Finally, FINALLY, after a long week of waiting, my See’s chocolates have arrived.

Because I have been making such a gd fuss about it on Twitter, people have been asking if they are REALLY so good. Er…I’m not sure. That is, I know I like them, and I’ve never found an equal to the Butterscotch Square—but I haven’t compared to many other higher-cost chocolates, and the non-Butterscotch-Squares don’t strike me as being Beyond! Compare!, and I think hardly anything is worth $20/pound plus shipping, and probably I wouldn’t have spent the money if I hadn’t had some gift money burning a hole in my pocket plus the recent annual discussion with Paul where we decide not to do Valentine’s Day. I think on a regular day I would get more satisfaction per dollar out of $20 worth of Dove chocolates with almonds, or $20 worth of peanut M&Ms. But because having expensive candy is a rare thing, and because it was kind of a thrilling situation to have ordered them for myself (and I added a mug at the last minute, and the mug came with another little box of candy), and because my appetite for Butterscotch Squares was whetted by Doing My Best’s Crappy Day Present of See’s—well, I got kind of WORKED UP about the package arriving, and about trying other kinds to see if perhaps there was another Butterscotch-Square-level candy among them.

The first thing I noticed was that the first box I picked up felt like it weighed more than a pound. I have a postal scale, so I checked it:

My two 1-pound boxes together weighed just a teeny bit less than 2.5 pounds. Packing techniques can vary, and also probably the pre-assorted chocolates are much closer to an actual pound than the pick-your-own boxes, so I wouldn’t want to make a big THING about this and then have us all disappointed if we ordered boxes later that were “only” a pound—but it certainly was a happy discovery. That’s like a free $10-worth-of-chocolate-plus-shipping right there. [Edited from the future: Did I forget to weigh the boxes without chocolates in them, though? Because that’s some of the difference.]

Now. Let’s open the boxes:

Oh, wait, I forgot to switch it to my camera’s “Blogger Mode”:

The one I wanted most to try was the Milk Bordeaux. I’ve mentioned (perhaps OVER-mentioned) that my favorite is the Butterscotch Square, which is described as “Firm brown sugar buttercream.” Milk Bordeaux is described as “Brown sugar buttercream,” so I’ve been wondering how it differs from the Butterscotch Square. I have now tried both and am ready to make my report: the Bordeaux is more like a regular buttercream, with a dense (I’d say it’s as dense as the truffles), sweet, very smooth and creamy filling that tastes only a little bit like brown sugar (primary flavor is “sweet”); whereas the Butterscotch Square has a grained texture like actual packed brown sugar, and also tastes like actual packed brown sugar. The Bordeaux also has a layer of little chocolate bits (like jimmies, but better) over the chocolate coating, and I don’t like those: messy and I dislike the texture.

So to me, Butterscotch Square wins HANDS DOWN NO CONTEST. The Bordeaux is NICE, and I’d put it in the lower middle tier of my own favorites, with Butterscotch Square in the top tier and Ginger in the lower tier (I got Ginger in a mixed box once and I don’t remember if I spit it out or if I just didn’t finish the piece—it was like a strongly-flavored ginger-root gumdrop covered in dark chocolate that peeled off brittley when I bit) (oh, ick: that gave me a taste/texture flashback).

Next I wanted to try the stripey one. It’s a Blueberry Truffle, and I didn’t expect to like it so I only put it at 5% of one box (in this case, 5% of a 1-pound box was one truffle). But I DO like it! Middle tier, possibly even upper-middle. Nice blueberry flavor, some of it “blueberry candy” flavor and some of it “actual blueberry-the-fruit” flavor, and it’s a very pretty color with flecks of what is either blueberry skin or a very nice approximation of it.

From there I moved on to the California Brittle. I was excited to try this because I love Skor bars and Heath bars, and this looked like an upscale version. I got three large pieces of this (they’re on the far right of the lower box in my photo) and I would definitely get more next time: SO YUMMY. The brittle was just the right type of brittle: it shatters exactly right, neither hurting the teeth nor being too sticky, and the nuts made it even better. In my top tier: I’d still choose a Butterscotch Square over it, but they can keep company.

Last, I tried a Pecan Bud. This is another large piece, like the California Brittle (the Pecan Buds are on the far left of the lower box in my photo: two slots are double-stacked Pecan Buds, and one is an extra-large Pecan Bud all by itself). I THINK I like them very much, but it will take another try to be sure (good thing I have five of them): I was expecting more chocolate per pecan, so the first piece I tried was a little disappointing—but that doesn’t mean I won’t love them when I go into it knowing what to expect. …In fact, I’m going to have another one right now to see. Yes, this time it was much better. These would be lower-upper tier, except that I feel like anyone can put caramel and chocolate on some pecans. Even _I_ could put caramel and chocolate on some pecans. So although these are very yummy and I really like them, I probably wouldn’t ORDER them at $20/pound again.

