In my last post I mentioned a few of the food items I tried in Florida: fried alligator and fried pickle chips. Today I would like to discuss another two: candy apples and boiled peanuts. I always thought candy apples were a myth. I am familiar with caramel apples, the delicious caramel-coated concoction popular in autumn, at apple orchards, and around Halloween. You can buy them at Disney World and at Whole Foods, which is pretty much Disney World for foodies. So when the books I read as a child (such as The Berenstein Bears’ Go Trick-or-Treating) showed bright red candy apples in their illustrations, I assumed that was an embellishment because red is a much more interesting color than brown.
It turns out I was mistaken. Bright red candy apples DO exist, and I bought one at Fort Pierce’s monthly Friday Fest. It was red, hard, coated in cherry-flavored hardened sugar, and leaked red coloring on anything it touched. It was not possible to bite into the apple because the coating was so hard, and licking it brought to mind the old Tootsie Pop commercial where the owl asks, “How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?” Now I am wondering if this is a geographical phenomenon. I have a low sample size, but the person of East Coast origin I asked had seen and consumed candy apples before, but another Midwestern acquaintance had not, and like me, thought they were a myth. So let me ask you, dear readers: have you ever had a candy apple? Where? And why do they still exist?
The second delectable is definitely a southern thing. Boiled peanuts. They came in a Ziploc bag, and it turns out they were boiled in that very bag. They tasted like baked potatoes and had none of the oily, salty crunch I look for in peanuts. But apparently they are very popular here. You can even buy them by the can in the grocery store.
No comments:
Post a Comment