On a weekend trip to my old high school stomping grounds, I popped inside one of my favorite shops in burgeoning “Uptown” Normal, Ill., which is undergoing a reconstruction that has the streets torn up, but businesses still in operation.
Confectionery consultant Beth Kimmerle knows a thing or two about chocolate and candy. The retailer-turned-product-manager-turned-historian is the author of three books on the subject.
I recall the first time I saw a three-wheel bike in a cookie/cracker bakery many years ago. As a novice to the industry, I wasn’t quite sure what a bicycle was doing in a food processing plant.
The night before Illinois’ new tax on candy, soft drinks, toiletries and alcohol went into effect, I considered a grocery run for non-flour-based sweets, Arizona iced tea, sensitivity toothpaste and liquor.
Pinch yourself. No, this isn’t an attempt to determine your pain tolerance level. Waterboarding is now definitely a no-no here in the United States. Rather, the pinching is simply an interactive approach of saying we’ve survived the first half of 2009.
Members of some generations may well-remember those five-and-dime stores that offered “penny candy” for, well, mere pennies. Confections may cost more now than they did back then, but such products have remained an affordable luxury, for the most part, even in these difficult economic times.
Call it a victory for common sense. Last week at the Organic Trade
Association (OTA)’s All Things Organic show in Chicago, Deputy
Agriculture Secretary Kathleen Merrigan presided over the
signing of an organic equivalency agreement between the U.S. Dept
of Agriculture (USDA) and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency
(CFIA).