Fresno, CA – The kids in Eileen Gasson’s neighborhood do not like stopping at her house when trick or treating. They would avoid her altogether if she wasn’t always standing in the doorway, eagerly awaiting their arrival.
“I feel bad,” said Trudy Gali, a neighborhood mother, “my kids hate going to her house, but she really loves handing out her homemade snack bars, which are a strange mixture of sunflower seeds, lentil beans, and applesauce.”
“I don’t feel as bad as the other mothers,” said Kathy Rosenstein, a mother of three, “My four year old cried last year when she dropped her weird hard bean nut vegetable snack things in his bag, which made the bag very heavy.”
The homemade snacks in question are a sugar free, dairy free, white flour free, concoction that Gasson swears are just as good as any chocolate bar. They contain wheat germ, lentils, applesauce, sunflower seeds, flax seed, soy milk, coconut, carob, red beans, a little seaweed and some Japanese umeboshi plums for salt. “If you took a bite with your eyes closed,” said Gasson, “you’d think you were eating a Three Musketeers bar, I promise you.”
“Three Musketeers bar? Maybe if it was covered in shit,” said Rosenstein.
Ten-year-old Devin Reese still goes to Gasson’s house but only out of respect. “I was really sad the first Halloween I went to her house,” said Reese, “After I tried her snack bar I went home and stayed in my room the rest of the night. It’s the night I learned what depression is.”
