How the Internet occasionally saves my sanity

(Pumpkin spice peanut brittle image courtesy of Target.com)

I enjoyed a piece of pumpkin spice peanut brittle today (go get some at Target, it's really good!), and as I crunched on it a phrase from a book bubbled up to the top of my head -- something about someone buying peanut brittle for an older relative, who would "clatter and crunch" over it later. I knew that particular phrase, and I knew I'd read it many times in the past, but couldn't place it.

People born after 1990, I want you to get a little taste of what life was like in the 1970s and early '80s. Barring my finding that phrase in a book through happy accident, or my subconscious managing to dredge up where it came from, I would have no choice but to let the phrase "clatter and crunch" bounce around in my skull for weeks to months, with no easy way to look it up because there was no modern internet.

As it was, I had my answer within 90 seconds. It comes from an early passage in the book We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, and it describes the narrator's Uncle Julian messily enjoying his treat.

Once again the internet has saved my tenuous sanity. Thanks, Al Gore!