Scottish Jelly Beans!

'Tis one of the most disappointing episodes of my life. I entered the "Scottish Jelly Bean Contest" (notice the Scottish tartan and ignore the French Canadian sweatshirt) and every day I entered a flavor. In all, I entered a total of 54 flavors, with some help from my friends, most notably Hardingfele. (She can no longer comment on my blog from her blog - they're having some sort of blog battle - so now she has to post comments as her daughter, "Rock Star Tailor," aka. "Stella.") Unbelievably, not one of my 54 luscious flavors was chosen by those fools at Scottish Jelly Beans. (Fifty-four is the number on the periodic table of my favorite element, xenon. Coincidence???) (Take THAT, conspiracy theorists!)

Here are the flavors I submitted, in no particular order:

earl gray, lingonberry, pomegranate, pesto, chocolate persimmon, chai, eggnog, green chartreuse, pumpkin pie, gingerbread, starfruit, almond, fuschia, Irish cream, clove, black currant, baba ghanouj, chocolate curry, kumquat, hibiscus, spearmint, fresh baked bread, peppermint, green tea, wintergreen, date, orange creme, baklava, tira misu, apricot, mint julep, eucalyptus, strawberry rhubarb, white Russian, tapioca, chocolate peanut butter, sangria, cookie dough, cheese curd, feta, stout, sea salt, cashew, fig, guacamole, tomato, mulberry, pistachio, mustard, Marmite, sweet potato, rose water, Cthulhu (tastes like calimari), chicken (since everything else tastes like it, why not a jelly bean?), tamarind, lychee, lefse, lukefisk (tastes great, and that's no lye!) and last but not least, bean! (sweet red bean) - nothing like a Bean Jelly Bean!

(OK, maybe that's more than 54, but math was never my best subject.)

And one I didn't submit but kind of wanted to: Communion wafer - tasteless, like this suggestion! (Thanks to Best Friend for this and the lutefisk comment.)

There was also an instant win game every day, and my very first day I won a "giant bean." However, I waited and waited and no Giant Bean was forthcoming, so I began to bombard Scottish Jelly Beans and all their subsidiary corporations with emails demanding an explanation for the deplorable lack of Giant Bean in my life. Eventually I recruited all my family and friends in this email carpet bombing effort, and while I was in New Orleans (a good six months after I won the Giant Bean, mind you), the "Giant Bean" arrived in the mail. Hardingfele and her daughter Rock Star Tailor were bunnysitting for me and collecting my mail, and when Hardingfele saw the little package from Scottish Jelly Beans, she left a note on it saying, "Is this the Giant Bean? Pathetic!" I opened the package and inside was a kidney-shaped tin full of jelly beans which was actually about the size of a kidney, so it had maybe fifteen jelly beans inside. I have to back Hardingfele up on this one: PATHETIC!

They had said they were sending me another prize to make up for that one taking so long, but I didn't actually believe them. However, after another month had elapsed, to my surprise there was a large box from Scottish Jelly Bean Corp. sitting in front of my front door. I opened it to find...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jn-gceUrMbs

If you are wondering why they are Scottish Jelly Beans, the answer is that we were going to have them be Hawaiian Jelly Beans, and we had this great Spike Jones song called "Hawaiian War Chant" for the background music, but then he talks right in the middle of it! So we decided to go with Scottish fiddle music instead.

Famous Hat