The Milky Way

Ha! Ha! Fooled ya: You thought this was going to be about space again.  But it is not.  This offering is a nostalgic meander through the confectionary memories of my childhood.

Ah, Milky Way… it’s a candy bar and a galaxy.  Okay now?  Are you up to speed?  Can we move along?  You’ll have a chance to ask questions later.

I do not remember a life before candy.  I have a sweet tooth.  I would rather quaff an A&W than a Heineken.  Actually, I would rather quaff anything than a beer, no matter its pedigree.  But if you know me, you’d be aware of that.  If you don’t know me, well stick around anyway to keep the “click” count up.   You might want to go back and read some of my old stuff from when I was funny.  Now back to our scheduled program, always in progress.

I have memories from when I was a tyke (is four years old a tyke?) of my father bringing home a selection of candy bars as a special treat (which means they were on sale at five for a dime or something like that) and since there were only the three of us in the household (me, mom, dad… in that order of importance… I mean after all; mom was the one who prepared my Franco-American spaghetti while I was watching Romper Room every day… yes, I was a Do Bee… stop snickering, you are only demonstrating your cultural ignorance) there was quite a variety to choose from: Snickers (no pun, ref. the Do Bee phrase), Mars, Milky Way and Three Musketeers.

I always picked the Mars bar.  Why?  Well because it was the biggest.  Okay, I have no idea if it was the biggest because I couldn’t read the labels.  But to my untrained eye, the shape made it look larger even if it was the same net weight as the others.  And when you are four years old, size matters (see my blogpost Size Matters, 7/18/13).   As my taste matured during the years of elementary education I found my preference for its multi-faceted ingredients and chewy composition led me to the Snickers bar; nougat and caramel in the same confection, and peanuts just to add personality.  Sorry Mars, the days of simplicity were over, the self-aware man needs context and subtlety.

  In 2008, while I was on a road trip with Frank to Wyoming, M&M Mars (the maker of Snickers and other candy bars) introduced a limited run of their most popular brands made with… wait for it… Dark Chocolate.  Every time I saw a convenience store on the horizon, I would start talking about waterfalls and ocean tides; next thing you know Frank would ask that we stop to let him evacuate his bladder.  As it is common courtesy on the part of the highway traveler who does not need gas to purchase something from the convenience store in gratitude for, well the convenience, while I was waiting I would buy a dark chocolate Snickers bar.  More about dark chocolate later… easy girls, we’ll get there.

As I entered by preteen years, I discovered a world of offerings made by confectioners other than M&M, Mars.  One of my favorites was Big Hunk.  I found that the nougat and peanut slab offered something of a challenge.  As an adult, there is no way I would attempt to ingest a whole Big Hunk.  The effort involved and the wear and tear on one’s jaws is just too great.  But during the summers of my preteen years, it was an oft granted treat that one of the neighborhood moms would pile all of us into their station wagon and drop us off at the La Mesa community pool for an afternoon of unsupervised frolic and frivolity.  I guess they figured the teen-aged life guards would keep us alive, “Good luck boys, I’ll be back for the survivors.”  Each would enter the facility with two dimes.  One for the admission fee and one for the snack bar to buy a treat as we laid out in the sun drying our trunks (nobody had a “swimsuit”, we were manly suburbanites).  It was my wont to select a Big Hunk, because I figured the effort applied to eating a sugary treat was somehow proportional to the level of perceived satisfaction.  I also remember not being able to eat the evening’s dinner fare as my jaws were locked tight by cramping muscles. Then, I discovered the Look bar.  All the sticky nougat goodness of the Big Hunk, covered in chocolate!  It was impossible to consume one of these masterpieces of child-targeted marketing without getting saliva dissolved chocolate on every square inch of one’s body. I am surprised the neighborhood moms didn’t strap me to the hood of the car for the drive home.

Chocolate, of course, is the rose in the bouquet of candies.  Anybody who does not like chocolate should have their name added to a subversives list.  It’s just unnatural.  But chocolate and its effects are something of an enigma.  It comes in three colors!  Milk chocolate seems where we all start the romance.  And it suffices well as an introductory experience.  But one is going to have to make a choice eventually; the light or the dark.  I remember my introduction to white chocolate. It was my paternal grandmother who brought along a box on one of here frequent visits.  It was sweet, too sweet.  I was flying around the house fueled by concentrated sugar.  My mother rightly rationed my intake for the duration of my grandmother’s stay and insisted she take the uneaten squares home when she departed.  I’m not sure how many days passed before my metabolism stabilized.

I do not remember my introduction to dark chocolate. But it was probably Hershey’s Special Dark from the miniatures assortment bag.  I can assure you, dark chocolate was created in hell by Satan to tempt the faithful to their eternal damnation.  I think that puts the punctuation on where I stand on the dark chocolate issue.  And as proof of the downfall of human society, we now publish the strength (% cocoa solids content listed on the package) to assure we get the proper fix dosage. For my particular taste, 60% is about the highest I can go.  But I know some women who derive such a deep pleasure response that they regularly eat chocolate with a cocoa solids content as high as 80%.  Men, I think were falling short somewhere (could it be another “size matters” indicator?).

If I were to limit myself to one source for my chocolate, it would be See’s Extra Dark Chocolate.  I know there are brands with more exotic names and fancier packaging, but you can’t beat See’s for consistent excellence.  My favorite is the Dark Chocolate Butter Chew.  I’m not gonna tell you what it looks like.  You will know where it was by the empty space in the box when I pass it to you.

Oh, it looks like we’ve run out of time for questions.