Nuts!

Thanks! I think it was called The Nutt Shoppe or Nutt House or something like that. It was the coolest place. I wanted to work there thinking "What could be better then working in a candy store?"

But there was another candy/pastry shop...Hansel & Gretel's Honey Haus, I think, across the street. I loved being able to buy jelly bellys for $4/lb. I'd get 1/4 lb at a time. What I loved also were the exotic European chocolates. This was long before you could walk into Safeway or Whole Foods and buy these off of the shelf. Chocolate was Hersheys or Mars, and milk chocolate was in everything. Let's face it, the Hershey bar I preferred was called "special."

Just an aside, I was looking for an image of Hershey Special Dark that I could put in here to make this blog more colorful. I was playing around Hershey's site, and they don't list Special Dark in their products! It's called Extra Dark.

I guess it's not special any more.

Aned in about 1983 or 1984, Lunardi's moved in. It used to be a really run down Safeway and they cleaned it up and added an incredible meat counter. No one else except the Los Gatos Market had such a great selection of meats and butchers. More on that later. For now, I'll just say that they brought in good European chocolates, and then I had a choice. But since Hansel & Gretel's was walking distance, I still headed there.