437: Cake Zine’s Candy Land

25:24And I think for me, as someone who had never had it before, I've still never had it because every time we try to get it, it's sold out because it's so popular. We've tried. We need like a daytime trip to Flushing, I think, because we go like too late in the day whenever we've tried to get it before. But I think like candied apple is the maybe like all-American version of Tonghulu that I've never been that into before because it's just kind of hard to bite into a giant candy apple and take pieces out of it. But I think the bite-sized element of Tonghulu also, that it's these smaller hawthorn berries or strawberries or something, has appeal.

25:56It's almost like the tiny M &M versus the larger M &M and the different ratio of like filling to inside that you have. Are you a tiny M &M girl? I don't really love M &Ms in general, but I think the tiny ones are more fun. Okay. Interesting. I don't know. And also, I think the Tonghulu thing that you were talking about before, just as the act of frying anything, Oreos, butterballs, even beer, took over local state fairs in America, the cult of Tonghulu has spread far past its sweet fruit roots. So I think you're right that there is this kind of like versatile technique component happening as well.

26:30Yeah, totally. What should I Tonghulu? What should you Tonghulu? yeah should we try tongue huluing a cake like cake pops maybe pop would work i don't think like i just i like the fact that it i like it when it's something fresh yeah i feel like cherries would be cool like still oh what if they were still on the stem that would be really cute would be really cute you'd have to like deep hit them though i guess yeah it's like an act of love kind of yeah that would be like a laborious tongue hulu the other thing i've been thinking about as a theme in this issue is the way that like candy connects us to kind of culture or family or memories in different kinds of way.

27:05Are there any things that come to mind for you on that? Yeah, I mean, there are honestly so many pieces in this issue that really sort of, you know, speak to that feeling or take that on. I think like it reminds me, obviously, of like Fabian's piece and Daphne, who are both like people who've left their home countries or, you know, places of origin and are sort of like yearning and longing and making something from their past as a sort of, you know, way of bringing home closer to them. Yeah. There's also the flip of that, which Katie Allen wrote a piece for the issue about growing up in Miami and a Catholic school that was mostly girls from Latin America and how everyone would bring candies from their home countries to recess and share them.

27:43But as a Cuban immigrant who doesn't have access to any candy being imported from Cuba, she felt like she was missing out on this experience. And I liked that also because it was almost like this absence of candy and this wishing for candy to contribute. Yeah, totally. Yeah, it reminds me of Edward's artist statement as well. And Edward grew up in Indiana, but his grandmother was from Mexico and she would always bring him pulpo de tamarindo. and he sort of writes about and sort of renders visually how he has come to like understand his heritage through food and through the sort of like absence of that in Indiana and this like smoky sweet spicy sour taste that is like bringing him in communion with his past and present yeah I love that story I love that we get to publish artist statements and their work in the magazine I think that's kind of an unusual format for a food publication and uses this pulpa de tamarindo though, to paint and then also writes about, you know, having this little pot of the tamarind paste that his grandma would bring to him that he would stash in his toy box.

28:47And then all of his toys would smell like tamarind, which just makes me like I feel so tenderly towards this childhood Edward who has his toy box that everything smells like tamarind. And it's cute because it's not even like my memory or my childhood, but I still feel this kind of secondary warmth coming out of that. Totally. So something we debated a lot when we were working on this issue was whether or not gum is a candy. What is your stance on this? The eternal question. I have been thinking about this because we ultimately decided, no, it was not a candy because you don't ingest it. You don't chew and swallow it.

29:23But I do think bubblegum is a candy. It comes in like those like crazy canisters. You're like, It's very much sort of like sweet saccharine for pleasure, not for like function. You know, like adult chewing gum to me, like when it's like minty, it's like, you know, something to do or it's like a breath enhancer or whatever. That feels a little less close to candy. But to me, like, you know, like bubble gum or like bazooka gum, that is. Like hubba bubba. Hubba bubba. Yeah. Yeah. Have you tried Big League 2? It was like, oh, my God, this is such a blast from the past. baseball themed like i think it's supposed to be like chewing tobacco it's like little worms of gum um that come and it's it comes in like a pouch and then you chew on it and then it loses flavor really quickly and you spit it out kind of like uh chewing tobacco that seems dangerous to market to the children yeah it's kind of in line with candy cigarettes um yeah oh oh we should have yeah i know i can't believe we did it we didn't include candy cigarettes in the issue There's always Candyland 2.0.

