If you can remember choosing a nickel or dime’s worth of penny candy from the jars displayed at the neighborhood shop you are giving away your age. Just hearing their names is a nostalgia trip: red coated peanuts known as Boston baked beans, wax lips and bottles filled with syrupy liquid, candy buttons on a strip of paper, chewy Mary Janes, good & plenty licorice and chocolate flavored tootsie rolls.
Here in Italy the local version of penny candy can found at fairs and markets all over the country. At the recent Sant’Antonio fair held each year in Vetralla on January 17th , among the hundreds of bancarelle (stalls) selling every conceivable merchandise, several belonged to vendors of dried fruit and sweets from Vallerano and Canepina. They travel so far and wide that tradition says when Columbus arrived in the New World, there was one of these stalls waiting for him.
The colorful but nameless candies are displayed next to dried figs, chestnuts, and pepperoncino too! You might as well pick some up for the pasta while buying candies for junior. You’ll also find imported spices and fruits; banana, pineapple, and even cranberries, an exclusively North American plant. Perhaps the New World vendors sent some back with Columbus on his return trip…
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Italian Notebook’s first correspondent has been busy lately finishing up the manuscript of her new book “1860 – The Irish and English in Garibaldi’s Italy” and is looking for an agent/publisher.
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