Sweet Like Sugar - Or The Devil's Drug

(Okay Mom, stop reading. There's lots of nice things to read on the internet besides how your only daughter inhaled sugar by the pound as a child. No? Okay, don't say I didn't warn you.)

I was 100% a sugar addict as a kid. (And well into adulthood, but we'll stick to my youth for now.) Not just sugary foods, either. If those weren't to be found, just plain sugar would do.
I remember my summer babysitter's older sister. She was baking in the kitchen and had a box of brown sugar that had some hard lumps in it. She would just hand me the lumps to eat. Score!

An adult party where there was a bowl full of sugar cubes? Score again!

After school snack? Got a sweet tooth? A spoon full of sugar was always good.

A couple of extra spoon fulls on my Rice Krispies was good, too. Heaven knows that stuff didn't actually stick to the cereal. It sunk to the bottom, then when the cereal was all gone, I had milk & sugar sludge to eat straight out of the bowl. That was when I wasn't eating three bowls of cereal that already had a ton of sugar baked right in.

Of course, at Grandma's, she always had a freezer full of homemade Hot Buttered Rum mix. If you aren't familiar, this is the recipe: 1 lb each of white sugar, brown sugar, butter, & ice cream. Add spices and mix. This was consumed (without rum, of course), not only by me, but every one of my cousins and my best friend, Lela. If we didn't have a spoon, fingers worked, too. (I shudder now, I really do, but we were kids and didn't care.)

7-Eleven had a bottom rack of penny and nickel candy. We'd buy as much as we could.
And eat it all.

For the record, this is NOT penny candy. Penny candy was ONE Jolly Rancher.
I'm not THAT old.

It didn't stop when I got older. My cousin and I worked at the family business on Saturdays as teenagers. We'd start the day with a baker's dozen donuts. And eat them all (except the one that my uncle would stop by and grab when he checked up on us). Yes, all. And on non-donut days, there was a drug store nearby with candy.


I won't even go there with the Twinkies, Ding Dongs, HoHo's and Susie Q's.

I really have no idea how I consumed so much sugar. And it's no wonder that when I did food sensitivity testing a couple of years ago that I had a positive sensitivity to CANE SUGAR.
Really? Hmph.

But I have cut most of it out successfully. It's hard to get completely away from it, and I do love a good dessert once in a while. But it really is just a rare treat now and not an everyday thing. And when I have too much? I feel sick. Really, truly sick. I never thought I'd be able to give it up. But for the most part, I have, and really don't miss it too much. I won't bore you with what current research shows about sugar now, you've heard it all, but I do wonder sometimes how we didn't climb the walls as kids.... or maybe we did!!! Sorry Mom!

I think I have a belly ache.
Ally

PS - For those that read my post about school shopping, School Shopping Resistance or Lela's follow up post about skinny jeans, The Real Skinny, here's a conversation I had with my son:
K - looking at a pair of jeans at Nordstrom Rack
Me - looking at the price tag: "I don't think so."
K: "What? You won't pay $100 for a pair of jeans?"
Me: "Not unless they're for me."

(For the record, he didn't really think I would buy him $100 jeans.)