Monday, October 30, 2006

Made in Georgia, USA

In our small town we have a Dollar General, which is basically a discount store selling discount merchandise of sometimes questionably discount quality.

They are a pretty big chain here in the Land of the Dollar Stores (Dollar Tree, Family Dollar, Doller World, Dollar Plus, Dollar Store, ad. infinitum).

In our Dollar General, I picked a jar of Bread and Butter pickle chips off the shelf and perused the label...


Turning it around to see where these staples of American picnics were lovingly created, I was surprised to see the following...


Truth be told, I wasn't all THAT surprised to find what I believed to be a uniquely red, white, and blue essential of pantries and picnic baskets across our country to have been "outsourced" to the land that originated the Nehru jacket fashion trend.

But it did click over to a memory from not too long ago, when the company I was with outsourced the majority of it's tech support to offshore labor. I understood the economics of it and the reasons behind the companies decision to do so, but it was frustrating to see many of my ex-tech support trench warriors get the polite shove off after many years of dedicated service.

Which brings me to a product which I think has been and will remain to be entirely outsource proof...the Southern Fruit Cake.

My wife loves the stuff, which is why on our recent trek through the Peach State, we had to make a prilgrimage of sorts to this spot...




Honestly, who else in the world would think to create, manufacture, and consume in mass quantities, such a culinary oddity as the Claxton Fruit Cake?


We bought the 5 lb. box from this nice lady, who had been with the company, making and selling the fruited cake of the Georgia gods for twenty-odd years.

2 comments:

WarWagon said...

You have my condolences! As someone who has tried very hard to like fruit cake, I've never found one that was fit to eat.

OKDad said...

My favorite dis on fruitcake of all time was aired recently on a VH1 Special, "I love the holidays." It went something like this...

"Fruitcake?"

(Comic holds up a 1 lb. rectangular log of Claxton's Famous Fruitcake).

I make it a policy to never eat anything that looks the same going in, as it does coming out!"

That killed me.