nostalgia — pleasure in simple things

Tag: nostalgia

pez…no question about it

May

field trip friday

PEZ…an iconic candy from my childhood, I haven’t thought about it in years. I don’t really notice it in stores anymore…maybe that’s just because I’m not looking for it. The PEZ factory has been located in Connecticut since the 1970’s, but only recently has it been open to the public. I had to check it out. PEZ was a staple in my candy repertoire back in the day… right up there with turkish taffy, button candy, and the huge round individually wrapped sweet tart. PEZ was always more about the dispenser than the actual candy…for me, anyway. I checked out the website recently to look up the visitor center hours and discovered that the dispensers are listed by the year introduced…so, if you remember your favorite, you can look up the year it was introduced …great way to feel your age!

The visitors center houses more PEZ dispensers than you can possibly imagine. Yes, they still produce PEZ and in many more flavors than years ago. The visitors’ center is not very big, but worth the trip down memory lane. I was happy to find out that the tour included a PEZ tasting, but somehow the candy just didn’t taste the way I remembered it.

I was very disappointed that I was not able to see the PEZ themed chopper built by Orange County Choppers on my visit. The chopper is a regular exhibit at the center, but it was on loan to a candy convention the day I was visiting. It was built in 2006 when PEZ introduced the first living people on a PEZ dispenser – the Teutel Family…Paul Sr., Paul Jr. & Mikey!

I guess another generation of PEZ lovers is being created, but their first dispenser will most likely be one of the super heroes from The Avengers, and not Popeye or Tweety Bird.

“If I could only have one food for the rest of my life? That’s easy-Pez. Cherry-flavored Pez. No question about it.”

-Vern in the movie Stand by Me. Dir. Rob Reiner. Columbia Pictures, 1986.

To find PEZ dispensers listed by year released: go to www.pez.com Click on ‘collector’s corner’, then ‘dispenser archive by year.’ P.S. Happy Nurses Week

2 comments » | nostalgia

the original sweet & salty

April

easy sweet recipe using saltines

Long, long, ago – when I started my first serious full time job, the woman I worked for brought in a dessert that she had made from saltines crackers. At the time, it seemed very mysterious and unusual. Looking back, it was the first time I really enjoyed the combination of sweet and salty. With salted caramels being so trendy, I was reminded of the old favorite saltine recipe. It is one of the few dessert recipes I have committed to memory, because the measurements are so easy to remember. A nice thing about the recipe is that it only uses four simple ingredients. More recently, I made it for my twenty-something son and he went nuts over it. Makes sense….when I think about it, I was his age when I first went nuts for it. The recipe:

2 sleeves of saltines, 1 stick of butter, 1 cup brown sugar, 2 cups of chips

Ingredients

2 sleeves of saltine crackers
1 stick of butter (I use unsalted)
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 cups chocolate chips

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Cover a cookie sheet with a piece of aluminum foil and give it a light coat of cooking spray.

Arrange the saltines on the foil, covering all the space.

Arrange crackers in a single layer to cover all the space on the pan…you may need to use a couple broken ones to fill in all the spots. Take 20 of the crackers you have left and seal them in a zip-loc bag. Use a rolling pin to crush them up and set the bag aside.

Use a rolling pin to crush 20 of the saltines in a zip-loc bag

Put the butter and brown sugar into a medium size saucepan and stir until it is boiling strong enough that it can’t be stirred down. Then, pour it slowly over the crackers, covering them the best you can. I use a dull knife to carefully spread the mixture evenly, trying to cover most of the cracker layer.

Bake in the oven for 5 minutes..the topping will be bubbling. Remove the pan from the oven and let it sit for about a minute. Sprinkle the chocolate chips evenly over the top. After a minute or two the chocolate will be soft and you can use a dull knife to spread the chocolate evenly over the crackers. Then, take the bag of crushed cracker crumbs and sprinkle over the top of the hot chocolate.

Let cool slightly, then put the cookie sheet in the refrigerator to set. After about 45 minutes or so, remove the cookie sheet and break the crackers into irregular pieces. Store in a plastic airtight container in the refrigerator…enjoy!

4 comments » | food & festivities, recipe

orange appeal

April

do they still make tang?

When I was out and about last weekend I decided to try and find something to rock the orange. Yes, I decided to give in to the orange invasion. If you have been in the stores at all this season you have witnessed the orange take over. It is everywhere. In Manhattan recently, I saw fashionistas all over the city carrying huge orange bags…a big departure from the usual all-black attire.

What exactly is the appeal of the color orange? What are the things that come to my mind when I think of the color orange? Construction sites… Prison uniforms… Mario Batali (okay, I do like him). Tang. Tang was the ‘space’ drink I enjoyed as a kid …do they still make that stuff? ….and as I got a little older, Tango. Tango was an interesting (albeit disgusting) mix of some kind of artificial orange beverage mixed with vodka. Back in ‘the day’ it was considered a much higher end beverage than my usual sloe gin fizzes.

I do give in to so many of the trends as time goes on….no matter how adamant I am about avoiding them.. I always give in. I figure I will get some token orange item and get it over with…satisfy the orange. I can’t go with too much of it because I know it looks awful against my skin. This was confirmed years ago when color ‘seasons’ were popular. I was told I was a winter. Apparently winters DO NOT look good in orange. Winter or not, I definitely agree that orange is not my color.

I decided to walk up and down the aisles of Jo-Ann Fabric & Craft Store to get some inspiration and a light bulb went off as I got near the yarn section. I will make a lightweight scarf!! Granted, I know very little about knitting other than the basic knit. I try to mix things up by using two yarns simultaneously or varying the size of the knitting needles. In this way, I can make a scarf look different without really knowing that much about knitting or learning any other stitches. If you pick interesting colors and yarns and/or mix up the sizes of the knitting needles, you can make people think you are an experienced knitter and they will never know you need to use a reference on the internet to remember how to cast on! Here are the yarns and needles sizes I chose: