A sweet bone to pick.....

(saigon cinnamon)

I have the loveliest memories of crunching on chicken bones.
Gawwwd, I would munch, and suck and crunch to my lil heart's delight. I would smash them bones with my teeth until all but little pink shards remained in my mouth, slurping on the dark innards, letting the whole mass melt away to sweet nothingness on my tongue. Then pop, crunch..... Start all over again.
My tongue would become incredibly sore but I ignored it's plaintive wail.
“Shaddup tongue, it's chicken bone season.”
And it was, I never lied to my tongue. I might lie to my brothers about who had the last chicken bone...but never to my tongue.
Ahhhh chicken bones.
The last time I had the intense cinnamony, chocolate filled delight was when some kind benevolent soul from the Canadian side of the family sent us a bag for Christmas.
I don't see chicken bones very often (if ever?) in California. In fact I am not even sure the American side of the family would know what I was talking about if I said I had me a hankerin for chicken bones. I might end up with a dismantled piece of poultry if I wasn't careful with my words!
In Nova Scotia, chicken bones (the candy not the skeleton of the bird) were readily available during Christmas. Light pink little round tube-ish bits that were was almost a danger to eat, between the *hot sizzling cinnamon shell that splintered like real bones and revealed the dark chocolate within* AND the addictive *can not possibly just eat 9 and leave them be* nature of them.
So I associate chicken bones with the holidays and a sore tongue. Because I seriously did eat a whole bag at a time, the texture and flavours were that addictive. My goodness I was a chicken bone addict...when Christmas passed I'd shake and shiver for a full hour, licking the pink dust from the bottom of the bag and cursing the fool who only bought enough of the good stuff to last us a few days.
Our supplier was some chicken bone pusher in Truro, Nova Scotia.
We used to sell crafts at the Zonta craft fair every November and some how...coincidentally (yeah frickin right) the chicken bone lady was always set up across from us. It was a pretty dang big fair for the area, over 70 booths, and she some how manages to almost always be across from us? I don't believe in coincidences, I believe in the fine art of stalking your customer and knowing their weakness. I mean she probably tailed me, noticed my nefarious and lustful glances at her goodies and then bribed the candle lady to mover over so she'd be in my direct line of sight!
And there I sat, as innocent as the day is long, surrounded by all our crafty goodness, looking directly across at a lady with nothing but a table piled high with candy.
Chicken bone candy.
Sometimes we'd buy a few bags, all friendly like, to keep the peace in the snooty atmosphere of sly looks and whispered words about each others booths. Better a friend then an enemy in the hot and frantic world of a Christmas craft sale put on by a charitable organization. Hoo boy it could get intense, what with the lil old men tottering up and demanding in suspicious tones if we'd actually MADE all this stuff.
“Yes sir we did!”
“You actually MADE it?? (asked suspiciously with enough derision in his voice to have me thinking I can take an old guy down right quick between chomps of my chicken bones.)
“YES!....ahem..yes sir, we made everything ourselves.”
“Hmmm, some people they buy stuff and then pass it off as their own. This here's a lot of stuff.....Yep, lot -o-stuffff.......... What sort of saw blades you use?”
Quick as a snake this old fool would try to trip me up, as if I might suddenly crack under the pressure of his intense questioning and admit that I own and run a small but tasteful sweat shop.
Luckily I was saved from saying something foul and very un-Christmas like by quickly popping a couple of chicken bones in my mouth and crunching like mad, smiling fiercely, teeth exposed in a pink speckled grin of unwavering intensity as I stared the man down and forced him with nothing but the heat of my gaze back to his own booth to whisper to his wife and glare back at me with vindictive eyes.
Good times, good times.
The closest thing to a chicken bone flavour I could replicate till recently was to eat a handful of red hot cinnamon hearts followed quickly by a chunk of chocolate. But I must admit, though that got me like ¾ of the way there, I haven't done that very often because of my deep and abiding fear of food dyes.
Seriously, the more I think about yellow number 47 and Red number 42 the more I shudder. EVEN if I didn't know they make some red dyes from insects, I'd be bothered by it.....it's just so...wrong.....so damn wrong...
But those chicken bones, those succulent, mind numbing, gots to have as many as I can get chicken bones......I have to face facts....I know cinnamon isn't pink so I'm even beginning to think my memories of chicken bones are sweeter then the actual thing....
But cinnamon...cinnamon hasn't let me down...(yet)
In fact if anything cinnamon has only gotten better or have I?
For I have discovered REAL cinnamon. I mean cinnamon that makes the stuff you buy at the grocery store taste like bitter brown nothingness. BLECCCCK! REAL cinnamon actually tastes so good you can dip your finger in and mmmmmm, straight from the jar. NOT that I do that.
Heck no, even though this saigon cinnamon we get is sooo flavorful that it has a sweetness all it's own and can make cinnamon toast with little to no sugar. EVEN though it's as spicy hot as those dastardly little red hearts...I don't stick my finger in the jar. AND if I did.....by accident several times then y'all can just bugger off it's my cinnamon and I'll slug it from a shot glass if I choose....which I did.
Oh dear, If I can pass along one bit of advice from my wise and doddering age of 30 to all the youngins out there...don't slug cinnamon from a shot glass. Even if you've just stuck a chunk of chocolate in your mouth and a wee tip of a teaspoon of cinnamon to follow so that your mouth can become the scene of a chicken bone flavour factory...even when your senses start reeling from the exquisite combination of reallllly good chocolate and reallllly good cinnamon do not, I repeat...DO NOT SLUG CINNAMON FROM A SHOT GLASS.
It may seem like a brilliant idea to just admit you're going to eat more cinnamon and more chocolate in a slightly manic, one bite after another, after another...after another moment that stretches into at least a half a dozen moments so you might think that being mature and admitting this you ought to just sit down and fully commit to your snack of chocolate chunks and cinnamon.....
But let me tell you, sitting down with a plate of chocolate chunks and a little shot glass of cinnamon you can tip back (hypothetically) and have a little taste of doesn't work. What does work is you ending up breathing cinnamon in a choking out puffs of cinnamon, coughing extravaganza, none of which resembles the desired chicken bone flavour experience you were going for.
Waving wildly at your husband in the universal “I'm ok, Im ok, I'm only breathing cinnamon powder and trying to recover from my lungs violent, albeit correct, response to said attempt at breathing something other than air” hand gestures.
I expect in the future I shall whip up some sort of melted chocolate and cinnamon type delight, something a little safer that doesn't have me coughing up a red hot spicy dust storm and causing my husband to think that any normal person knows what a shot glass is for and it's not for a snoot of cinnamon.
Can I get a “DUH” from the crowd?
But do not worry, I don't blame the cinnamon, it's not to fault. No, I blame the Truro, Nova Scotia craft sale chicken bone candy lady for instilling in me a deep and abiding affection for a treat I can't readily get my hands on.
If both my saigon cinnamon and a bag of chicken bone candies were dangling, precariously of course, over the lip of a volcano and I could only save one I think my decision has already been made. As much as I loved the chicken bones, my brain argues with my tastebuds that we don't care for dyes that much any more and hardly ever buy candy, so why not save the cinnamon? The potential in a handful of REALLY kick your ass good cinnamon is much greater than a bag of cinnamon candies.
Hmmmmmm I just had a thought....*runs to the kitchen to check something out*

