sweetprints

What's all the fuss about, sugar??
Refined sugar, that is. Been getting some awful press. Words like "toxic" thrown around.
Sigh. All lil' old sugah did was try to make people happy. Not just people, either...picture a bear going for honey. A chimp going for grapes. A dead dog next to a pile of chocolate wrappers.
Okay, not that last one. But we mammals love our sweets! And why the hell not? Sweets (and fats and salts) affect the same pleasure centers of the brain as opioids. Damn right. Pass those chocolate-covered potato chips!
And now sugar is being linked to depression? Cancer?? Obesity??? Okay, we'll give you that last one. Apparently what happens is that natural sugars, like those found in fruit, come with all sorts of fruity things bonded to them, which the body needs time to break down. But refined sugar hits our innards on an express track to the liver, and abnormally-saturated livers seem to be the primary cause of obesity. As for those grimmer possibilities, more long-term studies are needed.
Hm. Well, sugar is a drug. Of course. I think even people without kids would agree. And in this world, most of us need every single escape from reality we can get. Particularly ones that we can afford with pocket change, and won't land us in, y'know, jail. So americans consume twenty teaspoons of sugar a day. Hm. Yeah, that's a lot. If the thought of just eating twenty naked teaspoons of sugar at one sitting doesn't turn your stomach, you might want to consider a program. Y'know, the kind with steps.
But i can't hate ya, sugar! In fact, the reason i came here today is to write...a love note. A sweet love note. I have adored sugar, and seem to have avoided the more perilous pitfalls. And i grew up in middle America, where we had dessert every damned dinner! Well, everyone else in my family anyway...i was the only child who couldn't be bribed - no dessert was going to make my brussel sprouts disappear. Nor did i continue the daily dessert pattern as an adult - currently, i eat sweets maybe once a week. In fact, i just had my first refined sugar in over two months...i hadn't intended to do so, but once it was happening i went with it, out of curiosity. I didn't notice any change in my desires or emotions or energy.
Not that i'm immune to sugar's drugging affects. These past few years have been brutal. There have been nights when i ate sugar just because it might make me feel better. And it probably did. In fact, i even occasionally found myself eating sugar two nights in a row. One time, i did five straight.
I was studying humanity, y'know? Pass the damn chocolate-covered garlic!
My first step away from the refined norm came at the age of sixteen, when i transformed my personality profoundly, including a moratorium on all added sugars. And i mean ALL. I never blinked, never cheated. Five years later, i realized it had all been part of a teen identity crisis, so i opened myself up to resuming the things i'd excised. Alcohol never came back, but meats (for a while) and sweets did. And now, years later...well, i wouldn't mind dropping refined sugar altogether. I might be headed that way. More and more, i seek out natural sweeteners. Perhaps my favorite sweet treat now is a little squirt of maple syrup.
But wait, what's that? Dark chocolate-covered blueberries? My my my.
So now, let's switch over to an "a la" mode which may only be of interest to rat anthropologists centuries from now. Come with me, kiddies, let's go for a wonka ride on my sugary journey. What i've hated, what i've loved, and what i've REALLY loved.
I remember a childhood beach trip with my grandparents. They had something called Mary Janes. Sort of a peanut butter nougat. I wouldn't want one now, but for those few days i loved them. My other grandfather always had greenleaves around, a minty gelatin. Again, i wouldn't eat one now, but his personal magic made his candy magic too. I remember visiting the general store where my father had grown up, and tasting the old-fashioned candies...swedish fish, and those little LSD-like tabs you peeled from a long sheet of paper...
Later, gummy bears had my attention for a while, but that may have been mostly because of the tongue-tactile delight. Jolly Ranchers were good, too. And one childhood sweet i've never seen since, the only one which i would pay money to have just one more time, was little wax creations shaped like soda bottles. You chewed them, and they had some kind of fruity liquid inside. You eventually had nothing left in your mouth but wax, which you spit out. It sounds kind of dumb now, but i loved them.
