hummingwolf (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hummingwolf) wrote2004-10-11 07:40 pm
hummingwolf) wrote2004-10-11 07:40 pm
Entry tags:
Object Memories: Candy
Hershey bar, plain: S'mores, of course. Sitting with my parents and some family friends at the campsite my grandparents owned, toasting a marshmallow till it was just brown enough, putting it on top of a milk chocolate square on top of half a Graham cracker, then smushing the chocolate and marshmallow with the other cracker half. In between marshmallows, I'd put the tip of a stick into the fire and let a tiny flame grow at the end. After convincing myself the stick wouldn't burn up in my hand, I'd wave it around in the air, drawing pictures for the sole purpose of dazzling my own eyes.
Smarties (American candy, pressed sugar with artificial colorings and nominally fruitlike flavorings): The only time of year I ever had Smarties as a child was at Halloween. The next-door neighbors, an older couple who'd babysat me whenever my mother was in the hospital, always bought bunches & bunches of Smarties and I could take as many as I wanted.
In 1980, the couple's kitchen table was covered in bowls of any kind of candy a little kid could think of ; and as soon as they ran out of a kind you liked, they'd fill the bowl with more. Naturally, this was the house every kid in the neighborhood wanted to visit at Halloween. When we'd come to the door, the man would ask us, "Who are your parents voting for this year?" We'd shout, "Ronald Reagan!" and he'd let us in to the land of plenty. While I was there, a trio of high-school girls came to the door. Not being from our street, they weren't sure at first if it was safe to come in. When they decided that a horde of little ones couldn't be wrong, the man asked them, not who their parents were voting for, but who they would vote for that year. Two girls said "Ronald Reagan" and came right in. The other girl said, "I can't vote yet, but if I could, I'd vote for John Anderson!" The man told her she couldn't come in. She protested; he was adamant. She said it was a free country; he said he was free not to let her into his home. She stared longingly at the table full of candy, at her two friends laughing at her stubbornness, and finally said, "Okay, okay! I'd vote for Reagan too!" So she too got to enjoy the sweetness of the impending Morning in America.
(This wasn't my earliest political activity. Apparently in the early '70s I went around the house chanting "Nixon is a dummy! Nixon is a dummy!")
3 Musketeers: 1984, summer in a hotel in Wisconsin. In the daytime, my parents would go to the rooms designated for the machine embroidery convention my mother was attending. Mom was very good at "painting" pictures with her sewing machine and showed off her portrait of me (which I hated) and embroidered versions of various classic paintings as well as an illustrated poem she'd sewn up. Mom was also dying of lung cancer. At night, I'd hear her moaning in pain, Dad trying his best to comfort her. In the middle of the afternoon, bored with hanging around in the room, I'd go down to the hotel gift shop to buy myself a book and a candy bar. As I recall, the candy was always 3 Musketeers, the most filling bar I could think of. The books were mostly novelizations of movies I never saw (like E.T. and Gremlins), though that summer was also the first time I ever got all the way through The Lord of the Rings.
M&Ms, plain: Going out to open lunch with my friends in high school. We'd usually buy pizza slices for lunch, though sometimes we'd get hamburgers or even (gasp!) a salad from a grocery store salad bar. Anything was fair game as long as we could get back to school in time for the next class, right? So, having the appetites of high school students, sometimes we'd buy huge bags of candy and eat those. My friend Jenny once (maybe more than once) had an all-chocolate lunch, consisting of several different candy bars and (if memory serves) some Yoohoo. At least once we went into a restaurant, ordered water (no charge), and sat there at the booth eating candy and putting more candy in the water to watch the colors dissolve. Though we hadn't spent a thing, we left a tip for the waitress anyway. She deserved it.
