Sugar Savvy

I have always loved to swim. I love to swim in pools and lakes and oceans and rivers.

So, naturally, I love summer. The only bummer about summer, however, is that the high temps make the storing and transporting of my favorite food group (uhhh… chocolate, as if that needs clarification) somewhat of a challenge. Just last week I was sending some books to my friend in LA who is laid up with a broken foot. Naturally, I couldn’t resist throwing in a bar of our local Dagoba for an extra treat. Tragically, my friend opened the package and was greeted with a dark brown lime and macadamia-laced puddle of (65% cacao) chocolate goo. Whoops. And while cleaning up the mess and saving the books, she also accidentally threw out the hemp lip balm I included. Lesson learned.

But as much as I love to swim, the “no food in the swimming pool” rule has always been a bit of a buzz-kill. This is not to say that I haven’t managed to surreptitiously enjoy an Eskimo pie or a box of Lemonheads while lazily floating on an inner tube, but it just seems such a shame that my two great loves (swimming and food) are so often segregated.

So, I can’t really decide if these little gems I picked up this week at Dollar Tree (yes, AGAIN with DT – I know, I’m a little addicted) are either the next best thing to candy in the pool, or if they are actually just a taunting reminder of that which is so often excluded from the swimming party.

In any case, here’s a fun (and inexpensive) way you can enjoy a little “chocolate” under the hot sun without staining your beach towel and without risking a whistle-blow from the eagle-eyed lifeguard at the neighborhood pool.

And then when you return home, ravenous as you are after a good romp in the pool, go ahead and pull out the REAL THING that you have stowed away in the freezer with great foresight - for that summer afternoon sugar-Jones. Because, as we all know, any true candy freak cannot be truly satisfied simply by the PVC rendition of our true love. FYI: In case you’ve never tried them, frozen Junior Mints RULE!