Happy Easter. (And, a bit belatedly, Rest in Peep, Bob Born. Rest in Peep)

Well, Easter is upon us, and visions of Easter baskets dance in my head.

Not that I'll be doing much indulging.

Sure, I love nothing better than munching on the solid ears of a hollow chocolate bunny and sifting through jelly beans to find the purple and white ones I like the best. (Don't know why. Unless you get pricey "gourmet" like Jelly Bellys, that have recognizable tastes like espresso and watermelon, all jelly beans  - other than the black ones - taste alike, with a mild, soapy taste reminiscent of sucking on a wash cloth. Something I weirdly like to do when I was a very little kid splashing around in the bathtub.) And, of course, Easter is not Easter unless I've bitten the head off of a Peep.

But, having gotten a bit pre-diabetic-y, I've been cutting back on sugar. I've even stopped putting sugar in my tea, and I've been having sugar in my tea since I was a five-year-old sitting at my grandmother's oilcloth covered table enjoying an afternoon cup with her. Alas, before I have something sweet these days, I check to see how many grams of sugar it contains. 

A Lindt milk chocolate bunny (3.5 ounces) contains a mind-boggling (and possible diabetic coma inducing) 55 grams of sugar. (The daily suggested max for "added sugars" for women is a measly 25 grams.)

Jelly beans (of the Jelly Belly persuasion) have  21 grams of sugar in a serving of 27 jelly beans. So, better than a chocolate bunny, but still scoops up that daily allowance pretty quickly.

Better still are Peeps, which only contain about 6 grams of sugar in a single chick. A suggested serving is either four or five Peeps chicks, which is awful lot of Peeps to ingest in a sitting - even for a sugar/Peeps junkie like myself. So, having a Peep isn't all that bad. It's just that I'd rather spend those precious allowed grams of sugar on really good dark chocolate.

Nonetheless, I'll be good to go biting the head off of a Peep, assuming that my sister Trish does her usual Easter thing and brings me a package of Peeps.

Of course, I have thought about coloring some eggs and having a sugar-free Easter egg. But, no. A hardboiled egg has no place in my ideal Easter basket. And besides, I buy brown eggs, and if you dye them - as I recall from my childhood - the colors are dull and murky. 

So forget church. Forget Easter bonnets. Forget Easter lilies. 

As I said, it isn't Easter until I've bitten the head off of a Peep chick. I haven't yet decided whether I'll swallow the head (maybe 1.5 worth of unwanted/unneeded sugar), or, like someone at a wine tasting, discreetly spit it out. In either case, I'm ready to take on a Peep chick. 

Whether you're a Peepster or not, I wish you a very Happy Easter. 

But I would be remiss to not note that there was some sadness this year in Peeps world. Ira "Bob" Born, former CEO of Just Born, the Born family business, died this past February at the age of 98. 

Quite an interesting guy, Bob Born.

Son of Sam Born, Just Born's Russian immigrant founder, Bob - whose c.v. included an engineering degree from Lehigh and graduate work in math and physics at MIT - was planning on becoming a doctor. But while waiting for med school to begin, Bob fell in love with candy-making.

And the rest is history.

Among other notable achievements, the "Father of Peeps" mechanized the process for manufacturing those fabulous chicks (a process called "depositing"). His work took the process from a hand-crafted marshmallow chick taking 27 hours to create, to a manufactured Peep taking only 6 minutes to get just born. The Peep machine was invented in 1953, when Just Born acquired the original Peeps maker. 

The company's current machines, which are still based on Bob Born's design, now pump out 5.5 million Peeps per day.

Seventy years later, Peeps remain Just Born's most recognizable candy brand, the company says. Just Born makes around 2 billion Peeps each year, or enough to circle the globe two-and-a-half times. It sells the most at Easter, but also has versions sold for Halloween, Valentine's Day and other holidays. (Source: NPR)

As if making it possible to produce 2 billion Peeps each year wasn't achievement enough for any one life, "Bob Born also came up with the recipe for another popular Just Born candy, Hot Tamales." And, in his retirement, he didn't just loll around Florida golfing and watching out for alligators. Instead, he ran a literacy program.

Rest in Peep, Bob Born. Rest in Peep.