And speaking of soda, which seems to be the number one sugar devil in the world...yup, loved it. I preferred Coke over Pepsi. Dr. Pepper was dandy. Root beer and cream soda even more. Dad would bring home wooden cases of huge A-Treat bottles from an outlet store. The flavor we boys loved and hated was golden dry ginger ale, because it was double strength. I don't remember anyone ever drinking more than a sip, but it was huge fun to watch friends have a first taste, and see their faces contort. I also worked in a mexican restaurant, and would make hybrid cola creations in the bus station, mostly a mix of cola and orange (and tea?). By my mid-twenties though, i had heard about the studies (suburban legends?) in which a tooth left in soda will decay after few days, and that was enough. After that, the only soda i had was a root beer float once every few years.
But by far the most tantalizing sweet was, of course...ice cream! Is there any treat more sweet/fat maxed? I was picky though...chocolate was loathsome, and strawberry not much better. Vanilla was where it was at. And when chocolate magic shell came along, heaven had found its silver lining. There were a few fancier flavors i loved throughout the years, the greatest being chocolate chip cookie dough. From which mustache-twirling genius did that one arise? And Dairy Queen also made bad sooooooo good - their dipped cones were pure crack (surprisingly, i favored the butterscotch over chocolate). And ohhhhhh my, what were those things with the peanuts and chocolate coating/pudding? Buster Bars! Holy mcfucktree, Buster Bars. Once my vegan days arrived, i discovered that the soy/rice/coconut ice cream substitutes are so fantastic, that many vegan-disparagers might prefer "the fake thing" in blind taste tests. My only other ice cream memory is how stunning it was to watch my youngest brother. As a thin teenager, he consumed bowls so enormous, it looked like nearly a quarter-gallon at one sitting. No, he didn't get fat...but he did become a hardcore drug addict years later. Hm.
The second-greatest sweet ever? Look no further than that favorite ice cream. Chocolate chip cookies! Dry or dunked, crunchy or chewy (or both), homemade or store-bought, it's almost impossible to go wrong. My devotion translated into learning to make them, and spending years refining my recipe (which required a new drawing board when i stopped eating dairy). But even a failed batch is never a failure. And of course, eating the dough is sometimes more heavenly than the final product. There are other cookies out there, but none worth mentioning.
Okay, shortbread is worth mentioning.
And Girl Scout thin mints, and samoas! And Keebler fudge sticks! And oreos! (one of the few non-dairy mass market cookies) Being a precocious child, i invented double stuff oreos years before they arrived on the market. Twist one wafer off two cookies, and press the white centers together. Yes, i ate the rejected wafers too - there were apparently starving children in China, and i was a child of conscience. It didn't occur to me to mail those wafers overseas (or to my own american backyard as it turned out, but that's another story).
Pudding i liked, but not enough to go back to it once i started eating sweets again. The only ones i really liked were rice pudding and tapioca.
Pies have always been a mixed bounty. There's the great (french silk, pecan...which can be awful with a bad recipe), the middling (key lime, apple...which can be fantastic with a sublime recipe), and the noxious (pumpkin, coconut cream, banana cream...which has never been good with any recipe ever). Ooh, and my mother made pennsylvania dutch milk pies. Mmmmm.
And what is pie without the amazement of whipped cream (which has a coconut version that's almost orgasmic)? One of my most resonant sweet memories involves theater rehearsals in a church basement...after which, we explored the kitchen and discovered tubs of whipped cream in the freezer. I took a few bites every night. If you've never eaten frozen cool-whip, you've missed one of life's sweet shangri las. To this day, one of my most sublime treats is chocolate chips swirled into whipped cream.
And what of that american staple, cake? More miss than hit. Yellow cake and chocolate cake have always been yuck, even when i was a less discerning child. The one cake i adored was the red velvet mom always made on my birthday. Carrot cakes can be great. Wedding cake? Pretty damned good for store-bought, though the sugar ratio can cause a quick shut-down in desirability. Ice cream cake? Brilliant! Cupcakes? Mostly pheh, but a few of the storebought varieties (ho hos, ding-dongs) are fantastic. I liked twinkies as a kid, but the processed thought of them is wretched to my adult palate. And the second-most repulsive sweet ever (after, of course, peeps) is something called the snowball. The one cake memory i have which was almost miraculous (and never to be repeated) was an italian rum cake. The only other time i tried one, it was pheh...but that first one is burned into my drugged-out brain forever.
Ambrosia? Great. Monkey bread, cinnamon buns? Ecstatic when fresh. Sugar bread, cinnamon sugar toast, and much later cinnamon sugar pretzels? Wonderful. Real s'mores were great too, the only marshmallow memory which still pleases...um, except for Count Chocula and Boo Berry...yummm.
