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Bad things happen when you fall asleep in public

twinkies

I didn’t sleep well last night, for some unknown reason. So, while Uncle B went into Tesco’s for a few things, I decided to snooze in the car.

Bad idea. Left on his own to shop, Uncle B bought me a treat. Or, rather, a ‘treat.’ Viz., a box of Twinkies. Taste of home and all that.

I gather the cashier hadn’t seen such a thing before, and she and Uncle B took turns poking it with a stick.

And no wonder — look at the ingredients. All the things marked with an asterisk are genetically modified. I count six. Now, I’m not constitutionally averse to GMO’s, but I have to wonder why anyone would need to tinker with the genetic code for glucose syrup.

Tasted nasty. More that the texture was nasty. Kind of excessively springy. And either I’ve grown to gigantic proportions, or these things are about a third the size they used to be.

But I’m sure…I’m sure if they made Suzy Q‘s again, they’d be just how I remember.

Comments


Comment from David Gillies
Time: September 15, 2015, 9:36 pm

The glucose syrup (corn syrup to you seppos) is GMO-derived because the thing that it was extracted from was GM, which would be…corn (as in maize). Or it could’ve been GM potatoes, or wheat. But prolly corn. Pretty much all the corn in the US is GM now and has been for years without any noticeable increase in people sprouting an extra head or glowing in the dark.


Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: September 15, 2015, 10:03 pm

Weapons grade yeuch! if you ask me.

Then again, I live down a hole and eat worm pies, so what do I know?


Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: September 15, 2015, 10:04 pm

BTW Mr Gillies – spotted a letter of yours in the Mail recently.

Just so you know we’re checking on you 😉


Comment from Armybrat
Time: September 15, 2015, 11:42 pm

I’m still waiting for Hostess to bring back the orange cupcakes. On that day, life will be good again.


Comment from Phineas
Time: September 15, 2015, 11:52 pm

That’s why they have a ten year pantry self life


Comment from Nina
Time: September 15, 2015, 11:57 pm

All corn has been genetically modified, and that’s where they get the syrup.

Oh, I see I’ve been preempted by David. Read what he said. Corn is in a lot of things that you might not realize, so it’s going to pop up the GMO flag more often than you expect, too. I try really hard to teach my students this.


Comment from Surly Ermine
Time: September 16, 2015, 1:05 am

I’m a Fudge Round kinda guy myself but
my recent favorite are May West cakes. I think they are Canadian. Can’t seem to find them anymore. Oh well, I just bought them for the box art anyway.


Comment from Pupster
Time: September 16, 2015, 2:30 am

Twinkies in particular and Hostess Cakes in general are not the same since the buyout and return.

Little Debbies have stayed the same if you are in to that type of thing.


Comment from Deborah HH
Time: September 16, 2015, 2:40 am

Raspberry Coconut Zingers—the best reason ever for taking a road trip, which is the only time I go into quick-stop stores. Except then I need a quart of black coffee to offset the sugar crash. (Though I did love the simple Twinkie.)


Comment from drew458
Time: September 16, 2015, 3:05 am

I want the real Ring Dings that were sold when I was a kid. The things were the size of a hockey puck. Today’s product is actually a Ring Ding Jr., now sold as the real thing. It ain’t.

I never could stand Twinkies, even when I was a kid. So sweet, so light, but somehow they still have a gritty texture. OTOH, the chocolate frosted, chocolate cake stuffed with peanut butter version, sold as Funny Bones, now those things I WILL kill for.


Comment from dissent555
Time: September 16, 2015, 3:48 am

Yeah, I agree; the Hostess cupcakes are different than when I was a wee laddie (insert geological time reference here). The cake is a touch drier and the frosting has a more carob-like texture than the richer chocolate flavor I remember from childhood.

I eat them anyway, but it would be nice if somebody hurried up with that time travel thingy. I’d like to put it to good use.


Comment from mojo
Time: September 16, 2015, 4:03 am

Ho-Ho’s.

Chocolate cake and whipped cream rolled up and drenched in a chocolate shell. Mmmmmmmm…


Comment from M
Time: September 16, 2015, 5:30 am

With the awful thing Brits do to canned baked beans I don’t think they should be casting aspersions.