30:29Yeah. Well, I'm on Wikipedia right now to look up the definition of candy. And it's because Wikipedia is the source of all truth. And it says candy, alternatively called sweets or lollies, is a confection that features sugar as a primary ingredient. This category, also called sugar confectionery, encompasses any sweet confection, including chocolate, chewing gum and sugar candy. Wow. Maybe somebody edited this because I think after we after we get our decision. I'm going to stand. I like what you're saying about sugary gum being the difference, because I do think like sugar is the most important part of anything being candy.

31:06Like as a child, if you gave me like carob chocolate or chocolate that doesn't have sugar, like that's for adults. What about artificial sugar, though? Like aspartame? Yeah, I mean, there's a whole category of like better for you gummies that are out here right now that are trying to take that similarly. And on the note of aspartame, this writer at Heart Fargo in our issue writes about sugar free candy. And I love this because it's not coming from a place of critiquing sugar free candy, which I think would be a cheap shot. It's instead kind of claiming sugar-free candy as someone who was diabetic, as the nostalgic flavor as his childhood and as an adult, as kind of a part of like queer identity and camp.

31:44Like this idea that like sugar-free candy that is just going so hard in the direction of being candy, despite the fact that it doesn't have sugar, is campy to him, which I think there's something really fun in that, too. There really is. Do you like any sugar-free candy? I love a sugar-free Werther's. Oh, I'm so glad you said Werther's. I love Werther's. They're so like the grandma candy. Yeah. But they remind me of the dentist's office. Like you want to be. I want to be. I love the dentist. I'm trying to think of other sugar free candies that I'm like ingesting. Did you ever have those candies?

32:18They were wrapped and they looked like a strawberry with the kind of red wrapper and then the green top on them. Maybe they were like at like the like counter of a restaurant as you exited. Right. Yeah. I think there's a whole category of like giveaway candies that older people would buy that no one would really seek out. But like I think when I would go to like the dry cleaner with my mom, they would have a dish of them. And, you know, actually, we're having our launch party for the issue this week. And we do tattoos that are inspired by the issue at all of our parties. And the tattoo artist, Miley on Chambers, has one of the little strawberry wrapped candies on the tattoo flash seat.

32:55And my sister and I were sending it to each other being like, should we get another sister tattoo? and it would be this strawberry candy. Oh my God, that's a really good one. That no one likes. I was really into the Rolos. I was like, that's a deep cut that Maya included. Yes. A Rolos on the flash sheet. Oh, you know, I actually, I didn't know what that was the first time I looked at it. But now that you're saying, I mean, I've eaten a Rolo. I just wasn't expecting to encounter it in like a tattoo flash context. Yeah. But that's definitely what it is. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe I'll get my first tattoo and it'll be a lollipop.

33:23That's my favorite one. It is a cute one. Yeah. So I guess to close today, I want to play a little rapid fire game with you. But before, I want to know just how you think about candy differently after working on this issue. Yeah, I mean, I think like I hadn't been thinking very like critically about candy before we started thinking about it constantly for the past six months. Like it was something I was encountering daily at like, you know, a bodega checkout or in like the aisle seven of the grocery store. But it wasn't something I was like thinking about critically. Yeah, I mean, I think like more than other sweets that we've covered, like, you know, cake or pie, like candy feels tied to like capitalism and consumption and corporations and like empire and conquest.

34:04Because of how it's made and how it's made at scale. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's like, you know, of course, they're like mom and pop fudge shops. Sure. But they're few and far between these days, though there is actually a mom and pop candy shop in my neighborhood that I've been meaning to go to. But they might be small business owned, but the candy they're selling is still probably owned by the same five corporations. Yeah, 100 percent. Totally. So I think it's just like made me think more deeply and robustly about like things that I'm encountering on the everyday. Like to me, like candy used to just be sort of synonymous with Halloween.

34:37And now I think about it as sort of a microcosm for or emblematic of a lot of larger like forces and structures and like depraved histories that have like all come together to create the like wrapped Snickers bar on on the grocery store stand. Yeah, I think candy to me is so eternal because it doesn't really go bad, at least for a long time. You can find it more widely than any other sweet probably. And I think that ubiquity almost makes it go unnoticed or under the radar. Like you don't really see food publications writing about candy unless it's like, I don't know, a new high-chew flavor that's special or something like that.

35:16Certainly there are moments when candies from other countries or like healthier versions of candies like enter the ecosystem. But I think a lot of candy is just kind of been around for a while. But something that I wanted to mention that I was thinking about a lot was Gabrielle Loazel's piece in this issue, which is about the history of banana candy that I think was so interesting to me because it is about this moment in time where most Americans had never had banana the fruit before. But the chemical flavor of banana entered into this country through banana candies. And I think today banana candy is very passé.

35:52Like no one really likes it or wants it in general. A banana, the fruit is so ubiquitous and you can get it almost everywhere. But to think about this moment in time when the fruit almost felt foreign and artificial and the candy was like the original. and the way that candy can kind of introduce flavors or like reframe how we think about flavors. It's something that's really stuck with me. Yeah. What do they say? They say like an incomplete simulacrum. Well, that also is like the element there is that the banana candy was based on a cultivar of banana that is no longer available. The Grosse Michel banana, which was basically went extinct because of like mites and different agricultural things at play.

36:33And now this banana that is not that flavor, that's the widely known banana, also is maybe threatened in some kind of way. That's maybe like the more widely known thing is like, oh, the artificial banana is something else. But I think the thing that was lesser known that was interesting to me was that the artificial flavor was the true flavor first. And, yeah, no, I crave candy all the time. Do you? Have you your candy consumption has? It's gone up for sure. I think maybe because it's like, quote unquote, research for me now. Whenever I'm in a candy shop, I want to try something. Tax right off.

37:02Yeah, I guess. I mean, IRS is going to come for me now that we said that. This girl is buying a lot of peach rings. It's just once you start thinking about it, you see it everywhere. So true. OK, I'm going to do a little rapid fire to close. Are you ready? I'm ready. OK. Chocolate or gummy? Chocolate. Sweet or sour? Sour. Which color Skittle? Ooh, red. Green. Green. Oh, I haven't been answering any of these. Wow. OK, chocolate for me. OK, so should I do it for you? OK, ready? No, no, no. I'll go. I'll go. I'll go. Okay. Chocolate or gummy? Chocolate. Sweet or sour? Sour. What color is Skittle?

37:37Green. M &M's or Reese's? Oh, Reese's. What about you? Reese's, definitely. Okay. And if you were going to give out candy to trick-or-treaters, what candy would you choose? Ooh. Okay. I love that. I love that question. I used to really love the Cookies and Cream Hershey's bars. like they always felt they're so sweet like like incredibly saccharine but just so like pleasurable so i think i would do those i think i would do just a ton of jolly ranchers because i think there's something tanya just gave me a stink face because i think it's not about me it's about the kids right and i think to be a child and to be presenting with all the different colors and like think about like which one you want and choose it is like a really fun thing maybe it's part of like identity formation when you're a child.

38:24I don't know. I just like want to have the option. That's so funny. I feel like the kids, the kids who are coming to your house and seeing Jolly Ranchers are like bummed. No. Jolly Ranchers are like, I don't know. I mean, maybe I'm being a Jolly Rancher hater, but I'm not a, I'm not a, I'm not a huge fan. I don't think we approach trick or treating in the same way, which for me, it's all about bartering. And you get to, you got to take a couple of Jolly Ranchers first. It's not just one. That would be rude. But who's going to trade a Hershey's cookies and cream bar for three Jolly Ranchers? I mean, are you doing king size?

38:57Yeah, I'm going king size, girl. Oh, I can't compete if you're doing king size. Well, it won't be for the king size, but someone's going to want an Almond Joy and they're going to trade three Jolly Ranchers for it. And you know what? That's going to happen because of me. I'm glad to hear it. Thank you so much for talking about candy with me. If anyone is listening and they want to hear about it even more, you can pick up the latest copy of Cake Scene at CakeScene.com or look for a stockist near you. Thank you.

39:29Finding sweetness at the end of the world. My wife is absolutely obsessed with Three Musketeers bars, says Sam Levingood, a 36-year-old doomsday prepper living in the Appalachian Mountains. I have a huge stockpile of those in case something happens and I know I can't go to the gas station or grocery store and pick one up. I guarantee that'll put a smile on her face eventually. We're talking on the phone as Livingood watches over his children, who are four and five. Too young, he tells me, to understand why exactly their freezers are crammed with enough chicken nuggets and french fries to feed an entire preschool of picky eaters for a month.

