Nothing goes together quite like Cadbury and Easter. I still remember the commercials growing up, as well as the current crop showing bunny contenders, all wearing their ears. Also, I remember knowing that if I rooted around my basket, I would find a crème filled egg. One that had sunk to the bottom from being solid sweetness – none of that hollow crap if you please!

Over the years, I let them (and the whole tradition of Easter) drop from my main consciousness. Then in 2003, Easter came back into my life with special meaning; my little Beau was brought into my life where he would continue to shine beautiful light until his passing in 2021.

Then 2023 came along! And what should grace my Facebook feed? None other than this year’s Spokes Bunny for the godfather of Easter chocolate, Cadbury. If you haven’t heard yet, it is a one-eyed orange tabby from Idaho, named “Crash”.

Crash sustained injuries from being hit by a car that included a broken leg and jaw and the loss of his eye, plus a new name! But nothing can keep a good kitty down, and Crash charmed his way into becoming the resident shelter cat, greeting patrons and even performing a few tricks like the classic “high five”.

Not only will Cadbury be featuring Crash in a commercial but donated $20,000 to the ASPCA to continue their work and promote saving lives through adoption. This is on top of Crash’s winnings of $5,000 for himself and $5,000 for the charity of his choice.

That did it! Cadbury is back in my life with renewed enthusiasm and devotion! I made sure to pick up an array of Cadbury goodies with my weekly grocery haul. And you know what? Next week looks pretty good too!

On a side note, I adopted another kitty last year named George. So his 1 year adopt-iversy is coming up, and that will be, you guessed it – Easter Sunday. Amazing when these things happen.

UPDATE:

The American owner of Cadbury is Hershey’s, so I took my new love to their customer service department. I was hoping for a comment here but I got a fantastic email:

Kudos Hershey’s!

I know! I was supposed to post this yesterday but as you can guess, life got in the way!!

Hello and welcome to one of the most fun days in the calendar year! Yes, that double meaning holiday that brings joy to math nerds and foodies the world over. But guess what? You don’t have to limit your love of π (or pie) to just one day! More on that a little later.

The standard reasoning for choosing today, March 14th, for Pi Day is because the beginning of π is 3.14. But it wasn’t until 1988 that someone thought about it long enough to make the connection and a large-scale celebration was in order. It was California’s Exploratorium physicist Larry Shaw who nabs the honor. But it wasn’t until March 2009 that The House of Representatives agreed to officially designate March 14th as National Pi Day.

This all led Google to do their infamous Doodle and in March of 2014 – it was celebrated as “Pi Month”, allowing the March 14th of 2015 to become “Super Pi Day”! Then to add to the fun, if you use the American style of writing the date then 3/14/15 at 9:26:53 the date and time together represented the first ten digits of π.

According to Wikipedia “Pi Day has been observed in many ways, including eating pie, throwing pies and discussing the significance of the number π, due to a pun based on the words “pi” and “pie” being homophones in English ( /paɪ/), and the coincidental circular shape of many pies. Many pizza and pie restaurants offer discounts, deals, and free products on Pi Day.”

It continues: “The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has often mailed its application decision letters to prospective students for delivery on Pi Day. Starting in 2012, MIT has announced it will post those decisions (privately) online on Pi Day at exactly 6:28 pm, which they have called “Tau Time”, to honor the rival numbers pi and tau equally. In 2015, the regular decisions were put online at 9:26 am, following that year’s “pi minute”,^[26] and in 2020, regular decisions were released at 1:59 pm, making the first six digits of pi.” This is very clever indeed, although I feel stupid that I had to look up what the tau number was.

Here’s what I found out: 2π, also known by the Greek letter tau (𝜏) is a common multiple in mathematics. Some even say it is a more “fundamental” constant than π itself. All of this led to June 28th becoming “Two Pi Day” or “Tau Day” and the “jokingly suggest eating “twice the pie” “. Okay let’s not joke about this. I’m all for eating as much pie as I can handle!!

I love Pi Day because it is also Albert Einstein‘s birthday.

Remember when I said earlier that you can celebrate on other days? Well, here’s a list:

• Pi Approximation Day is (using the Western Style of writing the date) celebrated on July 22nd. This is because the fraction  ²²⁄₇ is accurate to two decimal places.
• I already told you about “Two Pi Day” or “Tau Day” (June 28th)
• And there is a second Pi Approximation Day! This one is celebrated on the 314th day of the year – November 10th

So there you have it – reasons to eat pie (or any other circular food) and all the days (not enough in my opinion) where you can sit back, rub your belly and say “That was so worth it!”

Well, well. It appears that March has National Ranch Day – who knew? My question, and it may be silly, but what kind of ranch?

This kind?

Or this kind? (The actual Hidden Valley Ranch!)

Call me crazy, but I have never been a big fan of the Ranch Dressing and seasoning craze that has taken over the U.S. Some of my friends even use it on their chicken nuggets! This concept just seems foreign to me. But I do love to watch YouTube cooking videos and I see a ton of people like Jessica O’Donohue (one of my favorites – along with Mandy In The Making), who absolutely love the stuff and will even add it to things that don’t call for ranch!! I suppose some may consider me crazy because I do the same with hot sauce (well, sometimes). But I do enjoy their crazy videos and their even crazier relationships with their husbands, “Bunkey” and Steven, respectively.

The O’Donohue’s with Daisy Mae

Mandy & Steven

If you do like ranch, just take a quick journey down Google Lane and you won’t be disappointed; dressings, seasoning packets and recipes galore! Or better yet, go to the King of Ranch, the Hidden Valley website, where not only can you find recipes – you can share them, too.

Ranch dressing has been the best selling salad dressing in the United States sine 1992 – when it beat out Italian.

The salad dressing was invented in the late 1940’s or early 1950’s by a man named Steven Hensen while he was working in the Alaskan bush as a plumbing contractor. He wanted to keep his workers happy so he invented the dressing. But it wasn’t until 1956/1957 that it really took off – being produced at his personal ranch; Hidden Valley Ranch in San Marcos Pass, California. Hensen would make the dressing for friends at functions and it was always well received. But it wasn’t until he put a batch together for his friend and owner of the Cold Spring Tavern, Audrey Ovington, that he hit it big and she became his first commercial account.

Hensen stayed with the operation until 1972 when it was bought by Clorox (of all companies!) for $8 million. Since then the name and production has changed hands numerous times as well as being cloned by entities like Kroger, Ken’s, Kraft, Litehouse, Marie’s, Newman’s Own, and Wish-Bone.

If you’re interested in a more in-depth history of Hidden Valley Ranch, check out Wikipedia and the Hidden Valley website.

I thought I would share with you some of the funny music remakes that have come out of this Corona Virus. Let’s face it, we could all use a little laugh during this difficult time.

Let’s start with the Friend’s theme song:

Now a little Queen:

Some Bee-Gees perhaps:

Even Billy Joel:

The clip I really wanted to show you I can’t find!  How typical is that?  It was from the British TV show The Last Leg.  They did a parody of Come On Eileen by Dexy’s Midnight Runners.  It was fantastic!  I’ll keep looking for it and if I find it I will post it.

Meanwhile, everyone stay safe and inside if you can.  We really do have it easy with NetFlix and delivery and the grocery store when we need supplies.  Good Night!