Hi! I’m Rosa, and welcome to my candy blog! I’m glad you’re here. I use this blog to share my opinions on various types of candies and sweets that I taste and eat. You’d be surprised at how much candy there is out there in the world. I hope that I can help you avoid the bad ones and hone in on the good ones. I have no formal training in the culinary arts or food tasting, but I love candy, and I love sharing my love with others.
I’m currently in the midst of a two-year stint as a lab manager of a research lab in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Rochester. Rochester has Wegmans and Hedonist Artisan Chocolates, both of which I love, and cold, cold weather, which my Austinite self decidedly does not.
I started this blog back in August of 2007, and I hope to keep it up as long as I can continue fitting it into my life. So far so good! If you’ve got good candy tips, feel free to drop me a line through my contact page; I love hearing from readers and fellow candy lovers.
My blog is self-run and self-funded, meaning that I pay for my hosting, my domain, and my candy out of my own pocket, and I write and maintain everything on this website. I do run Google Adsense ads, but I’m lucky if that even drums up a few pennies a day. I also run affiliate ads and links in my sidebars and in my reviews. If you click on those links to shop Amazon.com or JBox.com or CandyWarehouse.com, I get a small percentage of what you spend, at no additional cost to you.
Finally, I occasionally get free samples from PR people who are promoting their products. When that is the case, I always say so in my reviews. I state all of the above so that you, dear readers, know about anything that could potentially bias my reviews. If you’d like to help fund my blog, check out those affiliate links and this page here.
A few more candy related things about me: I love dark chocolate, especially chili chocolate. I adore malt and will eat it straight out of the tub. I spent a summer abroad in England (my first time in Europe) and fell in love with the place. I also fell in love with British accents, British toffee (especially Walker’s Treacle Toffee), and licorice pencils/cables/whatever you want to call them.
As my boyfriend learned after we toured France and Spain together, international traveling with me means learning about another culture through its candy. I will drag you into the candy aisle of every convenience and grocery store we pass, and instead of proper souvenirs, I will fill my suitcase with sweets. I am grateful to my boyfriend for his infinite patience, which is made doubly impressive by the fact that’s he’s been on a ridiculous no desserts - and thus no candy - diet the entire time we’ve known each other (lest I sound intolerant of his dietary decisions, let me point out that he’ll eat a dozen chocolate chip pancakes and a muffin, but hand him a piece of the finest Amano chocolate or call that muffin a cupcake, and it’s immediately, “No thanks; I’m good.”).
I can’t stand black licorice, and I tend to look down on white chocolate. I also tend to look down on Hershey’s for their sour milk chocolate and their horrible use of mockolate in many of their products. Take 5 used to be one of my favorite candies, but I haven’t tried them since they’ve been reformulated with mockolate. Mockolate makes me sad.
I take my candy photos with a plain old point and shoot digital camera - a Canon SD1000 set on macro with no flash in as direct sunlight as I can get, if you’re curious. I’ve been seriously considering investing in a digital SLR for ages, but I’ve yet to take the financial plunge. For photo-editing (which for me means cropping, white-balancing, water-marking, and re-sizing), I use Picasa for Mac. And I make liberal use of Picasa’s “I’m feeling lucky” button.
Enjoy the site, and have a nice day!
