Sweet Treats + Cheap Tricks
Travel hacks and global candies for sugar highs.
What’s the universe trying to tell us by giving us three very candy-filled holidays in one this weekend? That we could all use a little more sweetness in our life — especially given the election season we’ve suffered this year? We’ll take it. And seconds, please. In today’s newsletter, we’re handing out:
Special treats for Halloween, Diwali, and Día de Los Muertos
New passport tricks that save time and money
Tips to feel safer while traveling in uncertain times
Keep It Sweet for Halloween, Diwali, and Día de Los Muertos
There’s candy for the rabid, consumerist version of trick or treating (fill her up!) and then there’s candy to be slowly savored. Each has their own time and place, but the latter takes a little more time and energy to procure — you have to plan ahead for these sugar cravings.
Twenty years ago, I shared a small apartment with a friend from Oslo. Whenever her sisters visited from Norway, they left behind little wrinkled bags of sour candy and salty licorice, which I had never seen or tasted before, and which they assured me Americans did not like. I loved how my friend, who was super health-conscious 99% of the time, would squirrel away these little paper bags for nights we came home late and wanted a sugar fix. I also loved every single chewy bite. When my friend moved back to Oslo, I was afraid I’d lost my stock, but since then Swedish candy company BonBon on NYC’s Lower East Side has been my supplier for the best Scandi salty licorice and sour bites. (Who needs Halloween when you have lördagsgodis, the noble ritual of stocking up on candy on Saturdays?)
Lakrids by Bülow, in Svaneke, Denmark, is perhaps the world’s smallest licorice factory. The cooked anise scent can be smelled on the street outside the shop. If you don’t have plans to travel to the eastern coast of the Baltic island of Bornholm anytime soon, you can place an order online. My favorite are these little spheres of chewy licorice (no gluten, no gelatin) that have been coated in a thin layer of chocolate and rolled in licorice powder.