What's your favorite candy cane?!

[HenZen]

I'll go for some germancandies directly from hamburg... "Elbkiesel" the name comes from the "Elbe" which is a big river crossing Hamburg, and a Kiesel is another name for a Rock, or a stone. It has a hard crust, with different flavours, like peppermint, fruits and others..

[stiney51]

This is pretty funny. Candy Canes are huge this time of year. My wife and I buy at least a box every year and they have been on our Christmas Trees ever since I can remember as a child.
History Of Candy Canes

We have the flavored fruit sticks that are not shaped like canes as well, but I'm not sure what they are called. I never was a big fan of salt water taffy but my wife loves the stuff. Living on the seacoast in Maine, it's a fairly regular treat in the summer.

I was always a fan of Rock Candy but growing up in Vermont, the biggest deal was Maple Candy. A friend's wife is actually a product developer for Hershey and I've been trying to push that they produce some sort of maple candy. Probably too expensive to make for them though.

[stiney51]

Interesting side-note (not really candy related but definitely points out how even small area differences can change how people look at things or what they call them). I grew up in Vermont about 2 hours from where my wife grew up in New Hampshire.

I can think of at least 3 things without trying that we will never see eye-to-eye on because of differneces in how the states customs are.

1. Elbow macaroni noodles with sauce and hamburger is Goulash (American Chop Suey in NH).

2. The night before Halloween is Cabbage Night (Beggars Eve in NH)

3. Bowling is with a large ball (12-15 lbs usually) and 10 big pins in NH they call that "Big Ball Bowling" where as their "Bowling" is with a small handheld ball and thin "candle pins."

Keep in mind we grew 2 hours away from each other! You make it across country and there are so many differences you couldn't list them all.

[class_act]

One of my favorite meals as a kid was goulash. My mother used elbow mac, red tomatoe sauce (not spagehetti sauce) and hamburger. It was great and i could never duplicate the receipe.
"Mischief Night" is what we call the night before Hallowen. I think the history behind it is the same though. As I can remember, beggars or the very poor would walk house to house and if you didn't feed them they would do some dasterdely deed or mishief to you.

And for candy canes, I also hang them on my tree every year, take them down and store them. As I am not a big fan of eating them, they sit around and get soft in the summer with the heat and humidity and I end up throwing them away. Why don't I just throw them away after christmas, you ask??
I get attached!

The more we are different the more we are the same.

[MoodsR4Cattle]

Swedish Fish! Holy cow, haven't heard that term in a long time. When I was a kid (back in the stone age) we had a penny candy store two blocks away called Mary's Dairy Bar. I'm sure there was more in there than candy, but I never made it past the big slanted glass case that was always covered with finger and nose prints and loaded with penny candy. There was Swedish Fish, and their cousin the same candy shaped like coins, bubble gum cigars, and the white candy sticks with the orange tips that came in a box that looked like a pack of cigarettes, candy necklaces, and pixy sticks, jaw breakers, those weird wax pop bottles with colored liquid sugar inside and those wax lips and teeth - some of the kids would chew those things, I never knew if they were candy or not! LOL
Ahhhhh, enough nostalgia for one day.

Originally Posted by Jacorre

Anyone heard of Swedish Fish?! They are small chewy candies in the shape of fish and taste like strawberry. I used to buy them by the bags as a kid. They were a penny each so I'd buy a few bags! I wasn't sure if they were made in Sweden...

After I posted, I found this:
Hometown Favorites
You can still Get this stuff!

[Tamlin]

Originally Posted by class_act

"Mischief Night" is what we call the night before Halloween.

When I was a kid, we never really celebrated Halloween - it's taken off over the past decade or so, but I still think we're a long way behind how it's celebrated in the States. However, we did have "Mischief Night" - it was November 4th, the night before Guy Fawkes Night.

Oh - and that reminds me: we have a whole bunch of foodstuffs traditionally associated with Guy Fawkes Night, such as toffee apples, parkin and bonfire toffee.

[stiney51]

Originally Posted by MoodsR4Cattle

Swedish Fish! Holy cow, haven't heard that term in a long time.

My wife got a pregnancy craving for these about this time last year. She bought a box of like 400 of them. Craving solved and Swedish Fish never wanted again (at least in the last year). I guess 400 candies in 2 weeks will do that to you (well I ate about half of them).

[notjustgraphics]

I've never heard of Swedish Fish, but here in Canada we have something called Swedish Berries which sound similar... they are red fruit flavoured (can't really call it strawberry) and a bit chewy, about the size of a small marble....