40:07Rather than hoarding the dried beans and protein sludges I picture when I think of end-times cuisine, Livingood makes sure his munitions are aligned with his family's prelapsarian tastes. For me, it doesn't really matter. I can eat anything. As long as I can keep going, we're fine. That's basically how I live life every day anyway. But something that makes them happy makes me happy, and I see that as a luxury, he says. I don't tell living good, but my greatest fear is the apocalypse. Not dying. It's okay if I bite it individually. but living through mass structural collapse. Three suns flicker in the sky, the Brooklyn Bridge is melting.

40:51I'm impotently dragging the couch in front of my front door as a blockade. Despite his best intentions to project an air of calm, the mayor weeps on the local news before the TV signal suddenly blinks out. That kind of a zone. What scares me about the apocalypse is the threat of pleasure annihilation. a jagged turn towards sheer survival. Having a great time is my primary motivation. I eat Reese's Take Five bars for breakfast at least once a week. I wrote a whole book about sleeping around as a personal belief system, and half my paycheck goes to poisoning my hair until it's the color of a spotlight.

41:31While I usually see nihilism as the thought mode most conducive to my way of being, like, if nothing matters, why not party? try to live my values, and otherwise fully orient myself around beauty, I'd prefer not to have that logic stress-tested by napalm or, like, revenants. Unlike me, many preppers aren't afraid of the apocalypse. They're ready. Some of them are even planning to enjoy it. One late night, freaking myself out online for fun, I learned that it's fairly common for end-timers to ferret away candy alongside their toilet paper and firearms. Reviewing TikTok and Reddit posts from the fringe, I wasn't cheered to learn that red hots last indefinitely.

42:12Red hots suck. But free-stride Skittles? Potentially something to survive for. Preppers use the shorthand SHTF, when shit hits the fan, as a catch-all for whatever cataclysm awaits us. Nuclear war, alien invasion, dystopia of any flavor. In anticipation of the big one, they amass supplies. SHTF staples include water filters, portable generators, fireproof blankets, and MREs, or meals ready to eat. Dehydrated food bricks that busy militaries eat on the go. Plus, peanut M &Ms or warheads or whatever their favorite candy at checkout might be. The most seasoned survivalists especially have these extravagances.

42:58The nice thing about being a prepper for several years is that I have most of the necessities stocked up, So I have the luxury of prepping non-essential items, creature comforts. Elizabeth Villa, a 45-year-old prepper in Wisconsin, tells me via email. I dry can hot chocolate powder. I prep a lot of hard candy, like Jolly Ranchers. I picture a person in a hazmat suit dejectedly pawing through an oil drum of grapes and watermelons. Last resort flavors, even in the abundant present. Not all of Villa and Living Good's life-sustaining frivolities are edible. Lotion is my must-have, so I make sure to have plenty of my favorite kind stocked up, Villa writes.

43:40Given his kids, Livin' Good's more concerned about how to mollify them when tablets are kaput. We have board games out the wazoo. I have old-school TVs and Nintendos and PlayStation 1, PlayStation 2 games. That makes it easy, he says. Those actually don't use as much power as you think. Running off a solar generator's battery backup, you could actually get an hour a day out of that conservatively to get somebody some entertainment and to stop thinking about what's going on in the world around them. In addition to delighting themselves and their loved ones post-Armageddon, Living Good and Villa will rely on weaklings like me, ill-equipped fools for pleasure, and particularly those with the bad sense to live in overrun, strapped cities, to fill in whatever gaps emerge in their survival strategies, to come knocking with whatever we have in hand when their more essential supplies begin to thin.

44:34They know that once the global banking system is just a funny memory, it'll be time to cut some deals on the ground. While you'll eventually run out of batteries, human vice is an inexhaustible resource. Good, cheap fuel that burns clean. I have a list of barter items. Airplane-sized bottles of liquor, because it's easier to trade individual nips rather than pour from a big handle since people will insist on taking the whole bottle if they see you have lots of alcohol. Tobacco and rolling papers, candy, and cocoa. Decks of cards, Villa says. Coffee will become as valuable as gold if SHTF for any extended period.

45:15When times are hard, the smallest pleasures can hopefully keep people mentally prepared to survive. That's noble and strategic. In times of societal collapse, delicacies and distractions can be traded for gasoline or tampons. Livingood anticipates that other people's desires will become his family's provision and protection. It's a baked-in part of his system. Excess is both valuable and expendable. Barter with luxury items, not something you need to sustain your life, but something that someone else might need to boost their morale, Living Good explains. If somebody's wife is raging for a chocolate bar, they might do anything they can to get one to make her happier for a small amount of time.

