Frozen Easter candy

Shake a leg, get out of bed, grab some clothes, head for the store to load up a cart with marked down chocolate bunnies, cream filled chocolate eggs and packages of all your favorite candies wrapped in Easter colors. It’s time to stock up for next year’s Easter basket.
At least that used to be my philosophy.
My daughter found it so amusing that she laughingly told her husband’s family that her “mom was so cheap that she bought the Easter candy on sale after Easter and put it in the freezer for the next year.”
“I did that to make sure I had a basket of candy to give you at Easter time,” I said defensively. “I wanted to give you everything, but since we chose to have me at home during those early years, we did not have a lot of extra cash floating around.” I spoke as one who lived on the parent side of the financially careful years of raising a basketball team of boys and one cheerleader.
Rather than wait until spring and the possibility of hitting a financial snag that would leave me wondering how I would be able to afford candy for that many baskets, I bought it at the after holiday mark downs. Loaded up with candy marked off 75 percent, I took it home, packed it in a brown paper sack and plastic, wrapped it all up in aluminum foil and stashed it deep in the freezer for the next year.
Yes, I know I came across as a pinch-penny, stingy person at times, but I figured the extras could wait. I gave my children the one thing which I considered most important … my attention and availability to be near by, to supervise them, to make sure they stayed on course with their school work, extra activities and overall behavior. To accomplish that end, I stocked up on sale items.
It was such a grand plan that I used it for several years. Hidden in the bottom of our huge deep freeze, I insured a future want could be met without conflicting with immediate necessities.
But that’s only part of the story.
Until now, I have never admitted the rest of the story — not all of the candy made it into Easter baskets.
Some years, I found myself in the middle of a summer day, fall morning or winter evening craving something chocolate and gooey — and all we had in the entire house that fit the bill lay hidden beneath boxes of frozen broccoli, bags of mixed vegetables, skinless chicken and frozen fruit.
Because I buried the candy deep in the freezer, I knew that the children would not be able to find it, let alone reach a package tucked down in the very bottom of the freezer. But I could reach it and I did.
Pushing aside the vegetables, I would stretch to the back of the freezer and snag a finger in a fold of the aluminum wrapped, paper sack. Inching it towards the front of the freezer, I wrangled to get it close enough to haul out of the freezer. Very carefully, I unfolded the aluminum, opened the brown paper sack and selected one, just one, delicious cream filled candy egg in a pink or yellow wrapper before carefully re-arranging the candy, closing the bag and resealing it inside the aluminum foil.
Sometimes I waited for the candy to thaw, sometimes I just enjoyed the pleasure of having it melt in my mouth as I satisfied my craving for chocolate.
I never depleted the bag. I never ate the chocolate bunnies. I always made sure I had plenty for the kids’ baskets – but planned or not, I also had a little bit extra for my own occasional craving.
(Chocaholic, Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times. E-mail her at joanh@everybody.org.)