This Dazzling Digital Age

If you're someone who grew up with smart phones and Google, then I'm about to say something that only a truly old person can appreciate. And having just celebrated my Sweet 16 (if you happen to be dyslexic), I'm someone who is continually Ga-Ga for Google. (Awesome alliteration.) And one of the things I most grieve about my brother's early demise is that he didn't live long enough to own a smart phone. It's the kind of thing he would have loved. As long as I'm talking about him, here's a picture:

He and his family were visiting a "dude ranch" on their way to visit us in Oregon one year when this picture was taken. I don't think I ever saw him looking so happy and relaxed before or after. 

But that's not what I'm here to tell you. I wanted to tell you about my trip to the grocery store today, because I know you'll be hanging on my every word before I'm finished. Yeah. Grocery shopping. Be still my beating heart. Actually, there's more to it than that. By the time I'm finished telling you about it, I'm confident you'll agree that this whole episode is Emergency Blog Post worthy. So here goes:

For my Baking on Friday project, I wanted to try this cake I found on Desserts for Two: it's a Red Hot Cinnamon Apple Cake. And the recipe calls for one half cup of red hots. You know, that candy those of us born in the 14th Century used to eat. And while I'm here, I just want to point out that Red Hots are a fat free food. (I'm reassured knowing that the cake I'm baking qualifies as health food.)

So while I was at the grocery store, I looked, and looked, and looked for Red Hots. I could find Hot Tamales and Atomic Fireballs, Red Vines, Mike and Ike, and those red cinnamon disks; but no Red Hots. Seriously crushed by my lack of success, I asked one of the folks working at the store for assistance. Have you ever noticed how colossally unhelpful that usually turns out to be? They tend to take you right back to the shelves you've already gone over with a fine tooth comb and then admit that they really have no idea where they are either...or whether they even carry them. And in this case, it was especially depressing because the young woman helping me obviously had never heard of Red Hots. Like I said, it's a candy for people who grew up before the great plague years of London.

So I gave up on the Red Hots, and decided to look at a different store. Only I couldn't resist a parting shot to the cashier who asked me if I found everything I was looking for. 

"Everything except the Red Hots," I quipped.

She too was younger than my unborn grandchildren and looked at me like I was from outer space. "Red Hots?"

"Never mind," I said. Explaining it was more than I could bear at that moment.

So I loaded my groceries into the car and drove to the Safeway just across the street. When I couldn't find the Red Hots there either, I pulled out my trusty and (at that moment) astonishingly beautiful smart phone and started to type into the Google:

"substitute for red h" 

Before I could even finish my search question, the Gods of Google suggested this question:

That'll work, I thought. Well, no. It really wasn't helpful. It just told me that hot tamales were probably a bad choice. So I want back to my original question which was to be "substitute for Red Hots". This is what I found:

Okay, I said to myself. (Have you noticed how often I talk to myself? It's worrisome, let me tell you. Even more worrisome is the frequency with which I lose arguments with myself.)

So I clicked there and scrolled through some of the answers and lo and behold:

OF COURSE!!!!!! I practically yelled it out loud, but managed to restrain myself. And sure enough, when I went to the baking aisle, THERE THEY WERE!!!!! Well. Don't you know, I kicked up my heels right there in the middle of the aisle. Truly.

And since I'm a really terrible judge of volume, I picked up two of these little bottles because it didn't look to me like I could get a half cup out of just one.

So, there you have it. It's my I-♥-Google-and-Smart-Phones story of the day. I hope you didn't come all this way for nothing.