Family Holiday Newsletter 2013

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Farewell, My Hero (Burger)

One of my guilty pleasures -- the Hero Burger -- is gone from the market. A Hero Burger is two hamburger patties on a six-inch hero sandwich bun, topped with grilled salami and ham, cheese, mayo, lettuce and tomato and grilled onions if you wish. Late this summer I noticed that the Dairy Mart in my town became a Mountaineer Mart. Throughout the fall more Dairy Marts and All Star Expresses in my area became Circle K convenience stores. The Hero Hut sandwich stations in them closed. Finally this week I noticed that the standalone Hero Hut restaurant in Sabraton has also shuttered. Chico Enterprises sold 26 stores to Circle K and at least one to Mountaineer Mart. From now on, I will only get Hero Hut's signature sandwich, my guilty pleasure -- a Hero Burger -- if I make it myself and then it doesn't taste quite the same. Hero Huts have been around since my childhood, if not before. I'm sad to see them go.
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Product Review: Hershey's Air Delight Aerated Milk Chocolate

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Photo by Cynthia McCloud The new Hershey's Air Delights aerated milk chocolate bar is honey-combed with thousands of tiny pockets where air bubbles used to be. I can't figure out why they made such a thing. Is it to make you feel like you're eating a full-size chocolate bar but actually consuming less? I don't know. I do know what it's like to eat: It's soft, spongy to the bite. If I bit into it unaware that it's supposed to be like that, I would assume the chocolate had gone bad. It doesn't taste bad. It's just different. I prefer a creamier chocolate on the tongue than this chewy one. There are supposed to be Air Delight Kisses too but I haven't seen those.
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Don't call them pancakes ... celebrating buckwheat

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Sixty-five years ago, a volunteer fire department in the county where I live in West Virginia started holding a fundraising festival celebrating the area's agriculture -- a large part of which was the buckwheat that was harvested and milled into flour. Buckwheat is no longer the "insurance crop" farmers planted back then; a handful of farmers plant it now and a lot of the flour that is milled every fall for the festival starts out as buckwheat that's trucked in from a neighboring state. But a staple of the Preston County Buckwheat Festival remains: buckwheat cakes and fresh-ground whole-hog sausage dinners. Buckwheat cakes are pancakes (but don't call them that here -- the most my fellow Prestonians have ever let me get away with is "griddle cakes"). Buckwheat flour is flour but it's not from a grain; it's actually a fruit, from the rhubarb family. Doesn't taste like it though. At festival time there are lots of fund-raising dinners (plus peo...
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