Of course Swiss chocolate is all well and good, but most you lucky bastards live smack dab in the middle of chocolate nirvana. In the store, girl in the white dress, made fresh daily, nirvana. I hate you for it.

Yeah, around Christmas time we get a cart at the mall that sells a few prepackaged selections, and yeah I can order off the web site, but it just ain't the same as getting it from the store.

I never understood why See's was such a phenomenon. Every Christmas everybody was giving it out to everybody else and it just tasted like your standard chocolates to me.

Since they don't do the sarsparailla suckers anymore (that I've seen over the last year of looking) there's no reason to go in anymore.

But then, since I don't bitter stuff (this feeds into the coffee hating too) I'm a heretic in not really caring one way or the other about chocolate and when I do I prefer milk chocolate over dark chocolate.

I like Sees, I grew up with Sees, but it's not fresh daily in the stores, has not been forever. I have a Sees a few blocks away on Polk Strasse, I do love their caramels (and toffee, and raspberry cremes) but if I want chocolate nirvana, plain and simple, it's this. One small uber dark square of this decadent 70% cacao, melts slowly in your mouth like nothing else. If I could inject it, I would.

If they are what I think they are, I want a case :p

Thank you all for the offers. I really appreciate it.

It probably because it was tied to all our family special occasions when I was a kid. Christmas, birthdays etc.. Objectively, yeah it's probably not that different than some other brands but emotionally there ain't nothing that comes close. A whole box of Milk Molasses Chips all to myself was just about the best part of Christmas for me. Plus I'm sure living out on the bitter east coast where I can't get it plays it's part also.

Though at least it is now officially not the policy* of Cracker Barrel (as of 2002) I am still iffy about patronizing the place since most of the company executives that supported the explicit anti-gay employment policies are still there. The more recent racism allegations don't help.

On the other hand I love any restaurant where you can get a meal with three "side vegetables" and none of sides are actually vegetables (I think I had macaroni & cheese, some cinammon apple thing, and biscuits of some sort).

*Between 1991 and 2002 (when forced by shareholders) it was official policy that employees promote normal heterosexual values.

For us growing up it was equally likely be a See's sampler or a Whitman's sampler. I preferred Whitman's because it had a map of the chocolates (if the See's did as well I never saw it).

At least for us, the holiday Sees boxes (except for the molasses chips) where all custom selected 1lb boxes heavy on the California Brittle and Milk Chocolate Creams and so no road map.

Mmmmm... See's.... (anguished drooling)

I used to love the See's pops, hard chocolate blocks on a stick. The dark ones were especially tasty. I probably lost a filling or two on them.

So, I've had two perfect hair days in a row. Awesome.