food, so far, is Simply Caramel Milky Ways.  I just love them!  I think chocolate and caramel are a wonderful combination.  Kudos to whoever first put them together! (Ooh, speaking of Kudos, I should add chocolate granola bars to my list!) 

I tried Rolos.  Another caramel and chocolate combo—what could go wrong?  A friend of mine once told me of when she met the Dalai Lama.  She watched as he was receiving various gifts from people he met and then quietly handing them off to one of his attendants who took them off somewhere.  When someone handed him a pack of Rolos, however, he put them in a pocket of his robes!  So the Dalai Lama likes Rolos, huh?  So I tried them and meh.  I wasn’t thrilled.  In fact I was a little disappointed.  They have a bizarre taste as if they are not quite sweet, but almost like they used bad milk when they made the milk chocolate. Oh well, I don’t take the Dalai Lama’s fashion advice or respect him for his amazing dancing skills. And I can still have faith in him and be respectful even if I don’t have to agree with his taste in chocolate.

Anyway, it occurred to me that maybe what I like is not the combination, but simply the caramel.  I love French fries.  But I know that some people eat French fries not because they like French fries so much, but because it is a convenient way to eat ketchup.  Ketchup becomes the object; the fries are merely a means to an end.  Many foods have fallen victim to this passive eating role in cuisine.  I almost feel bad for them, but then I remember that it’s mostly vegetables that this happens to, and duh! They don’t have any feelings!

So perhaps I haven’t been swept away by the chocolate-caramel bliss.  Maybe I’ve just been thrilled to have an excuse to eat the sweet caramel that I’ve always liked.  Perhaps caramel is my ketchup.  I had to know.  I bought a bag of caramels.  Very good.  Verrry good.  I happened to have one in my purse; I’m eating it right now.  It is portable—unlike chocolate.  Yes, I do like caramel—a lot!

And then yesterday, the family I work for bought a whole bunch of bite-size Simply Caramel Milky Ways.  I wanted to bless and damn them in the same sentence, but I wasn’t sure how to do that.  I took one and in that first bite I knew: yes, I like caramel, but the combo is what is truly incredible.