 

Five flavors down, fifteen more to go!

Here is something I find exasperating. As you may know, bloggers are required by some sort of law to tell you whenever they’re talking about something they’ve been paid (in cash or in product) to talk about. That’s not the part I find exasperating, though I DO find it irritating that, for example, businesses are not held to the same requirements and can put “1 cup Brandname sugar” on their recipes all day long without disclosing their relationship to Brandname, and magazines can talk about how extremely awesome a product is without disclosing that they were given it for free, and so on. It’s not that I mind the rule (I DEFINITELY want to know if a blogger has been paid to tell me about how awesome something is), it’s that I mind the unfair/uneven application of it.

ANYWAY. Moving on to my point. There are MANY RULES for this disclosure stuff, and they are CONFUSING AND ALSO STRICT, but the gist is that if I’ve been given ANYTHING or benefited in ANY WAY from writing about something, I have to TELL YOU SO.

So! In theory, this should work great for things I’m NOT being compensated to talk about: I write about it, I don’t mention compensation, and you know that no compensation has occurred. HOWEVER: because of the blogging rules, the general blogging public is being extra-careful and doing the “disclose when there IS NOTHING to disclose” policy: i.e., saying “I wasn’t compensated in any way and I bought my own stuff with my own money” when such is the case—which means that THAT has become the default, and that NOT saying that specifically seems to imply that the reader needs to wonder about compensation.

SIGH. This clutters the place UP. And it makes it seem sleazy, too, like a salesperson saying, “Hey, I would sell this product FOR FREE, just because this product is SO AWESOME I feel an almost RELIGIOUS FERVOR for spreading the news of its existence!”

All this is to say that I am about to talk about something AWESOME, and I have not been compensated IN ANY WAY—which you SHOULD have known by the fact that I wasn’t saying I’d been compensated, but instead you get THIS crap.

*cleansing breaths*

SO. I recently got a Target RedCard (LINKED FOR HELPFULNESS NOT FOR COMPENSATION) (SIGH!!), which means everything I buy at Target is automatically 5% off. I’d wondered how that would WORK, since I don’t slide the card until AFTER it rings up a total so how does it know to take 5% off? And this is how: the clerk says, “That’s $100,” and I slide my card, and the total changes to $95 automatically and then charges THAT amount. Awesome. It was also easy to apply: it asked me a few questions (SS#, address, income) on that little screen you have to sign on, and then I was done. My mom told me afterward that what she did was apply at Customer Service, so she wouldn’t hold up the line.

But I’ve had that card for a couple of weeks, and this NEXT part is what made me rush to Inform The Internet: they sent me a thingie that says I can have 1% of what I spend sent automatically to any school I choose (er, of participating schools) (duh). And I thought, “Hey, why not? Free money. For schools.” So I went to http://www.target.com/tcoe, I chose one of my kids’ schools, I entered my name and card number, and DONE.

The unexpectedly cool part is that you can see how many other cardholders are having THEIR 1% sent to each school you’re considering, AND how much money has gone to the school, AND how much has accumulated since their last payment. So in our case, in which our children are spread over three schools, I could look at each of the three and choose the one with the fewest cardholders already donating money to it.

…I’m not succeeding in making this sound as fun/cool as it actually was, which is probably why I am NOT being compensated to talk it up. There were even daycares and preschools on the list! And this COSTS ME NOTHING. And yet I am giving money to SCHOOLS! Automatically! So I never have to think about it again, unless I want to change schools, and yet money will continue going to the school!

This is one of those things that gives me this huge IMAGINE WHAT COULD BE DONE feeling: imagine if everyone with a RedCard signed up—whether they had kids in school or not. It’s not as if it costs the cardholder anything except that couple of minutes it takes to choose a school and type in a name. And 1% isn’t much, even if you shop at Target the way I shop at Target, but it ADDS UP, and there’s NO REASON NOT TO, and it BENEFITS THE COMMUNITY, and *pant pant*

I’m feeling especially passionate on this issue because our school system has been asked to cut their budget this year by a huge amount of money, the kind of amount that’s causing them to wonder if they should choose MUSIC to cut or ART, or maybe THREE teachers should be laid off, and OMG PEOPLE JUST SIGN UP SO TARGET WILL GIVE A SCHOOL THE 1%!! It doesn’t even have to be a LOCAL school: if you have a niece in school in another state, you can have the money go THERE. Or if you want to give to your old hometown elementary school, or WHATEVER.

In other news: