Let them eat peanut chews
One of the cult candies of Philly was the Goldenberg’s Peanut Chew, a tiny, chocolate-covered brick of peanuts and ruminative goodness. In Candyfreak, author Steve Almond waxed poetic about taking a bite: “The piece was absolutely exquisite, like a rich taffy, with a hint of molasses for body, and the peanuts provided a pleasing textural snap and a rush of smoked flavor.” Imagine all that, enrobed in a dark chocolate coating. What’s not to love?
Something, apparently. When the Goldenberg family candy business was bought a few years ago by Just Born (best known as the maker of Peeps), the recipe for Peanut Chews was modified in preparation for wider national distribution. The dark chocolate coating got lighter and thicker. The chews, softened up by new emulsifiers, lost their dentrifice-pulling grip. And, in a bid for the elusive youth market, packaging went from winningly goofy to ineptly “rad”, complete with an incoherent website.
I still eat Peanut Chews anyway, lured by the siren song of the 3-for-25¢ package. Today I got a little something extra for my two bits: I found three-and-a-half Peanut Chews inside. The runaway extra chew butted right up against the package edge, cleaved cleanly by the sheer force of an industrial candy-wrapping machine.
Had I kept my head, I would have saved ma petite chew as a curiosity. But my appetite got the better of me. C’est la vie.
[…] Closer to home, 1,000 Times No is a new Philly Blogger who writes about quintessentially local topics like Peanut Chews. No Assembly Required is partially on the topic of unschooling, which is sortof homeschooling minus all the artificial structure of school. It’s a topic i am highly interested in and could potentially one day inflict on my eventual hypothetical children. Agent of Distraction is a synaesthetic, - a condition where two or more bodily senses are coupled. For her it means that certain words evoke an almost tangible sense of color. Because i have an encyclopaedic memory for Rolling Stone feature articles, i know that John Mayer experiences a similar synesthesia. […]
Where can I buy peanut chews?
Go to www.peanutchewsstore.com and click the link to go to the online store.