Make your own Candy

Benefits

Environmental Benefit: ★★☆☆☆
Making things yourself is almost always an environmental plus - saves on packaging and distribution costs if nothing else.

Money Saved: ★★☆☆☆
Candy can be really expensive. For example, quality truffles cost at least $1 each, but cost more like $0.20 each or less to make.

Lifestyle Benefit: ★★★☆☆
Some candies like chocolate truffles are actually very easy to make. Others, like caramels, take more cooking and are difficult to handle (stiiickkky!!) but worth the effort! Lots of fun to make with kids too - they're fascinated by candy that didn't come from a store!

What We’re Doing
Last Valentine's day we got lots of gourmet chocolate bars, additions like mint leaves and orange tea and cocoa nibs and caschews, and made gourmet truffles! Mmmmm - they were good and we ended up giving away lots and gaining probably a few pounds. Also made peanut brittle for the first time a few weeks ago, as our oldest daughter was asking what it was! Lots of recipes abound on the internet, but if you are a chocolate lover then you need to be aware that truffles are actually very EASY to make!

A Little Humor

You can safely have chocolate while driving.

You can have chocolate all weekend and still walk okay on Monday.

If you've got melted chocolate all over your hands, you're eating it too slowly.

Chocolate covered raisins, cherries, orange slices and strawberries all count as fruit, so eat as many as you want.

How do you get 2 pounds of chocolate home in a hot car - eat it in the car park.

If I eat equal amounts of dark chocolate and white chocolate, is that a balanced diet?

Money talks. Chocolate sings.

Chocolate has preservatives. Preservatives make you look younger.

Why is there no such organization such as Chocoholics Anonymous? Because no one wants to quit.

Put "eat chocolate" at the top of your list of things to do today. That way, at least you'll get one thing done.

A nice box of chocolates can provide your total daily intake of calories in one go. Isn't that handy?

If you can't eat all your chocolate, it will keep in the freezer. If you can't eat all your chocolate, what's wrong with you?

If not for chocolate, there would be no need for control top pantyhose. An entire garment industry would be devastated. You can't let that happen, can you?