Sunday, November 25, 2012

Twinkie memories

With all of the hand-wringing, hoarding and e-bay selling of Twinkies and other Hostess-related products thanks to the employees' union leaders telling them not to worry, that their strike would result in more cash, not the threatened closure of the whole business as was promised by the owners (Good job, union leaders. But at least you guys still have your jobs.), I figured I could write about one of my earlier Twinkie memories.

It was a long time ago, in a suburb far, far away. My mother used to go to the Hostess store and buy Twinkies and other cakes by the box and put them in our basement freezer. All one had to do to thaw one out was take it upstairs and put it in the oven for five minutes and it's be as perfect as a Twinkie could be.

Then one day, we got our first new-fangled microwave oven. Me being a teen, I could not see much use for it, until I was told that I could warm the Twinkies up in that instead of the oven. OK. That seemed like a handy thing, then. So the next time I wanted a Twinkie, I took one out of the freezer and put it in the new microwave. Not really being familiar with the concept or aware of it's capabilities, I set the power to "high" and turned the dial to "5 minutes" and turned it on. Then I went back downstairs to wait on my anticipated gently-warmed snack.

I was brought back upstairs in a hurry approximately four minutes, thirty-five seconds later by the screaming of the smoke detector, only to find the entire upstairs of the house filled with smoke. Bad micro-wave..BAD!

Once my sister and I and a neighbor or two managed to silence the smoke detector and air the house out by opening all of the doors and windows (It was wintertime if I recall.), I examined the microwave to see what went wrong and found the remains of the Twinkie: blackened and shrunk down to a rock-hard little thing about the size of a Tootsie Roll, sitting in the remains of the melted plastic bag that the Twinkie had been wrapped in.

That was the day that I learned that micro-waves cook things faster than regular ovens. Now I know and appreciate them for this, but my mother...well let's just say that she didn't appreciate that Twinkie Viking Funeral in her kitchen while she'd been away. Nope. Not one bit.

So that's what I'll remember as Hostess goes out of business forever. Thanks for the memory, Hostess...and micro-wave people.

10 comments:

  1. They still produce them in Canada. Next time I'm in Toronto, I'll make a twinkie buy for you.

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  2. Can you legally smuggle those across the border?

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  3. Heh. Not Hostess-related, but my first experience with our family's newfangled microwave involved a frozen Capri Sun, and a brilliant plan to thaw it out quickly, since I was thirsty NOW, and not 30 minutes from now (no, we won't discuss the faucet five feet away...water isn't flavored!). Thankfully, I was standing next to the microwave oven when the lightning started dancing along the foil pouch, and got the door open about as fast as humanly possible. It did look pretty cool, though!

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  4. Anonymous9:09 AM

    If it's smuggling, I suspect it's not legal...

    gfa

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  5. Well it wasn't a twinkie, but my mom lit some beets on fire in the microwave. It is even funnier when an adult makes the mistake.

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  6. Why would anyone freeze a Twinkie?

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  7. I remember my first experience with a microwave...it wasn't a twinkie..it was a roll, the durn thing didn't get soft....so I tried 2 times at 30 seconds each time...no go..so I did it for 3 minutes....that will learn that biscuit..lemme tell you. Well 3 minutes later, I had the smoke detectors going off and smoke everywhere. Well I got the charcoal out of the microwave, opened all the windows and doors and turned the attic fan on in March to get the smoke cleared out before my dad got home. I was mostly successful....He came home and seemed to not notice anything *whew* I told him the story later and he got a chuckle out of it.

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  8. Har. I learned that grandma's china really did have gold inlay...

    Finding Twinkies less interesting in taste than in the past. Maybe I can find some Hohos....

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  9. You will glad to know that the most likely winner in the biffing for the brand names that Hostess will auction of is a Mexican bakery company. They already sell products here in Texas the company name is Bimbo.

    So it's likely you will be getting Ho-Hos by Bimbo.

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