I was never a snack cake fan. Too sweet. I prefered that other disgusting American snack food the Slim Jim and its fat cousin the Firecracker. Pig anus and cow lips. Yum. Makes me gag to think about it now. Heh. I did have a short love affair with twinkies when I was an *altered* teenager. Ooooh, and hot fries. Loved Andy Cap hot fries. And Funyuns. Now I’m hungry.


Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: September 16, 2015, 1:54 pm

Not fair, M! We didn’t do anything to yer baked beans – it was Heinz wot dun it and I believe they are one of yours!


Comment from Can’t Hark My Cry
Time: September 16, 2015, 2:43 pm

Treats we miss from childhood. Our local cooperative supermarket used to sell a British brand of hard candies (I think Cadbury’s, but that could be memory conflating stuff). Butterscotch; and licorice; and some others I misremember. Little bars about 2.5″x.3″, each in a little wrapper, a bunch packaged together. They were wonderful, but they seem to have dropped off the face of the earth. Probably just as well–I shouldn’t be chewing things that hard, I’m getting tired of having teeth crowned.


Comment from SCOTTtheBADGER
Time: September 16, 2015, 4:12 pm

Deborah HH you are a wise woman, Raspberry Zingers are the crown jewel of Hostess snack cakes!


Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: September 16, 2015, 5:49 pm

That sounds like it might have been Keiller’s butterscotch, Can’t Hark – a fabulous and very decently compiled Scottish delicacy (no GM fiddling in them days!).

It used to come in unique cardboard packages with each slab of the tooth-shattering mixture individually wrapped in silver paper.

I suspect Keiller faded away back in the 1980s as I haven’t seen it for many years. Possibly just as well as I have a hatred of dentistry!


Comment from David Gillies
Time: September 16, 2015, 5:51 pm

Cadbury’s mini rolls. Yum.

Uncle B., I post the occasional comment in the DM to keep the libertarian flag flying against the conformist Middle Englanders at which it is aimed.


Comment from MikeW
Time: September 16, 2015, 6:01 pm

DHH & StB I’m right there with ya. Raspberry Zingers! Mmmm, they were my snack of choice if I ever grabbed something in the 7-11 back in my formative years.

I also have a few fond recollections of opening my 4th grade bag lunch to find a pair of those luminous Sno-Balls! The upside down, creme filled, chocolate cupcake covered with pink foam rubber… or something. Much more fun to disassemble than an Oreo.

Let me close with a little delectable desecration for Uncle B… Behold Twinkie Henge!


Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: September 16, 2015, 8:13 pm

You’d be in trouble here these days, MikeW! The health Nazis in our schools now inspect kids’ lunch boxes and confiscate anything they deem ‘unhealthy’!

There really isn’t enough piano wire…


Comment from Uncle Al
Time: September 16, 2015, 8:47 pm

Callard & Bowser made those little foil-wrapped hard candy bricks. Their butterscotch was my favorite. No longer made, alas.

The company is now Callard & Bowser – Suchard, and among other things the make Altoids mints. Although hard to find, Ginger Altoids are excellent!


Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: September 16, 2015, 8:59 pm

Ah, yes, you are quite right, Uncle Al! My mistake. Keiller was the other brand and it was C&B who made the small packs, as you say.

Apparently C&B is yet anther fine old company destroyed by a giant corporation – in this case, Wrigleys.


Comment from Steamboat McGoo
Time: September 17, 2015, 12:08 am

” There really isn’t enough piano wire…” (Uncle B)

Excellent!

What Nina said, but applied to soy beans, also.Soy products are in everything from the Twinkie to the wrapper. And probably the shelf they’re sitting on.

I suspect (but have zero evidence) that soy beans have been genetically piddled with and poked at more than any other living thing.


Comment from Rich Rostrom
Time: September 17, 2015, 6:27 am

Most corn grown nowadays is “Bt corn”. There’s a microbe called Bacillus thurigensis which produces a powerful natural insecticide. Bt corn has been enhanced with the gene for producing the Bt insecticide, and is therefore anathema to the greenoids.

It should be noted that sales of Bt insecticide produced by extraction from the microbe are in the billion$. It is endorsed by greenoids as an “organic” product – the identical compound as found in Bt corn.

IIRC there is also Bt soybeans.


Comment from Can’t Hark My Cry
Time: September 17, 2015, 3:07 pm

Yes! Thank you, Uncles–it was indeed Callard & Bowser.

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