(very sad but honest to goodness extremely tiny sample of cinnamon coca powder toast made with left over bread crust bits I scrounged from the bread box thingy)

Oh man...cinnamon....cocoa powder.....this is a very very very good combination. I am now in agonies because there is no bread made or else I'd be whipping up some crunchy, buttery cinnamon, coca powder toast and sitting back dreaming of chicken bones.
Instead I'm contemplating a wee tiny shot glass of cinnamon and cocoa mixed together.............
This is also one of those moments where I am severely ticked off at the bread maker for not keeping us well stocked in bread for such cinnamon, cocoa powder testing emergencies. (Never mind that I'm the bread maker, I can be mad at myself can't I?)
But wait, I'm more then just the bread maker...I'm a gull dang biscuit maker when I want to be is what I am........and biscuits can be made in like 30 minutes...I'll be right back.....
(time passes, approximately 30 some minutes if you're picky about such things........)
One batch of biscuit dough, dived in two, one half flattened on a cookie sheet and covered with a mixture of coca powder, cinnamon and brown sugar, second half of dough spread over the top. Baked, one big cinnamon chocolate biscuit sandwich. Taste test...YUM! Second taste test...mmmmm YUM!
It's not a chicken bone.....but it is warm, cinnamony, like a cinnamon roll only flat and with chocolate. A chocolate, cinnamon flat.
Hearty enough for the grownup in me, not a speck of unnatural colour added, and best of all, satisfies the incredibly overpowering chocolate/cinnamon taste I have been craving for the better part of forever now..........