Licorice? Nasty. Jelly beans? Pointless. Except for, um, buttered popcorn Jelly Bellies...maybe swirled with a blueberry or two.
Of course, to an american child, candy bars are the sweet by which all others are measured. The high holy sweet holiday, Halloween (Or wait, is it Easter?? Of course - America has TWO high holy candy holidays!), is an unending candy bar orgy. Apples?? Raisins??? GET THAT SHIT OUT OF MY PLASTIC PUMPKIN! Hmm...i get why sweets got all mixed up in Easter...as holidays go, it's tragically unhip, and only by making kids drugged-out happy zombies could positive associations be reinforced...but why did we decide Halloween needed candy? Dressing up, scaring people - that's already hip, the candy part seems gratuitous! I guess it just goes to show how much we love sugar. Maybe the question should be, why aren't St. Swithin's Day or Arbor Day high holy candy holidays?? Let's make them trees sexy, maybe some kid might grow up to save a forest! So with candy bars, which have i loved most? The first was the Heath bar...mmmmmmm. It is one of the minor tragedies of my life that i've never found a non-dairy version. There was something called a Marathon bar, a carmel chocolate creation which was stunning for its architecture alone. Twix bars were pretty damned good...though the best Twix was one which didn't last, the cookies n' cream version - curse you, oh capricious corporate America! Reese's cups were pretty good, especially when dark versions (like Newman's) became available. York peppermint patties? Fine. M&Ms were respectable, especially when the peanut and dark versions came around. Milky Way Dark? Not bad. Toblerone was damn good, and Toblerone dark double damn good. If you're sensing a trend, yes, as i discovered dark in my teens, it pretty swiftly rendered milk chocolate pukelike in comparison. My favorite bar became Hershey's special dark. Years later, when they "lightened" the recipe, that was the darkest (ha- unintentional pun!) chapter in my sweet tooth life. The new version was disgusting. When they made the change, i found a store that had the old ones, and bought out their stock, making those bars last for a year or two.
The only peeps of the candy bar world? Something called a...mallo-cup (shudder). And those Halloween tri-color traffic cones...WHO EATS THEM??
The only thing i ever loved about Easter was the white chocolate rabbits, though i can't imagine eating one now.
One bizarre candy bar memory, an accidental aberration, happened when i was on a camping trip. I was poking around a cooler with a cousin, and we discovered Hershey bars. For several days, the melting ice had left an inch or two of water in the bottom, and these bars were soaked. Their brown color had paled, and some adult suggested throwing them out. But i took a nibble...and it was freaking amazing! Far less sweet, but soooo cool. The fact that nobody else would go near them was my own little chocolate miracle.
As an adult, pretty much the only sweet i've bought for myself is some form of dark chocolate. A bag of non-dairy chocolate chips is all i need. Dark chocolate espresso beans or pretzels can be dandy. The only brand i know worth mentioning is Nib-Mor...mm-mm-mmmmmm.
I suppose the lesson here is...look at how much i've just gushed. If i met a woman who moved me this much, i'd marry her...and i approve of marriage less than i approve of peeps! Bear in mind, in terms of being an american child sweethound, i was average at best. As an adult, far less. Yet, oh the power of these refined brain drugs. I've avoided obesity, and have only ever had one or two cavities. I'm not condemning sweets, but it sure seems that the overlords of capitalism have led us down the primrose path with the 100 POUNDS of sugar they pour into our eager gullets each year...especially those of us who won't (or can't) choose more powerful (and mind-altering) forms of escapism. I'm just saying, if 100 pounds is the average, someone out there is consuming 190 pounds, just to balance me out. Sugar is everywhere. Sugar is cheap. Sugar makes you feeeeeeeel good. And we live in a sedentary culture of alienation and escapism so relentlessly dehumanizing, that we gobble and gobble and gobble...and, yes, we are the fattest country in the world. Probably ever. U.S.A.! U.S.A.!
And since the only exports we have left are guns and Hollywood, the rest of the world seems to be following in our tubby sweetprints.
Yes indeed, awareness of my stress is, well, pretty stressful. Congratulations, U.S.! You're the global pioneer in metastress!
Sigh. Barkeep, gimme a sip of that maple syrup.
Ah, screw it. Leave the damn bottle.