SousChef Community

A recent Saturday afternoon found me cruising the aisles at a large downtown Chinese market that I’d somehow never been to in all my years of living in this town. Naturally, I made a beeline for the candy section. All the usual suspects were there – Kasugai and Lotte gummies, White Rabbits, and a few [...]

One of the treats I got from the All Candy Expo was this pack of VE2 energy gum. It’s candy with a conscience - the packaging is very minimalist and it says, “To save trees & make less trash this package avoids using a paper sleeve wrap.” I love the idea that a medium which [...]

Tootsie’s Junior Fruit Cremes are probably the most notorious candy to hit the shelves this year, or in recent memory for that matter. Many other candy bloggers have reviewed/lambasted them, and the results have all been the same: abomination (and that’s the nice way of putting it). So why do you think I wanted to try [...]

Some of you may remember Kojak, the police detective television series that aired in the 1970s. The character of Kojak was played by actor Telly Savalas, and he often had a Tootsie Pop lollipop in his mouth. Kojak would smoothly deliver his signature phrase, “Who loves ya, baby?” with the Tootsie Pop stick dangling from [...]

Around here, when you’re eating Thanksgiving dinner with your grandparents and someone passes around a box of chocolates, it’s likely to sport the familiar purple and gold wrapper of Purdy’s. Purdy’s, which has been around since 1907, is a fixture in the provinces of Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. It’s one of those mid-range chocolate ...

I love the word “nutjob,” so when I learned there is a candy bar called NutJob, my hopes were high. NutJobs are manufactured by Bartons Candy, a candy company that was founded in 1898 in Vienna and then moved to the United States around 1938. The packaging of the NutJob chocolate bar is rather appealing [...]

China did a superb job hosting the recently concluded 2008 Olympics, I thought. One shouldn’t forget what a centralized state can accomplish when it sets its mind to athletic PR. And if you’re not some oddball fan of newfangled democracy, or perhaps even if you are, it’s impossible not to admire the longevity, [...]

Q: What do you get when you cross one sour-loving Candy Addict with a whole sleeve of sour power gumballs? A: One very happy customer with a very sore jaw. I wasn’t all that excited to get these gumballs, since I’ve had a particularly long run of not-really-sour sour candies to eat lately. The package also [...]

Bali’s Best Green Tea Latte Candy is a hard candy with infused green tea that “originates … exclusively in the islands of Java.” The package continues: “Mindfully hand-plucked, our tea derives its fresh & lively flavor and light floral scent from the sultry Javanese climate and rich soils.” I don’t know what it [...]

Every year on my birthday, my parents would take me out for a special dinner. I used to love getting all dressed up and heading out to what I considered to be a fancy restaurant; the kind of restaurant that required reservations, served Shirley Temples in sparkling crystal glasses, and had [...]