Irving…we have a problem

For the second time within 30 days, a food (for lack of a worthy synonym) I was attempting to purchase had been wiped clear from store shelves here in NY.  And I feel a need to share some thoughts about this upheaval, while I simultaneously attempt to move away from the hard and sad realities of my last few posts and speak to a lighter topic.  

Contrary to what you are about to hear and may not read between the lines, my diet has long been mostly Mediterranean and in the year since I have given up chocolate I have brown bagged and packed considerably more fruit, vegetables, granola, and whole grains into my life.  I can certainly attest to a daily fiber intake that is up in the 90 percentile range.

Hidden amongst all the eggplant and olive oil though are the experiences of a boy who grew up just blocks from a Hostess/Wonder Bread outlet in Brooklyn.  Yankee Doodles and a glass of milk were a foundation of existence.  There is no mystery as to why I am a recovering chocoholic.  For almost as long as my memory permits recall my chocolate dependency caused me to stop whatever I was doing at 3PM each day, then find and consume something, anything, whether it was a natural or man-made cousin of the cocoa bean.  Sometimes, in my youth, a ballgame or chore would cause me to get to the bread factory a bit late.  My favorites might have been snatched up already.  But the sweet smell of freshly packaged artificial flavoring was too comforting to pass up.  Surely I would walk away with at least a box or two of Devil Dogs.  

As an adult one of my longest periods of destructive behavior, one that I would estimate at about 5 years, put either two chocolate CupCakes or Yodels in my digestive tract everyday…rain or shine…winter, spring, summer or fall.  In time my addiction spilled over the aisles.  I weathered a Dove Bar era, ushered in by the large size dark chocolate variety.  I’m grateful to be past a Hershey’s Malted Milk Ball chapter, plus an M&M’s stage that was maybe the roughest of all as I would crave those smooth and brightly colored, glistening candy coated morsels at mid-afternoon and then again at 10PM.

Occasionally I would try to wean myself off the brown sugar by making a different choice.  All that did was to make me a professional sampler of various brands of Coffee Cake’s and Fruit Pies.  If you were to cut up the pie treats and blindfold me I could tell the difference between a Hostess, Drake’s or Entenmann’s fruit pie, whether cherry or apple.  If you were to ask me my favorite: the two Drake’s squares have the best overall texture, glaze and close to real fruit flavor.  And if you were to dangle the rarely found blueberry pie snacks in front of me, you would have me at hello.    

But mostly I want to know where is the next businessman or woman who wants to take a crack at peddling these finely refined frills.  Every once in a while I want to be able to dunk a Twinkie into my coffee.  And I stand ready and willing to pay an additional 25 cents per serving to get myself off the newly forming long lines of sugar deprived refugees who are too frazzled to quickly open up a flattened plastic bag, pull out a glazed donut from the bakery display without blocking the tongs and the wax paper and, in effect, creating a big kink in the whole process of pulling off the road and into 7-Eleven.  

World peace?  I just want short, no-nonsense lines when I get my gas or when I slip into a craving for a cup of coffee along with a synthetic pink, coconut sprinkled, and expertly preserved cream filled core of compressed Doodle-like chocolate hidden beneath a tangy marshmallow ball---in a twin pack of course.  

Any questions?

© 2012 Christopher’s Views