Godiva: My father's girlfriend was an odd one in various ways, but the oddest was her utter indifference to chocolate. Her family, for some unknown reason, never could remember that she was one of those weird chocolate non-lovers, so they'd give her some expensive candy and think it was a great gift. She gave the chocolate to my father, who'd share it with me. I still wonder how much money her kids spent on chocolate which eventually ended up in the house of someone of whom they did not entirely approve.
M&Ms, Mint: A little less than a year after I moved into this house, a housemate and I had a continuing argument about the existence of Holiday Mint M&Ms. One morning I heard on the radio that it was the first day of Hanukkah and I decided that this was the day to prove to him once and for all that yes, Mint M&Ms are Real and Good. So I went out to the stores and bought a cheesy Hanukkah card, a bag of Mint M&Ms, and a box of cherry Pop-Tarts (in case he was an infidel and didn't like the M&Ms). He was very pleased with his gifts. His girlfriend was both pleased and a little bit annoyed, since she'd had no idea that it was a holiday already. Later that month, the housemate who'd gotten the Mint M&Ms gave Christmas gifts to everyone, which inspired the rest of us to give each other little gifts. This is how a single bag of Mint M&Ms brought holiday cheer to a whole house.
Cherry Ripe (Australian candy): Spring 2003, some woman I'd never met before (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
perkazy) came to the house at some ridiculous hour of the morning and drove with me off to the mountains of Tennessee, where I was forced to hang out with a bunch of strange people for a long weekend. One of those strange people was monquito, who'd brought some Cherry Ripe with him to America. I got to have a taste. More recently, megthelegend sent a box of Aussie goodies and I got to have a whole bar, which brought back great memories of that trip to the Smokies.
Smarties (American candy, pressed sugar with artificial colorings and nominally fruitlike flavorings): The only time of year I ever had Smarties as a child was at Halloween. The next-door neighbors, an older couple who'd babysat me whenever my mother was in the hospital, always bought bunches & bunches of Smarties and I could take as many as I wanted.
In 1980, the couple's kitchen table was covered in bowls of any kind of candy a little kid could think of ; and as soon as they ran out of a kind you liked, they'd fill the bowl with more. Naturally, this was the house every kid in the neighborhood wanted to visit at Halloween. When we'd come to the door, the man would ask us, "Who are your parents voting for this year?" We'd shout, "Ronald Reagan!" and he'd let us in to the land of plenty. While I was there, a trio of high-school girls came to the door. Not being from our street, they weren't sure at first if it was safe to come in. When they decided that a horde of little ones couldn't be wrong, the man asked them, not who their parents were voting for, but who they would vote for that year. Two girls said "Ronald Reagan" and came right in. The other girl said, "I can't vote yet, but if I could, I'd vote for John Anderson!" The man told her she couldn't come in. She protested; he was adamant. She said it was a free country; he said he was free not to let her into his home. She stared longingly at the table full of candy, at her two friends laughing at her stubbornness, and finally said, "Okay, okay! I'd vote for Reagan too!" So she too got to enjoy the sweetness of the impending Morning in America.
(This wasn't my earliest political activity. Apparently in the early '70s I went around the house chanting "Nixon is a dummy! Nixon is a dummy!")
3 Musketeers: 1984, summer in a hotel in Wisconsin. In the daytime, my parents would go to the rooms designated for the machine embroidery convention my mother was attending. Mom was very good at "painting" pictures with her sewing machine and showed off her portrait of me (which I hated) and embroidered versions of various classic paintings as well as an illustrated poem she'd sewn up. Mom was also dying of lung cancer. At night, I'd hear her moaning in pain, Dad trying his best to comfort her. In the middle of the afternoon, bored with hanging around in the room, I'd go down to the hotel gift shop to buy myself a book and a candy bar. As I recall, the candy was always 3 Musketeers, the most filling bar I could think of. The books were mostly novelizations of movies I never saw (like E.T. and Gremlins), though that summer was also the first time I ever got all the way through The Lord of the Rings.