45:59You might get something you actually need versus something that they wanted. Offering your spouse or young children a pocket of joy in a waking hellscape is pragmatic. So is counting on others' desperation for escape of any kind and promising them momentary relief and even optimism in an otherwise joyless wasteland. Luxury items, chocolate, anything that you get pleasure from every day. It's nice to have after it all hits the fan, says Livingood, who doesn't indulge in swearing. It gives you hope that something like that might come back. With a Three Musketeers bar, he'll be able to offer a taste of the ultimate luxury after the end.

46:38Time travel. Here is the world as it was.

46:52Hi, Amy Rose. This is Taste. Thank you for coming on the podcast. I'm delighted to be here. The Cakesine Taste podcast collab that happens twice a year. Okay, Cakesine is my favorite thing. I'm thrilled to be a part of this issue. When I set the theme with Tanya, there's always stories that we expect to receive. And then there are stories that I could have never thought about. And I think hearing about Doomsday Preppers and Candy was definitely in the latter category. in a really fun way. And to start, I'm curious if you could tell me about how you came up with this idea. Are you secretly a prepper?

47:24Yes. That's actually, I'm trying to promote the prepper lifestyle by way of your magazine. Yes. No, this pitch actually happened on the fly. I was standing with Tanya in our friend Matt Starr's kitchen, and she told me about the theme. And I immediately thought it was so great and was just rattling off ideas. And this was one of the first ones that I was like, oh, and you could interview doomsday preppers about the candy that they prep for the end of the world if they do that. I wonder if they do that. And Tanya was like, will you pitch that? At the time, I was working for a different magazine.

48:03And I was like, oh, yeah, somebody could do that. And she was like, you could do that. Yeah. And so I was immediately like, oh, yeah, I could. And I was beguiled by the idea and just wanted to talk to people who wanted to eat candy after the end of the world. Yeah. Right. So how did you go about finding the sources in this piece? Were you kind of trolling through the online forums? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Reddit is such a wellspring of people who want to talk about their deep freezing techniques, how they can things, what works, what doesn't work. And TikTok is actually yeah also a really robust place to find people who call themselves like the elegant prepper mom or like the minimalist prepper yeah kind of like that it's it's really funny like you know those uh videos that people will make where they're filling their like clear plastic drawers with yeah which is kind of like prepping meal prepping in a short-term way yeah like that but for their bunkers.

49:03Totally like that. And so it's a similar premise. People just love to show off their, you know, stockpiled goods of firearms and candy. Yeah. And when I first read the pitch, I think to me it made sense that people would include candy in their kits because as a food person, candy to me seems like the most indestructible dessert imaginable. Like it's hard to imagine Skittles actually going stale, not to imagine like the freeze dried Skittle era, which I think is just trendy with people who like candy. But it does come from this kind of prepping background, right? I'm not totally sure if it does.

49:37I would imagine that it does. I think that people also see it as kind of like an astronaut food as part of the novelty. But I only recently had my first freeze-dried Skittle. And maybe like a week ago, I saw them in the grocery store. Have you been seeing them places? Well, I edited a story for Taste maybe last year about like the TikTok freeze-dried candy ecosystem that's been happening, but I still haven't tried one. So I'm very curious to know what the experience was like for you. Okay, I'm bringing you one next time I see you. Please. They're very hard and they kind of look a little exploded.

50:09Yeah. And I think I prefer the original, but the novelty factor is huge. Right. Yeah. And it's good to know like if I ever, you know, needed it, it would be there indestructibly. I'm curious to hear about what to you is the most interesting or unexpected part of the reporting process, because I would imagine you had a lot of very unusual conversations. I think what I was surprised at, I sent a lot of inquiries to people. I probably reached out to like 30 or 40 people. They're like, the government is coming for us. Why is everybody asking questions about candy? I thought it was going to be like that.

50:49And instead, everybody wanted to talk to me about what their situation was. Some people were like, I won't tell you where I am. In fact, I think both sources in this case would not tell me here is exactly where in a given state. Because of course, they don't want anybody coming for their stash. Yeah, their three musketeers. You got to keep those for your wife. But yeah, I was really shocked at how many people were so forthcoming. It seemed like there was an attitude of, I want you to know this. Like Sam Livingood really was concerned for me. He was like, you have to get out of the city. He was like, you live in New York, you're screwed.

