M&M's

As I ate a handful of M&M's this evening, I was reminded once again of how M&M's have not changed since I was a child.  Well, except for that unfortunate shell color change.  I'm talking about the original brown bag, not all of these fancy colors and flavors they sell now.  They used to be dark brown, yellow, green, red, and tan [or a light brown].  But I digress.  (If you're really interested in the color history of M&M's, then click here.)

When we'd visit our paternal Grandparents, one of the first stops my siblings and I would make was the candy jar in their kitchen.  It usually had M&M's in it.  If it was empty, we would find a brown bag of M&M's in a drawer just below the candy jar.  It was a rare day when there weren't M&M's in the jar or in the drawer and whether in the jar or in a new bag, I loved the smell of those candy-coated bits of chocolate.

To this day, some 40 years later, when I open a bag of M&M's, I stop and take a whiff of the contents before pouring them into my candy jar; one that used to sit on my Grandma's kitchen counter.  I swear, M&M's smell, and taste, exactly as they did when I was eleven or twelve and the scent of a fresh bag of those chocolate morsels puts a smile on my face and takes me back to Grandad and Grandma's house every time.