Yep. And to drink, a nice tall glass of warm powdered milk with lumps in it. Mmmm…
When I was a kid, in the south, there used to be a candy display in every run-down country store that had miniture pecan pies, little round cardboard boxes of stale, incredibly salty peanuts (the boxes promised that money was sometimes to be found in with the peanuts), little mushy banana-flavored Starburst-like things, and the dreaded round purple peanut brittle/divinity patties. Except for the one time that I did it, I never saw anyone buy any of these purple things (by the way, it was nauseating, but perhaps that’s because it was 10 years old), and after trying to eat one I understood why. The banana-chew things were heavenly by comparison.
Does anyone else remember these purple things? All of the other nasty stuff that they sold my wife recalls from the cross-country trips of her youth, but she doesn’t recall these, and I’m just wondering if they were only inflicted on the “tri-state area” (TX/AK/LA) where I lived.
You dare to try to take this thread off on a tangent by discussing some other food instead of the heavenly Circus Peanuts, food of the Gods?!
I’m sorry about that, but I figured that consumers of circus peanuts, which were frequently (but not always) on those candy racks, might remember the purple peanut patties (maybe these were circus elephant patties). The circus peanuts on those racks were, by the way, always well aged, but you could usually still smell them, so they weren’t completely petrified. Do you happen to know how long it takes a CP to get rock hard? As I recall, there was an intermediate stage where they became quite chewy, which I liked best. The banana-like odor wasn’t quite so strong then. I fear that I have lost my palate over the years, and I just don’t find them appetizing anymore.
Well, I don’t know what those purple things were, but I can tell you this: They weren’t divinity. Divinity is a white, spongy fudge that is the absolute richest, sweetest substance on or off of the face of the Earth. I have a piece once every year or two when my Gramma makes it for Christmas, but no more-- It’s too rich for that.
Well, FTR I emailed the mods about a Circus Peanuts article that appeared in the Wall Street Journel sometime early last year when this board was just starting.
Like most of what the WSJ prints the article was about as dry as some of the aged peanuts that have appeared in the above posts, but it did cover the subject more completely than most would have desired.
There are even a set number of dimples in each peanut.
I know about divinity – it was a “staple candy” of the part of the south where I was raised. There were two forms of it. One was powdery and rather gooey, and the other was a little more fudge-like (I think that they put some corn syrup in the latter one to change the consistency of it). The stuff was so sweet that eating more than one piece of it would put you in a coma. Anyway, the reason that I referred to the purple gunk holding the peanuts together as divinity-like was that it had a crumbly consistency and seemed to be made almost entirely of powdered sugar.
I asked my dad about this stuff tonight, and he said that there was a second kind of patty that was pink. He thought that the colors were supposed to refer to the flavoring, but he’s not sure. (I wonder if it’s just that the purple things sat in the sunlight so long that the color faded…) He thinks that they were made in Texarkana, which might be why neither of us have ever seen them outside of that area.
What these things were will probably remain a mystery. Perhaps some future archeologist will uncover the site of a Pecan Joe’s and they can analyze the petrified remains of one of these patties (and one of the pecan logs, too).
Franklin,
Milk (of any sort) with haggis? No, no, no! Once you address the haggis and plunge the sgian dubh into the bag, letting the haggis spill out in all its majesty, you douse it generously with a good Scotch. And you drink Scotch with it, of course.
I’ve seen these (well, the last time was about 10 years ago) in Oklahoma. As I recall, they came in several sizes, including a monster that was probably 6-8" across. Looked sort of like reddish-purple peanut brittle with spanish peanuts in it. Yes, I tried them, and yes, it was revolting.
–tygre
Ah. My mistake. I am not much of a gourmand. I can see where the fruitcake would be edible, even enjoyable, after large quantities of alcohol. So, dinner at jti’s, everyone! Haggis (with a circus peanut garnish) Scotch, and fruit cake for dessert. BYOBB (Bring Your Own Barf Bag)
well, the Beloved might not be happy if all 7,611 Dopers show up at once, but we’ll do what we can - kilts required, for those who have them.