Well, we’ve all done a lot of things as kids that some people wouldn’t let fly now, that’s obvious. To avoid lawsuits over chipped teeth, it may have been easier to just say “inedible” and just wink at what we’d do. As I recall, just a few years ago, Martha Stewart suggested buying metal foils to coat your cookies – edible gold (I’d had that on cake once), edible silver (I had that on Indian sweets once) and copper foils. Copper is for decoration only – that one is toxic, that much I know. Then again, Martha Stewart was sued by the lawyer above, so what does she, or centuries of old world tradition know? And if I’m so sure copper foil is toxic, and gold isn’t, how sure am i really about silver?
As an aside, I’d heard years ago, the red dye used in maraschino cherries was a cancer agent. But it was the only one that would dye cherries properly. You were supposed to discard your cherry, it was “only for decoration.” Good God. That does not describe my behavior towards marischino cherries at all.
When I was a kid, I fought with my sister for the jar. We counted the cherries daily to make sure we each got an equal share, we sliced the last one into two equal halves with the precision of a surgeon. And we really fought over the portions of cherry juice. Mom vowed again and again she’d never buy them again. We never made sundaes, we just scarfed the jar down.
Well, they impressed the Doctor: "“Nobody else in this entire galaxy’s ever even bothered to make edible ball bearings. Genius.” He’d probably be very disappointed in California.
I live in CA and can’t get them - if you get somebody to mail them to you, will you let me know? Sites I’ve seen won’t even ship them here! This is a major Childhood Nostalgia item for me, dammit!!
I just saw those in the store recently - at a Michael’s craft store (or JoAnn Fabrics) with the Christmas cookie decorating supplies. They had pearl-like ones too. Very pretty!