M&Ms, plain: Going out to open lunch with my friends in high school. We'd usually buy pizza slices for lunch, though sometimes we'd get hamburgers or even (gasp!) a salad from a grocery store salad bar. Anything was fair game as long as we could get back to school in time for the next class, right? So, having the appetites of high school students, sometimes we'd buy huge bags of candy and eat those. My friend Jenny once (maybe more than once) had an all-chocolate lunch, consisting of several different candy bars and (if memory serves) some Yoohoo. At least once we went into a restaurant, ordered water (no charge), and sat there at the booth eating candy and putting more candy in the water to watch the colors dissolve. Though we hadn't spent a thing, we left a tip for the waitress anyway. She deserved it.
Godiva: My father's girlfriend was an odd one in various ways, but the oddest was her utter indifference to chocolate. Her family, for some unknown reason, never could remember that she was one of those weird chocolate non-lovers, so they'd give her some expensive candy and think it was a great gift. She gave the chocolate to my father, who'd share it with me. I still wonder how much money her kids spent on chocolate which eventually ended up in the house of someone of whom they did not entirely approve.
M&Ms, Mint: A little less than a year after I moved into this house, a housemate and I had a continuing argument about the existence of Holiday Mint M&Ms. One morning I heard on the radio that it was the first day of Hanukkah and I decided that this was the day to prove to him once and for all that yes, Mint M&Ms are Real and Good. So I went out to the stores and bought a cheesy Hanukkah card, a bag of Mint M&Ms, and a box of cherry Pop-Tarts (in case he was an infidel and didn't like the M&Ms). He was very pleased with his gifts. His girlfriend was both pleased and a little bit annoyed, since she'd had no idea that it was a holiday already. Later that month, the housemate who'd gotten the Mint M&Ms gave Christmas gifts to everyone, which inspired the rest of us to give each other little gifts. This is how a single bag of Mint M&Ms brought holiday cheer to a whole house.
Cherry Ripe (Australian candy): Spring 2003, some woman I'd never met before (
perkazy) came to the house at some ridiculous hour of the morning and drove with me off to the mountains of Tennessee, where I was forced to hang out with a bunch of strange people for a long weekend. One of those strange people was monquito, who'd brought some Cherry Ripe with him to America. I got to have a taste. More recently, megthelegend sent a box of Aussie goodies and I got to have a whole bar, which brought back great memories of that trip to the Smokies.
no subject
People indifferent to choc confuse me. I'm not a choc-aholic, but I enjoy a good bar/cookie/syrup.
I wanted to vote for Anderson too. I hated Carter and thought Regan was a doddering coot.
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Do you still think Anderson was better than the other choices in 1980?
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I definetly think he was the better choice over Carter.
I'd have to go back and look at his foreign policy beliefs to see if I would still pick him over Reagan.
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Ahhh...Cherry Ripe! Monki brought me one to TN too and it was divine. I left it in the freezer too long though...it was kind of hard :)
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Not even if it's a choice between a dead Reagan and a live Dubya? 'Cos, frankly, Zombie Reagan strikes me as much more appealing than what we've got now.
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So he held her hostage to her greed until she denied her political principles and conformed? A better metaphor for the modern Republican party I could not have asked for.
Cherry Ripe (Australian candy)
So you're why the damn things haven't been driven off the market years hence! Oh well, I'm glad somebody likes 'em. They always make me ill.
Have you encountered pineapple lumps, which I think are uniquely antipodean?
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Heh. Pretty much.
As for Cherry Ripe: I can't be the reason they're still on the market. I've only had one bar (and a bite of another) in my life! So you'll have to find someone else to blame, probably somebody Australian.
I'm pretty sure I've never had pineapple lumps unless someone slipped me some at a party once.
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mmmmarshmellows
I used to do the exact same thing. So ... here's the question: How do you like your marshmellows?? Personally, I like to slow cook them until they become so gooey they almost fall off the stick, then catch them on fire until the skin is good and crispy.