G
Guest
Guest
This made me nostalgic. As a girl I loved MaryJanes (the candy, not the weed), Good'n'Plenty, Chocolate Necco Wafers, Nik-L-Nips and Lik-M-Aid. How about you? - Perdita
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Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America by Steve Almond
Reviewed by Dave Gilson, May 2, 2004, SF Chronicle
Inside the main exhibit at the Copia food center in Napa, there's a simple game. Visitors examine photos of candy-bar cross sections and try to identify them. When I tried it recently, I recognized seven out of 12. I haven't come across a Skor bar or a Whatchamacallit in almost two decades, but apparently their striations are burned in my memory.
Next to Steve Almond, I'm a piker. Almond is a self-diagnosed "candyfreak"--an orally fixated ectomorph who proudly claims to have eaten a sweet every day of his life. He buys his favorite brands in bulk and hoards them, lest they suddenly be discontinued. When he's not eating candy, he's thinking about it. He daydreams about nonexistent but hypothetically perfect candy bars, and mentally regurgitates the worst one he ever had (a Turkish morsel that tasted like "rancid carob"). But mostly, he moons over the candy bars of his youth. "Oh where are you now, brave stupid bars of yore?" he laments, only half ironically. "Where Oompahs, those delectable doomed pods of chocolate and peanut butter? Where the molar-ripping Bit-O-Choc? And where Caravelle, a bar so dear to my heart that I remain, two decades after its extinction, in an active state of mourning?"
"Candyfreak" is a nostalgia trip into Almond's--and America's--love affair with candy. There's plenty to be wistful about. In the first half of the 20th century, the United States had as many as 100,000 brands of candy. Their names alone are worth savoring: Old King Tut, Prairie Schooner, Choice Bits, It's Spiffy, Prom Queen, Club Sandwich, Tween Meals, Baby Lobster, Chicken Dinner. Though the demise of a candy called Chicken Dinner may not seem like a great loss, you have to wonder what the heck it tasted like. Today, confectionery giants Hershey, Mars and Nestlé dominate the market. Almond blames the "Big Three" for killing off America's small-time candy industry and churning out what he calls "crack for children."
Inspired by the snacks of yesteryear, Almond sets off in search of the last holdouts of American candy making. He discovers a handful of specialty and regional brands, like Goo Goos, Valomilks, Twin Bings and Idaho Spuds. He tours facilities where machines with names like the "chocolate enrober," "nut applicator" and "coconut depositor" are overseen by preternaturally perky employees with job titles such as "cream center manager." His odyssey wraps up at Hayward's Annabelle Candy Company, whose Abba-Zaba and Big Hunk taffy bars have been subsidizing Bay Area dental professionals since 1950. The future for most of these companies is uncertain. But, fortunately for Almond, they still give out plenty of free samples.
Reading "Candyfreak" is like following a kid into a candy store. Not only is Almond a glutton for his subject, he's a hilariously uninhibited writer. The chapter in which he reveals the childhood roots of his obsession is one of the funnier things I've read in a while (imagine David Sedaris with an insatiable sweet tooth). Almond also has an uncanny ability to evoke the experience of candy. Not just the candy industry, but individual pieces of it. His bite-by-bite descriptions are tongue-tinglingly precise. Take his account of eating a Five Star Bar: "The teeth broke through the milky chocolate shell, sailed through the mild caramel, only to encounter the smoky crunch of the almonds, and finally, the rich tumescence of the dark chocolate."
When it comes to bad candy, Almond is the Mr. Blackwell of the confectionery world. He loathes Jordan almonds ("Who chose the color scheme, Zsa Zsa Gabor?"), Jujubes ("pencil erasers have more natural fruit flavor") and marshmallow Peeps ("a candy that encourages the notion that it is acceptable to eat child offspring"). And don't get him started on white ingredients, be they white jellybeans, white chocolate, or shredded coconut--which he refuses to eat due to its "creepy dead-skin texture."
"Candyfreak's" sugar high doesn't last forever. The factory tours eventually blur together, and Almond's overuse of the word "freak" as a noun, verb and adjective is the literary equivalent of shredded coconut -- a distraction from otherwise original prose. Even so, this is gonzo food writing at its best. Almond has written an exuberant tribute to cheap, plentiful, locally produced sweets and "the small, attainable pleasures" they provide. "Candyfreak" is like a good candy bar: a piece of delicious, ephemeral fun.
