Charleston Chew Vindicated

After reviling the Mini Charleston Chews in my last post the comments were unanimously in support of the candy.

I've been wrong exactly three times in my life, could this be #4? (My wife will get a good laugh from the preceding statement.)

I have no desire to wrongly malign anyone or any candy so on my way home I bought a chocolate and vanilla Charleston Chew.



The ingredient list wasn't inspiring: Corn syrup, Sugar, Vegetable oil, Non-fat dry milk, Cocoa, Lactose, Milk Protein, Egg albumen (?), Artificial flavor, Soya lecithin (?), Soya protein (?), Salt. But this is candy, not health food, so I continued the experiment.

The wrapper suggests they are good cold so I cut each bar in half and put a half in the fridge.

I tried the chocolate first. The chocolate coating tasted about the same but a bit better. The nougat still had the compressed marshmallow texture but it tasted better. And no icky after taste. Remarkably better than the Minis from yesterday.

Next up was vanilla. I was hesitant because the Minis were also vanilla. I was pleasantly surprised to find the vanilla chew to also be pretty good with no weird chemical flavor and nasty after taste like the Minis.

Both flavors were also good chilled as the nougat was now brittle and snapped off when bitten. Indeed they did taste a little better cold.

Charleston Chews did not make it into my top tier candies (that's reserved for Snickers, Kit-Kat, Butterfinger and Twixt), but they've been salvaged from the "never eat this again" category. And I could see myself eating a Chew now and then when the hankering hit me.

The minor mystery that remains is: Why were the Mini Chews so awful? Perhaps the Minis are just made different and not as good. But the sad theory I'm leaning toward is that the Minis were not fresh. Could they have been from Halloween 2008, or even earlier? It's probably a good thing I can't recall which neighbor handed out the Minis. I think it's best if I just close this case and move on.


Nails on a Chalkboard

The kids were watching So You Think You Can Dance, a show I find repulsive. Not because of the dancers, most of whom are talented. The format of the show is annoying, with it's meager content stretched over a full hour, but that's not the worst.

It's Mary Murphy's voice. (Listen, if you dare.)


I would rather endure a car alarm or nails down a chalkboard than listen to her hideous mouth noises. She gushes in the worst possible way - loud and obnoxious.

But the nightmare is her laugh, which makes me want to shove something in my ears, say ice picks, to make it stop. It's some sort of evil cackle tragically combined with a belly laugh.

If I do something really bad, like suicide bomb an elementary school that's also a children's hospital and a church, I would fully expect to wake up in hell married to Mary Murphy. In a one-room apartment. And my arms removed so I can't plug my ears.

When the show came on I retreated to my room. I can't repel firepower of that magnitude.