The two sweets currently living in my bag at all times.

I have gone through phases with sweets the way everyone does. There was a long stretch where I was not eating much sugar and felt righteous about it in the way people do until they do not. There was a stretch of very good dark chocolate. There was a brief and embarrassing period of those sugar-free gummy bears, which I will not discuss further.

What I have landed on is simpler and, I think, more honest: two things that taste genuinely good, that I keep nearby, and that I eat without guilt because life is short and both of these are actually fine.

The first: coconut dark chocolate. The combination of dark chocolate and coconut is not complicated but it is specific, and the specific combination does something that either ingredient alone does not. I am partial to chocolate made with at least 70 percent cacao and unsweetened shredded coconut rather than sweetened coconut flakes, because the sweetened version tilts it toward candy bar territory and away from something that tastes like it was made by a person who likes both things. Hu Chocolate's Simple Dark bar and the Eating Evolved coconut butter cups are both excellent purchased versions. The vegan chocolate recipe elsewhere on this site works very well with toasted coconut pressed into the top.

The second: crystallized ginger. The Gin-Gins chewy ginger candies from The Ginger People are the specific product, and they are available at most Whole Foods and Sprouts. They are aggressively gingery in a way that wakes you up and does something useful for digestion. The original chews are the best version. The dark chocolate covered ones are also genuinely good, which brings us back to the first category.

One square of coconut dark chocolate and one piece of crystallized ginger is a combination that covers bitterness, sweetness, heat, and richness in four bites and somehow satisfies the kind of craving that would otherwise send you to the kitchen three more times. That is the whole recommendation.