--------------
Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America by Steve Almond
Reviewed by Dave Gilson, May 2, 2004, SF Chronicle
Inside the main exhibit at the Copia food center in Napa, there's a simple game. Visitors examine photos of candy-bar cross sections and try to identify them. When I tried it recently, I recognized seven out of 12. I haven't come across a Skor bar or a Whatchamacallit in almost two decades, but apparently their striations are burned in my memory.
Next to Steve Almond, I'm a piker. Almond is a self-diagnosed "candyfreak"--an orally fixated ectomorph who proudly claims to have eaten a sweet every day of his life. He buys his favorite brands in bulk and hoards them, lest they suddenly be discontinued. When he's not eating candy, he's thinking about it. He daydreams about nonexistent but hypothetically perfect candy bars, and mentally regurgitates the worst one he ever had (a Turkish morsel that tasted like "rancid carob"). But mostly, he moons over the candy bars of his youth. "Oh where are you now, brave stupid bars of yore?" he laments, only half ironically. "Where Oompahs, those delectable doomed pods of chocolate and peanut butter? Where the molar-ripping Bit-O-Choc? And where Caravelle, a bar so dear to my heart that I remain, two decades after its extinction, in an active state of mourning?"
"Candyfreak" is a nostalgia trip into Almond's--and America's--love affair with candy. There's plenty to be wistful about. In the first half of the 20th century, the United States had as many as 100,000 brands of candy. Their names alone are worth savoring: Old King Tut, Prairie Schooner, Choice Bits, It's Spiffy, Prom Queen, Club Sandwich, Tween Meals, Baby Lobster, Chicken Dinner. Though the demise of a candy called Chicken Dinner may not seem like a great loss, you have to wonder what the heck it tasted like. Today, confectionery giants Hershey, Mars and Nestlé dominate the market. Almond blames the "Big Three" for killing off America's small-time candy industry and churning out what he calls "crack for children."
Inspired by the snacks of yesteryear, Almond sets off in search of the last holdouts of American candy making. He discovers a handful of specialty and regional brands, like Goo Goos, Valomilks, Twin Bings and Idaho Spuds. He tours facilities where machines with names like the "chocolate enrober," "nut applicator" and "coconut depositor" are overseen by preternaturally perky employees with job titles such as "cream center manager." His odyssey wraps up at Hayward's Annabelle Candy Company, whose Abba-Zaba and Big Hunk taffy bars have been subsidizing Bay Area dental professionals since 1950. The future for most of these companies is uncertain. But, fortunately for Almond, they still give out plenty of free samples.
Reading "Candyfreak" is like following a kid into a candy store. Not only is Almond a glutton for his subject, he's a hilariously uninhibited writer. The chapter in which he reveals the childhood roots of his obsession is one of the funnier things I've read in a while (imagine David Sedaris with an insatiable sweet tooth). Almond also has an uncanny ability to evoke the experience of candy. Not just the candy industry, but individual pieces of it. His bite-by-bite descriptions are tongue-tinglingly precise. Take his account of eating a Five Star Bar: "The teeth broke through the milky chocolate shell, sailed through the mild caramel, only to encounter the smoky crunch of the almonds, and finally, the rich tumescence of the dark chocolate."
When it comes to bad candy, Almond is the Mr. Blackwell of the confectionery world. He loathes Jordan almonds ("Who chose the color scheme, Zsa Zsa Gabor?"), Jujubes ("pencil erasers have more natural fruit flavor") and marshmallow Peeps ("a candy that encourages the notion that it is acceptable to eat child offspring"). And don't get him started on white ingredients, be they white jellybeans, white chocolate, or shredded coconut--which he refuses to eat due to its "creepy dead-skin texture."
"Candyfreak's" sugar high doesn't last forever. The factory tours eventually blur together, and Almond's overuse of the word "freak" as a noun, verb and adjective is the literary equivalent of shredded coconut -- a distraction from otherwise original prose. Even so, this is gonzo food writing at its best. Almond has written an exuberant tribute to cheap, plentiful, locally produced sweets and "the small, attainable pleasures" they provide. "Candyfreak" is like a good candy bar: a piece of delicious, ephemeral fun.
My mother is a smart woman but once she gets something in her head....
