This a tough time of year for me. It's Russell Stover chocolate marshmallow bunny time. We go way back, that blue-foil bunny and I. Nearly two decades ago, my friend Joan and I stumbled upon the after-holiday sale to end all after-holiday sales. There, left carelessly in a mall corridor, were metal baskets packed with Russell Stover chocolate marshmallow bunnies...for twenty-five cents EACH! Surely, this couldn't be real. It was the equivalent of getting Apple stock on the ground floor. Giddy with delight, Joan and I lugged our loot out to the car. We reminisce about that magical day often.
For the cynical among you who view all chocolate as the same. First of all, and please don't take offense, but you're idiots. You obviously have a slab of liver flesh for a tongue. Those of us with a discerning palate such as myself, could talk for hours about the horrors of cheap wax-y pseudo-chocolate. The chocolate on a Russell Stover marshmallow bunny is rich and creamy and cracks when you bite into it. The thick space where the ears meet is my favorite part. And the marshmallow...oh! the marshmallow! I still wear black during 4-H cookie season in memorial of their cruelly-retired chocolate eclair cookies. In fact, let us please have a moment of silence for this great loss: ...............................................................................................
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Anyhoo, fellow fans of the 4-H chocolate raspberry eclair cookie (Hold on, I'm tearing up again) will immediately understand when I say that the Russell Stover marshmallow bunny's filling is comparable in texture and density to the 4-H chocolate raspberry eclair. The marshmallow is packed tight and spongy yet still maintains a delightful airy quality. Should one delicately nibble off all the chocolate from a Russell Stover marshmallow bunny, the marshmallow shape would relentlessly retain its noble rabbit shape. It is the perfect Spring-time treat but is often difficult to find after that first magical encounter twenty years ago. Fortunately, Wegman's can always be counted on to carry this limited seasonal snack but WARNING: there exists an alter-ego: the Russell Stover chocolate-flavored marshmallow bunny. When one is anticipating an original Russell Stover marshmallow bunny, it comes as rather a rude and devastatingly disappointing shock.
Both Brad and my friend Sarah have had similar experiences with me regarding the kind and then cruel distribution of my beloved Russell Stover marshmallow bunny, which, if you haven't noticed by now, I refuse to cheapen with an acronym. My loved ones have, in the past, repeatedly purchased mass quantities of the bunnies, not anticipating that my lack of self-control would blossom into self-destructive bunny binge eating. To save me from myself, Brad strategically hid marshmallow bunnies all over the house and watched, horror-struck, when I ripped the place apart. Sarah locked my bunnies in the trunk of her car and heartlessly doled them out like a one-a-day bunny multi-vitamin.
My daughter Sydney and I wandered into Wegman's the other day and while Syd was distracted, deciding on the perfect shade eye-liner ("You left your mother alone in Wegman's during Russell Stover chocolate marshmallow bunny season," her father yelled at her later when he'd discovered what I'd done. Poor Syd's grounded for a month but really, she should have known better), I hopped over to the seasonal candy aisle. A heavenly light shone over the shiny blue foil of my Russell Stover marshmallow bunnies. I'll just take one, I said to myself. But it's like taking one puppy away from its sad little siblings. I couldn't leave them behind. I found myself crab-walking, clutching bunnies like cord-wood, in search of a basket. The conveyor belt of shame was somewhat mortifying as my billions of bunnies followed a health freak's fresh produce and chicken stock (She was making homemade soup, the bitch).
The reality of what I'd done struck me in the truck. Obviously, I would have to hide these from my husband. And I refused to relegate my rabbits to the trunk of some car. They didn't snitch on the mob, for pete's sake. I am an adult, I told myself. I can handle this. So it was, after a sleepless night thinking about my bag of bunnies, I marched all the way to the opposite end of the school and solemnly handed it over to my friend, Amanda with strict distribution directions. "I MUST walk all the way through the school to receive my bunny and I can only have ONE a day," I told her. "But what if you're having a bad day," she asked, making me wonder if she were too soft-hearted for this endeavor. "You have to be strong," I said sternly, taking careful note of where she placed my treats. But she wasn't. By day two, I had successfully whined my way into a double distribution. I am writing this as both will and warning should you not hear from me again. But don't be sad. This is the way I would have wanted to go.
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