Jelly Beans

If I get a cavity, it’s all Kira’s fault. She brought jelly beans to a meeting last week. Not dollar store jelly beans that taste like lemon Pledge, stale Tang or some alien interpretation of red fruit. No, she brought high-end gourmet jelly beans in flavours that rivaled Bertie Bott’s — only without off-putting variations like ear wax, rotten egg or spinach.

Pear, green apple and even buttered popcorn burst in my mouth. I’m ashamed to say I paid as much attention to the jelly beans as the agenda.

Being seduced by sweets isn’t unusual for me, but I normally go for cookies over candy. And despite three kinds of homemade cookies sitting right next to them, I nibbled my way through the lion’s share of jelly beans.

My enamel-dissolving encounter on Tuesday night would have been bad enough on its own, but I found myself craving these things. I tried not to think about them, but that’s like trying not to think of a pink elephant — or in this case, a pink jelly bean. By Friday night? I was the proud owner of a 900g (2 pound!!) box of gourmet jelly beans. Some shone sky blue, some glowed like gemstones and others were dead ringers for tiny polished beads of granite. Coconut, toasted marshmallow and strawberry smoothies were on this agenda. And there wasn’t a room of peers to keep my gluttony in check.

By Sunday night they were gone — all but the burn-your-tongue-hot cinnamon coals, the despised black licorice ones and, what I am forced to conclude was, an unfortunate attempt at root beer.

Good thing I didn’t read the ingredient list until I was scrounging for the last watermelon bean at the bottom of the box. Turns out I might have been safer scarfing ear wax. I knew I was in for a high dose of sugar and corn syrup, but shellac? Yes, shellac — and bees wax and other ingredients my fingers refuse to type out. Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction.

So, if we were to share a jar of jelly beans, which flavours would you arm wrestle me for and which would you be picking out of the mix and secretly feeding to the dog?