Licorice is one of those things that people usually like a lot or totally abhor. You are pretty much into it or you’re not, there is not much waffling on the fence concerning licorice. I am in the licorice camp.
So there I am on a summer’s day; a kid wandering through Woolworth’s after finishing up a banana split ice cream sundae that I scored for twenty-three cents – you picked a balloon and they popped it and you paid whatever price the little piece of paper in the balloon said. After finishing off that, I became distracted by the pet section with the white mice, the hamsters, and the parakeets. When I left the store and got out to the sidewalk, I was lured by a spicy aroma into the small specialty store next door. We called it “The German Deli”, although that was not the name of the store and I am not sure what other countries the store actually represented…..it was probably more like a gourmet import store. I was maybe eleven years old at the time, if that.
In this “German Deli” there were sausage-y, rich, spiced scents that seemed to seep from the walls. The inside was dark and close. The wooden shelves were stocked with bottles and cans of exotic, Weird and Unfamiliar Things; the things you normally did not
see in the supermarket in those days. Chestnuts floating in syrup, pearly white onions in brine, jams made from exotic fruits, unidentifiable items with pretty labels and unpronounceable, magical names. These Unfamiliar Things lured me. I was curious to try something, but almost everything I saw was outrageously expensive to me. However, on one of the lower shelves, a shelf I could easily reach and inspect, round metal tins of Pastilles were arranged in rows. A white tin with little black diamond shapes printed on it said GYMS in black and gold lettering. I did not know what “GYMS” meant, but I assumed the diamonds referred to something like licorice. The writing on the tin was not in English. The tin was affordable to me (especially since I had made such a killing on the banana split) so I bought one.
When I pried the top off the tin, it was filled with little black diamonds that gave off a tangy, acrid, licorice but not licorice scent. Testing one of the diamonds on my tongue, I discovered this licorice certainly was nothing like the licorice that I knew. It was salty, and something else besides. And from that moment, I was hooked. I could eat them one after another. Whenever I happened to be down that way, I would always make a detour to “The German Deli” for more GYMS.
It turned out none of my friends or siblings had the same attraction to the GYMS – as a matter of fact, most of them were disgusted by it – so I was pretty much on my own concerning this discovery. I ate GYMS for years, until “The German Deli” closed…and then we moved away and I forgot about them.
My next encounter with salt licorice happened in Yiftah in the Golan Heights of Israel, where I met a Dutch woman who had brought some from home. She told me they were called “Drop”. These were not little diamond shapes but round and oval black shapes. Again, my immediate reaction to them was so powerful that I was instantly craving them, wanting more and more. 
For some reason, Dutch friends keep appearing in my life – none of who know each other – and each one has turned me on to the salt licorice. The second Dutch woman, who I befriended when I parked myself next to the food table at a party (stuffing my face), brought back a bag of black coins when she was visiting her family in Holland. She told me the drop were “zout” and “dubbel-zout”, and indeed the ones with the “DZ” on them were killer salty. Every time her family came to visit or she would visit them, she would bring me a little bag of “zout drop”.
I went to The Netherlands with her, where they have candy stores filled with all sorts of loose drop that you can mix up and buy in bags. It was drop heaven. Some of it was surrounded by a sugar-coating, some of it was softer, or in different shapes. There were sugared, square cubes of chewy stuff called Griotten which also had that taste. It was in one of these drop stores where I discovered the softer, light brown salmiak coins, which are like the salt licorice, but there is something else about them also. They are milder but incredibly addictive. The light brown salmiak became my thing. I will say while I type this, right at this very minute, I am actually salivating for salmiak.
What is this stuff? I had to know what this salmiak was! So I asked our host, my Dutch friend’s cousin, who looked at me like I was insane and said “What do you mean? Salmiak is salmiak!” I took that at face value. There must be something called salmiak that they make the salmiak out of. One and the same in name?
The third Dutch friend entered my life through an internet group of cancer survivors. Not only did she have salmiak, she had it in a kind of chalky round, grayish-tan candy form that came in a roll. I liked this even better. But it seems you could not find this in “regular stores”. 
By the time I met my fourth Dutch friend at a holistic center, I figured all these Dutch women and their salmiak was a sign. I am not sure where that sign was pointing, but I went on a quest to find out where I could get salmiak here in the states instead of the intermittent care packages from Holland.
Well, you can Google anything, and I finally did. Salmiak, which is familiar to the Netherlands, Nordic countries, the Baltics and parts of Northern Germany, is salty licorice that is flavored with ammonium chloride, or “sal ammoniac”. It is the ammonium chloride which gives it that kick I so crave.
