Out of kindness, consideration and politeness, I will encourage you to stop reading this for a minute while you go and fetch a napkin. Yes, a napkin. Why? Because I know that at least some of you (the before mentioned politeness comes in here - I'm being polite and not mentioning anybody in particular by name o;-p) will be drooling by the time you finish reading this posting. ;-b

    Instead of buying more candy this year to give out to trick-or-treaters, I dug the rest of the candy out which had been left over from filling the little favor bags we had used at Byron and Cyndi's Michigan wedding reception. For those of you newer to my blog, last fall our eldest son got married out of state. Then due to holidays and a cousins wedding, we waited to have a in-state reception till the middle of January. However, we still held to their fall theme, and in tune with the bride's love of Halloween, we made up little trick-or-treat bags as favors for the guest, whom were suppose to say "trick-or-treat" to get one from the ushers :-}. I had bought all of the candy up at 75% clearance two days after Halloween, before we even had any idea what-so-ever where the reception would be, or how many would be invited, etc. . I ended up over buying. Hey, it was chocolate. And it was for a good cause. And ... o;-p

     So for Halloween this year, I pulled the (hidden until then) leftover candy out to hand out. But the number of trick-or-treaters we had this year was considerably less than normal. And while the candy itself was no longer 'wonderful', it was definitely still 'good!'. But for how much longer? I wanted to use it up not waste it. Hum mmm. The thinking cap came on.

     The large percentage of the candy were little bags of  M&M's (both the bride and my husband's favorite :-}). I had placed the peanut ones as well as the Twix bars and the Reece's's cups (one of the grooms fav.'s) in a small basket on the trunk in the living room. But I still had lots of bags of the regular M&M's, and recently I had stumbled upon a partical large size bag of Easter M&M's (sometimes out of sight really does equal out of mind o;-p), as well as a partical large bag of the dark chocolate M&M's (left over from something ... o;-p). I wanted to use all of them up. Hum mmm ... thinking ... .

     I toyed with the idea of making M&M cookies using of my choc. chip cookie recipe. I had done this before. But for what ever reason (totally unknown by me - yes, it was MY brain - don't ask okay?!?! o;-p), they just weren't what I wanted to use the M&M's for this time. Hum mmm ....

     Then I read the email requesting more pans of brownies to be donated to the flag football event at church. BINGO! :-D  M&M brownies. But made a bit different this time. Usually when you add M&M's to something, you add them as whole pieces. But that has two down sides where brownies are concerned. First off is the fact of cutting them. It's not always plausible to cut in a straight line when cutting M&M filled brownies. M&M's are not easily cut through, causing your knife to stall, or slide sideways a bit, or something. The other thing is a mind thing. When your eating brownies, even ones that you know contain M&M's, your mind set is still that your biting into something soft. And then your tooth hits a (uncutable) M&M, one which has been baked (which I swear makes their shells even harder) and those of us with sensitive teeth to start with, end up cringing 8-/.

     But the idea of M&M brownies persisted in my mind. Hum mm. I wonder. If my kitchen shears are strong enough that they can cut through raw chicken bones, they should be able to cut through M&M's, r-i-g-h-t?

     They did. So during the course of the day Thursday, I would vary between sitting in my claimed spot on one of the small couches, cutting M&M's mainly in half, while watching something with Brandon and visiting with Byron and Cyndi, to doing loads of laundry, to rocking Analyse. EVERYbody in the house thourally questioned why I was cutting them and whether or not it would make any difference. But I kept cutting. ALL of the trick-or-treat sized bags got done. ALL of the left over Easter ones got cut. And almost all of the dark chocolate ones got done, untill I had what I deemed was the needed sized pile of pieces sitting in a bowl. :-}

     Then on Friday I baked brownies. I started by making a triple batch of my homemade brownies (which I had made the recipe up for y-e-a-r-s ago). Once the batter was ready to put in the pans, I added the cut M&M pieces. I then poured the triple batch into two 11 x 12 baking pans. Those would be sent with Brian to flag football. When they were done baking, I made up a batch and a half, added the rest of the cut up M&M's, and poured the batter into my other 11 x 12 pan. That pan would fulfill the house rule of "if I bake something to send elsewhere, I must also bake one for the people at home to eat".

     Did cutting the M&M's make any difference? OH MY GOODNESS!!! These brownies are "scrumdelicious"!!! (For those of you that don't know - "Scrumdelicious" is a word from the movie 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang', and is a combination of the words 'Scrumptious' and 'Delicious' :-}). The word totally fits as a description of these brownies!!! SERIOUSLY!!! They are maxed out fudgie! It is taking so-o much will power to only eat half of one a day!!! (help!) And 'out of sight' would most definietly not work as out of mind with these!!!

     Whoops, I warned all of you to go fetch a napkin, but didn't do so my self ... gotta go. Question is, will I fetch just a napkin, or also fetch today's half? o;-p