Luke was reading his book before bedtime the other day and he needed help with a vocabulary word: Ding Dong. I had him use in it a sentence for me first, before I came up with this excellent definition, “it’s like a ho-ho or a twinkie, but instead of being chocolate of vanilla it’s pink or something and covered in coconut.” I just spent upwards of two minutes researching hostess products only to find that what I described to Luke was actually a Sno Ball. Regardless, his response took me by surprise. He said, “What’s a twinkie? What’s a ho ho?”
Come on! I know we are Boulder hippies, but we aren’t that bad! What’s a ho ho? Are you kidding me? I told him that when I was a kid I had the generic version for lunch every single day of my life. We we were a Swiss Cake Roll family. And when I did finally see or maybe even taste a honest to go ho ho later in life I thought Swiss Cake Rolls were actually better.
My mom kept the Swiss Cake Rolls in the freezer. Why? I don’t know. But when she opened a 2-pack and put one in your lunch, you either got the one that had half the chocolate from the other roll stuck to it, or you got the one that had half the chocolate missing. Hence the childhood phrase, “I CALL CHOCOLATE.”
Twinkies, on the other hand, never crossed the threshold of our house. I always wished we could get twinkies just once, but it never happened. By the time I started babysitting and had my own spending money, I was twelve and had already started dieting, (and by “dieting”, I mean, “lying about my weight”) so even though I still wanted to try a twinkie, I knew it wouldn’t be that enjoyable in the long run.
I shared all these snack cake related memories with the boys and Jack’s response was, “I want one of those Santas!”
Oh honey, “It’s Ho-ho.”
MetaMegan 
Poor, poor underprivileged child. Now you can get either fried twinkies or chocolate covered twinkies.
I believe they were Little Debbie snack cakes. If you were home for lunch, I believe I served the frozen cakes sliced. Lovely spirals!
I forgot about the sliced swiss cake rolls! What a delicacy! But the snack cakes are different, I just googled them, vanilla cake with chocolate icing in the middle, covered in chocolate.
I never liked Twinkies.
HoHos do that at room temp too.
My mom always got the oatmeal cream pies, because I’m sure she thought they were healthy.
this post is giving me food issues.
Great Timing – you heard last week that they are going bankrupt, right?
I did hear that they were going bankrupt and there was a twinkie themed editorial cartoon in the paper this morning. The story I heard on NPR pretty much blamed today’s healthy eaters for the demise of Hostess.
ok not giving me food issues. reminding me of food issues, re: babysitting/weight/hohos
lol
I”m sad to report that after reading your blog, I finally went into Malley’s and asked about the chocolate covered Twinkies. Indeed they did carry them (I knew the cost of shipping them would be steep) but alas, they weren’t carrying them now. So close…. Well I will keep the light on and keep checking it out for you. Personally, I have never had a chocolate covered Twinkie, but it does sound intriguing.
OMG I forgot about I call chocolate!