deutschland, home of the sweetest thing everrrr.

a few years ago i went to germany for a redbull bike contest. it was quite an adventure. i speant about 5 days with redbull and then about 15 days with some friends traveling. the bike contest was held in a gasometer, which is basically a huge silo. it had steel floors and it was cold outside. but one great thing about redbull is they take care of their people. they had an awesome snack area set up with tons of beverages(redbulls, duh!) and all these candies. and some sandwich stuff as well. but all i saw was the candy. there were so many different little packages with their german words and nifty illustrations. but this one candy grabbed my eyes. it had a glass of milk, some wafers, hazzelnuts and some grain or something on it. and the letters that spelled out, "knoppers".




this strange item somehow attracted 100% of my attention. and i had to try it.

"mmmmmmmmmmmmm" is all i could muster out of my wafer crumb, hazelnut, creme filled mouth. and it wasn't like a "mmm" that comes from your mouth, this "mmmmmmmmmm" came from my soul. it was so happy with the taste that had just engulfed my mouth.

so i ate knoppers pretty regularly while i stayed with redbull. they come in these nifty little multipacks that i would grab up when leaving the gasometer to head back to the inn, we were staying at.





and holy shit, i get to the inn and there are knoppers in our rooms!!! wowzers!!!!

but as all good things must come to an end, my time with redbull was ended and i was off with my german pals to travel and ride our bikes across this motherland of sweets. but luckily for me knoppers were at pretty much every market and gas station. so i always kept a plenty stock of my new blood. my veins kinda itched of the wafer flowing through them at times.

15 days later and i'm at the frankfurt airport about to depart back to the us of a, a place not home to knoppers. so i had about 22 euros left and i speant it all on knoppers at the airport. i probably ate about 10 on the way home. thus leaving me with a small knopper supply for who knows how long.

but then a gentleman named peter ventured to the us of a fromt he great deutschland, and he too loved knoppers. and when he went back home he sent me some knoppers. and at other times i would trade us of a product with my german pals for knoppers. but its been a while since i've had that amazing taste.

so here's to you knoppers, god damn i miss you.


and here's a video of my pal peter riding his bicycle.


PeterWinter2007/08 from Peter Aust on Vimeo.

THE junk food specialist welcomes you!

welcome to my blog. about the best thing in the world. junk food.

according to the wiki article on junk food, the term was created in 1972 by Michael Jacobson. and your blogger here, well i was born a mere 9 years later. 4 years after that and i'm wolfin down laffy taffy's with my pops cruisin back from the corner store in his cadilac tellin each other the jokes on the wrappers. those little square taffies, in yellow, green, red, ligter red, purple, etc.. i would dart across the store in a bee line around all the other candy displays just to get to the little bins on the bottom shelf to scoop me up a handful, 1 of each color.

22 years later and i haven't changed. well maybe a few. i usually look around to make sure no one is robbing the store or no sketchy like characters are present, then its bee line to the candy isle to peep the bottom shelf. one thing that has changed is laffy taffy's shape. no longer are they in their little cube of goodness, but wrapped in a rope like fahion. thus making it easier to hold more colors in your hand. these contain a bit more of the taffy than what i was used to as a kid, but i'm a big boy now and i need more laffy taffy!



however, i must note, that still a form of smaller laffy taffy exists. these smaller styles are usually found closer to the cash register as impulse buys.


so here's to you laffy taffy, keep being badd ass!


and here is the laffy taffy video by d4l.