With a name like ammonium chloride, I have to wonder if it is Bad For You. A quick Wiki check reveals that it is used in metalwork; in zinc carbon batteries; as a food additive in baking; a flavoring for licorice; is known as noshader in India and Pakistan, where it is used in food for crispness; is sometimes used as an expectorant; and also as a soldering flux, to name a few things – not all very appetizing and maybe a bit questionable. Dutch health organizations advise 
not eating more than 50 grams of licorice a day, as the body would have to metabolize the glycyrrhizine, which is the compound which provides the sweet taste. Too much of that stuff can cause edema and hypertension. However, it is also supposedly inhibits liver cell injury. All of this is more information than I think I need. I have never gotten to the point where I have keeled over from salmiak, and none of my Dutch friends have ever had a salmiak-related problem either.
So far I have not found a really good source for salmiak. I think I might look for a store and order it. Tonight.
But when I got home, instead of using the juicer machine, I decided to squeeze some fresh orange juice by hand. I remembered that somewhere, stashed away, I had a little glass citrus squeezer which predated the electric juicer. I found it safely stowed on the bottom shelf of the dining room hutch, a hutch which had been in our home when I was a child. I remember my parents dragging the old pine piece home and my Dad refinishing it.
high-powered assault weapons, with the possibility or intent to slaughter innocent populations at whim. It seems the meaning of our Second Amendment has become grossly distorted.
point in standing there like a queen while the poor checker is running through a large order and then has to stop so she can turn around to pack bags, resulting in holding up the entire line. When I see one of those entitled “princess” customers standing there doing nothing and making everyone wait while expecting the checker to stop and pack, it really annoys me. Unless you are aged or infirm or injured, there really is no reason for that. Bagging is something I will gladly participate in. I want to do this. I actually like doing this. It insures that the cold items are packed together, that the powdered sink cleanser is not put next to something like an open bag of damp produce, that the bags are not so over-packed that I cannot lift them, that the meat is put into a plastic bag so it does not drip all over the cereal box, and that all items make it into the bag and nothing is left behind on the counter.
e conveyor belt who grab your stuff and just shove it into bags at random. They really don’t care. Where is the QA in these supermarkets?
this gift, I collected up all the mementos I had saved at the time and put them in that box. Over the years I have added to it periodically, although it is now so full that it barely will close. It is an assortment of varied and poignant articles, mostly from childhood but not totally. Tonight I was putting some things away and found something I wanted to add to the box, so I dug it out, and of course, got lost in those memories once again.
t is contained within:
cetown, back in the days when P-Town was a hippie haven. The vendor swore, subject to suspicion, that it was “mastodon ivory.” We camped out on the beach, got bitten by sand fleas, had the most delicious fish soup with friends.
recognition of the situation.
printed African cloth within. Lifting that drum carefully out, she proceeded to untie this fabric case. Removing her djembe from that revealed that it had a protective quilted cloth hat on top of the drum head. Removing that, there was a colorful second cloth beneath, which lay across the top surface of the drum. The grand finale to this drum strip-tease revealed a very beautiful carved djembe. She did not look to her left where we were sitting, but did engage with the woman on her right, who we figured must have been a friend.
got the feeling of a somewhat spiritual and basically good person. It had all come full circle and that circle was now complete. I haven’t run into her drumming lately though. I haven’t even seen her post since June.
Finally got rid of them, only to realize that the chaff from the hollyhocks is making me itch – very much. That’s a first. Next thing I know, my arms above my gardening gloves, my neck and my collar area are covered with an itchy rash. I don’t even remember touching my neck!
Some of my past relationships might have diligently come up with a gift, others would not. A core of good girlfriends and sisters usually could be counted on to acknowledge it in some way. There would be precious hand-made cards from the kids. But essentially it was just another day. The justification for this was that birthdays are for children, and it seems maybe sometimes for other people. I struggled with almost feeling it was too much of an ego thing to make much over a birthday. Sometimes in the past I might have even felt just the tiniest bit blue about this.
he time, they were dubbed Hudah Moths. A campaign to eradicate them was begun in earnest.
door, right where the firemen had to be entering. With visions of them dragging hoses and axes across and through my vehicle, I turned to go back in and retrieve my keys, only to realize this would be foolish and impossible. Within a minute the building had filled with thick smoke. There was no going back inside.
back, away from everyone else. I guess they felt it wasn’t good PR to have him sitting out in the waiting room.
You know, I do believe there is probably other life out there. How could there not be? The odds are too great that there must be. I don’t know that I could be convinced about strange space craft landing and taking people away in their mother ships, but I think we are not the only ones out in the universe. Or necessarily the only ones here, if you want to get into talking about dimensions. But that is another subject.
We hit three garden nurseries in a row – one that focused on native plants, the second an unplanned stop at a large farm store that sold food in addition to gorgeous botanicals, and the last one set in a niche on a hill and just delightful. I am buzzing high blissed out from these wonderful places. (Also maybe from the orange muffin with piles of orange butter cream frosting on top that we got at the second place). In any case, I have been floating all weekend…..and a bit lighter in the wallet too.
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