For Your Sweet Tooth

I’ve done everything I can think of to try to rectify it, but I think the time has come to call in the big boys. It was on the first day of my vacation when I found another leak in my basement, this time underneath my kitchen. We were working on those cornices I showed you yesterday (just so we could get them done and ready to install) and from behind me I could hear a hissing sound. I’d heard it before on occasion and by the time I figured out where it was coming from it would stop and dismissed it as a mouse rustling in something nearby and always meant to set a trap and never did. Well, it wasn’t a mouse, it was a big leak in the discharge hose from my dishwasher. When the machine would drain, water would shoot up like a geyser and run down the wall (and probably behind it). Well it must have been doing that for some time because the cleanup was monstrous once we got into it and then we had to go find a replacement hose. So, that’s fixed. And the gutters are fixed. But I’m still leaking water from somewhere and I doubt it’s coming from outside. It’s been dry as a bone. I just hope it’s not a pipe behind the wall but what else can it be at this point?

Let’s get into a sweet story now. When we were down in Asbury for the Fourth of July weekend, and we went into Candyteria. I snubbed the M & M display and then I spotted that one small shelf, kind of like a rack of poetry books in a bookstore. It was a bunch of old time candies, like Necco wafers, wax bottles, Razzles…oh my God, remember those?! How about Bottle Caps? I didn’t see them, but do you remember them?  I used to love the root beer ones.  But there was also Pop Rocks at Candyteria and packs of Charms hard candies, kind of like Lifesavers, but the square ones. I should have bought some of those. Then there was a display of the modern answer to Bonomo Turkish Taffy, Doscher’s French Chew. It’s been a while since I’d found out about Doscher’s and I even bought a bar at the Cracker Barrel in Ohio on our way home from our latest trip to Illinois, but their selection was very minimal and almost hidden. But here, in Asbury Park was an entire display, so I bought several bars of each flavor; chocolate, vanilla, banana and strawberry.

Then, the guy behind the counter, who looked to be quite a number of years younger than I (that’s me and my proper English) asked if I’d ever heard of Bonomo Turkish Taffy. Apparently he must have thought I was younger than he (I get that a lot…in my dreams.) and we got into this discourse about how close this Doscher’s is to the original. He then mentioned, if I were to come back in about two weeks, he’d have a stock of Bonomo Turkish Taffy and I became one big goosebump. It’s back and became available on June 21 of this year.

Of course, going back down there just for that (unless it was the only way to get it) was not an immediate option so I looked around online and sure enough, it’s available, unless it’s out of stock from several places and I ordered my box of 24 (6 of each flavor) from Amazon. You can also order it from Candy. com and Hometownfavorites .com.

So, that’s it. That’s the big find. For any of you old timers like me who remember it, it’s back. For those of you who never knew the joy of freezing a bar of turkish taffy and smacking it into bits on the kitchen table for easier sharing. And eating, as biting into it is a sure way to pull all your teeth. We didn’t care when we were kids. But my teeth cost me a small fortune and I’d like to keep them around for a while. And they are mine, the last payment was finally made, a little late and for a little bit more money because according to the fine print, if the total wasn’t paid off in a certain time frame, retroactive interest would be tacked on for the entire amount and there was one month our usual payment was split in half.

From candy to cheesecake: What Hollywood icon is trussed up in this severe binding structure of a bikini, circa 1942?

Tags: Amazon.com, Bonomo Turkish Taffy, Candy.com, Candyteria, Doscher's Chew Taffy, hometown favorites