51:28Yeah, exactly. He was like, I really, I think you should reconsider. And he wasn't paternalistic about it, but he was just like, you're in trouble. You're in danger. I think that's an attitude that I respect about preppers is it's almost like the really like devoutly religious people who try to convert you. Like, I don't want to be converted, but I appreciate that you truly believe that I'm going to go to hell if I don't do this and that you're looking out for me, you know? Yeah, it's absolutely like a personal belief system in which, like, he was like, I like you. You seem like a nice guy. Like, get out of there.

52:00It is a little like religion in that way. The other thing that I found unexpected reading this story, like, it made sense that you would want to keep candy just for something sweet. But the whole bartering aspect and specifically the fact that people will be so willing to trade medicine or gasoline for chocolate. I wasn't really in that headspace before reading it, but I think it makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And that was the thing, too. That was the sort of like cynicism and nefarious part of it. Because you start with this person who's just like, yeah, you know, I keep three Musketeers bars to make my wife happy and dino chicken nuggets for my kids.

52:34And then he's like, yeah, well, if you needed something, I would have it. and what would I need from it? It took a turn. Yeah. And I guess it's also like the 3D chess mentality that when other people who have not been prepared are amassing their supplies after this big event happens, that they're not going to think about the luxury items. So then it's going to have more value to them. Yeah. I just wouldn't necessarily think of candy along those lines, maybe like alcohol, cigarettes, but they were really all in on And the fact that like candy would be an important form of currency. Well, I think there's the nostalgia element of it, right?

53:10That it would bring you back to Halloween or like your little treats you would buy yourself after the dentist. Like back in the world when we went to the dentist still. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And I think it has a lot to do with kids too. Like something to mollify your children. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the kids are really going to be difficult to control in the endgame situation. I know. That's why the PlayStation part, I was like, you're a genius. Like, oh, you figured out like how many hours of a generator you would need to give your kids screen time. Like that is, as you put it, like 3D chess in the extreme, I think.

53:43So I have to know, after writing this piece, how is your prepping lifestyle going? You know, I'll go through phases every few years because I really am afraid of the apocalypse. Like I don't want it to happen. Just I want to be clear about that. I mean, me also. But my feeling with it is like I always have candy in my house somewhere. It's just who I am. It's how I am made. It's how I operate. But I think I've begun to keep a little bit more like even at my boyfriend's house, I will keep like an extra take five bar in the freezer, like a hazelnut Kit Kat bar kind of thing. Yeah. So I should probably be thinking a little bit more about like, I don't know, rubbing alcohol or first aid kit.

54:29But I am thinking Hershey's Kiss. Honestly, I think we should just cut it there. That's such a perfect ending. But I will ask you one more question, which is if you could just briefly tell me about the appeal of a Hershey's Take 5 bar. Because is it Hershey's? Reese's? It's a Reese's. Yeah. The branding moved over some years back. It used to be just Take Five, and now they tried to put it under the recess mantle, I think, to make it more appealing to people, which doesn't make sense to me at all. Take Five bar is great because it's everything in one chocolate bar. You get peanuts, peanut butter, chocolate caramel, and pretzel.

55:07And what could be better than everything? Again, like I try to like heap pleasure into my life as much as I can. so I think what when I first got into them I kept fun size ones in my freezer because I thought it was such an elegant thing to do if you were like hooking up with someone and then like send them on their way yeah but yeah it's just been such a part of my life for so long like it's it's such an uncomplicated joy for me well honestly it sounds like it would be pretty good to barter within the apocalypse because it has so many things inside of it that people would be interested in. Totally.

55:42And we're already doing the fun-sized mentality when they talk about like the nips. The little nips of alcohol. Yeah. Okay. Well, I'm going to go home and buy some fun-sized chocolate bars on the way in your honor. Well, I'm just saying this to protect you in the apocalypse, much like Living Good did with me. Thank you so much for this. It was great. Thank you for coming on, Amy Rose.

56:05This is Taste is hosted by Matt Rodbard and me, Eliza Abarbanel. The show is produced by Shalia Harris and Pat Stango and edited by Clayton Gumbert. Theme music by Steve Rydell. Visit Taste online at tastecooking.com and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter for updates on all cool things happening.