Pickle-flavored taffy? Sure, I’ll try it.

– Everything is an Adventure: Column by Julia Wolf –

One of my dad’s favorite lines is, “I’ve never met a doughnut that I didn’t like.” I’m sure he likes the line better, because it usually comes when doughnuts are present or will be shortly. Plus, it is a great dad joke.

Everyone in my family has a sweet tooth and my choice of sweet tends to be the fruity/gummy candies, though I like chocolates, baked goods and ice cream, too. Of course, when someone comes across a unique candy, they think of me. After all, I really like candy.

Someone told me how good freeze-dried Skittles are and that I should try them if I get the chance, but I didn’t think I would come across freeze-dried Skittles anywhere, so I put them out of my mind.

Then, my “little sister,” through Big Brothers Big Sisters, asked to go to the candy store with me. Sure. Why not? I knew we would spend more time perusing all the different shaped and colored candies, than we would actually buying anything.

On the drive to the shop, my little started to tell me about pickle-flavored taffy. She said it was kind of weird, but she liked how it tasted like pickle juice and that I should try one.

I like pickles, though I was pretty sure I didn’t like pickles enough to want taffy flavored like them. But hey, you only live once and it was a pretty low-risk endeavor.

The two of us looked through the store and spent some time discussing the merits of different options. Is it weird to say the candy was cute? Because a lot of it was.

Eventually, she picked out her stuff and I settled on picking from some bulk taffies, so I could select how many of each kind I wanted (and avoid the fake chocolate and banana-flavored ones). I bought one pickle taffy to try it and a few other flavors I was less sure about, selecting a few more of the flavors I knew would be good.

I also saw freeze-dried Skittles and pointed them out to her. Turns out, she was not the person who was telling me about how delicious those were. Perfect. Someone to try them with.

On the way home, we had to stop for me to run a quick errand and it seemed like a perfect time to break into those Skittles. They were very good and somehow tasted different than not-freezedried Skittles. The consensus was that their texture made our tongues’ feel kind of weird, though. That was probably just as well, because it encouraged me to make them last.

As a whole, the taffies were pretty good, too. My favorite flavors were blue raspberry, green apple, cinnamon and peppermint. Those are classics for a reason. The cotton candy-flavored one, which I considered not buying, because I was afraid it would be too sweet, was sweeter than I like. That is the other method of making candy last longer, I guess. I was sugared out for the evening, after that one.

As the taffies jostled around in the bag, I lost track of which green one was the pickle-flavored one. The last two I had left were green apple and pickle. However, they looked exactly the same. At that point, I knew it was time to be brave. So, I unwrapped the first one and gave it a smell. Definitely pickle. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I can see people who really like dill pickles or who like the sweet/savory favor combination, thinking it is a great flavor. Unfortunately for me, I am neither of those kinds of people.

That meant the last taffy in the bag was green apple, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Ending on a high note is always fun.

The story of trying pickle taffy made my next phone call with my boyfriend. It turns out, he was the one who told me I should try the freeze-dried Skittles. After some discussion on the topic of the candy I purchased, I decided that the pickle one was better than the cotton candy one. Neither was my flavor of choice, which is a little sad, because candy is good.

My dad had the same problem with doughnuts. It’s been a while ago now, but at one point he was at a meeting where there were doughnuts out. He didn’t look too closely what he was grabbing and ended up with a doughnut that had bacon crumbled on top. Some people would really like that sweet/salty combination. He didn’t. And there it was, the doughnut he didn’t like.

Ah, yes. The (not quite) bitter taste of betrayal.