We also have candy fish made from the same type of chewy stuff, but the fish have different flavours too - orange, lime, grape, etc...

Is this the same thing?

In Canada we have a staple halloween treat known as Halloween Kisses which really come in two types - a soft chewy maple flavoured glump of toffee wrapped in a wax paper like pieces of Salt Water Taffy. The second type (My favourite) are made from molasses and are much more chewey (almost rock hard).

As for Candy Canes, they are as integral a part of Christmas as Santa Claus is to us... I never fathomed that England would not know Candy Canes... It seems all of our traditions are inherited except that one.

Now, in Australia, they have these little cookie like things called TIM-TAM's...rectangular wafers coated with chocolate. They are quite delicious in their own right, but they have a little tradition called Tim-Tam-Slam which involves taking a tiny bite out of opposing corners and sipping a hot beverage (usually tea or coffee but Hot Chocolate is good too) through the wafer (like a straw) and then slamming the whole biscuit into your mouth.

The wafer inside disolves almost instantly with the hot beverage but the chocolate coating on the outside holds it all together long enough to put it in your mouth where it finally gives way to an explosion of flavour that is absolutely devine.

If anybody out there is from Australia and is willing to send me Tim-Tams (made by Arnotts) i'll gladly credit your Pay-Pal account or other means... I just can't find them here in Canada!

There is an interesting article @ CANOE Money: Tim Hortons coffee popular in Afghanistan, but lingo still hard for some to master
that explains one of Canada's favourite traditions - Tim Horton's Coffee - now on the military base in Afghanistan.

Tim Horton's (Tim's) is just so much a part of Canada that it's hard to believe the rest of the world has to suffer without it.

Mike.

[MoodsR4Cattle]

Stop the Suffering! Send me some!

Originally Posted by notjustgraphics

Tim Horton's (Tim's) is just so much a part of Canada that it's hard to believe the rest of the world has to suffer without it.

[Taipan]

I've always known what candy canes were and we even used to draw them on the Christmas cards we made at school several hundred years ago. They were normally shown hanging on the tree. They didn't actually make an appearance though as far as I know.

Most edible tree decs were in the form of net bags of chocolate coins, and hollow chocolate sweets in foil wraps (skilled kids would remove the chocolate and reform the silver paper back into it's original shape!).

I think sweets/candy will always be a huge part of nostalgia because as kids it was our mainstay of treats. Long hot summers with 1p pop ices and 2p for the fat ones. Penny sweets, and the millions of varieties.

Anyone remember coconut tobacco which came in a hessian pouch?

Here's a site for some halycon memories of British childhood sweets, amazing that you can still buy most of the sweets you thought had long gone.

A Quarter Of..

[Tamlin]

Originally Posted by Taipan

Anyone remember coconut tobacco which came in a hessian pouch?

Good god, yes! I always thought it was disgusting - I think I'd have preferred eating real tobacco!

That website is a revelation - I didn't know you could still buy Barratts Shrimps!

[Jacorre]

Speaking of tobacco, does anyone know about Big League Chew?! It was a big pouch of strands of bubble gum. It was meant to be fake chewing tobacco and had a picture of baseball players on the front!

[Tamlin]

Originally Posted by Jacorre

Speaking of tobacco, does anyone know about Big League Chew?!

Is this it?
Wrigley's Candystand

[Taipan]

Originally Posted by tamlin

Good god, yes! I always thought it was disgusting - I think I'd have preferred eating real tobacco!

That website is a revelation - I didn't know you could still buy Barratts Shrimps!

Actually, going through that site I found Candy Canes, I don't remember them though. Perhaps they were a girl thing like making rose-bud perfume.

£1.77 ($3.48) for 12 small canes. Here's a guess, they are slightly cheaper in the US?

[notjustgraphics]

Oh my god yes that's it!

Big League Chew! Wow... so long ago!

Reminds me of the old candy cigarettes that got banned... little sticks of chocolate wrapped in wax paper, and if you blew on them, a white powder came out the end....

Got banned because of the anti-smoking movement, and as far as flavour went, they weren't a big deal... still miss them...even popeye cigarettes (now popeye candy sticks).

Every once in a while i come across FIZZ which are individual hard candys in fruit flavours usually sold in a strip (one per packet). If you let them melt in your mouth or even if you bit into them, the centre fizzed quite profusely for a few seconds (like a really good tasting alka-seltzer tablet).

Quite entertaining!

I also remember Gold Rush Bubble Gum... little gold nugget shaped pieces of gum in of course a gold colour, but they sold them in a little sack with a draw string...

This thread could go on for a while!

Mike