Ever lick a lemon stick???
I just read online that the lemon stick phenomenon is specific to Baltimore, where I’m from.
I always assumed that all kids who went to summer fairs and festivals enjoyed a good lemon stick. Is this untrue?
Where did you grow up? Do you know the lemon stick?
January 9th, 2009 at 11:09 am
Oh, pity the poor souls who didn’t have this growing up. Thanks for the reminder, will have to start spreading this deliciousness next summer. xo.
January 9th, 2009 at 11:21 am
No! Never heard of it!
January 9th, 2009 at 11:22 am
Hi Laurel: I grew up in Montgomery County, MD and have not had the pleasure of experiencing a lemon stick. It’s maybe just a Baltimore thing? But i want one now. I may have to make it a Tucson thing.
Have *you* ever experienced a salidito? It’s a dried prune coated in salt (lots and lots of salt) and lime. Sometimes kids stick them in the center of a halved orange or lemon and lick away at them.http://www.everything2.net/e2node/Saladito
January 9th, 2009 at 11:29 am
Never heard of it!
January 9th, 2009 at 11:35 am
Opening that picture made my mouth water… will be trying this this very evening. Saladitos are VERY addictive! (Grew up in Phoneix, waves at Kat in Tuscon.) More mouth watering.
January 9th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Nope. never had a lemon stick. But I’m from Brooklyn. Though occasionally, I would squeeze a lightly peeled orange (leaving the white rind as a sort of bag) and suck the juice from the straw. That was from either a Puerto Rican or Dominican street vendor.
Did you have a sliding pond?
January 9th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
I grew up in South Jersey, and I have to confess that the lemon stick sort of revolts me. (However, I do like both pork roll and scrapple, so who am I to talk?)
January 9th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
I’ve never encountered a lemon stick here in Michigan (but maybe I just haven’t gone to the right places.) The picture does really does evoke summertime, though — maybe the trend will spread!
January 9th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
WOW, immediate salivary response to the image of a lemon stick!! Now I must have one…not only are they specific to Bmore, but they began as a Flower Mart tradition. Why, I don’t know. Did you go to Flower Mart as a kid? It’s like a ladies’ horticultural society thing that happens in April (I think, maybe March) around the Washington Monument. Lots of little booths selling annuals and lemon sticks…swoon.
January 9th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
OMG! I LOVED Flower Mart! I actually helped out one year. I went to Peabody Prep for ballet and remember coming out of class into all the flowers.
Ahhhh.
I’m a kind of Ferdinand!
January 9th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
I am from Baltimore and I am lamenting that I have never had a lemon stick.
January 9th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Jeez, we ARE lost twins. We have my husband’s childhood copy of Ferdinand on permanent display on a little book stand in our living room. We change pages on a curatorial basis. It’s currently on “he had a favorite spot out in the pasture under a cork tree.”
January 9th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
Our Brownie troop had these, outside Chicago. But if I am remembering right, we used oranges. They had us roll them on the table to sort of juice them up, and then they helped us get the peppermint sticks in, cutting the smallest possible hole in the rind. Our strategy was to suck on stick like a straw, working so hard at it that little holes formed and the sticks worked like straws. Or did I dream that? No, I’m pretty sure that’s how it was.
January 10th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
You wrote this just for me, didn’t you, friend? Ha! I lived in Frederick Co., MD for 25 years (and in PG County for 7, AND in Montg. Co. for two… and my in-laws lived in Baltimore County, and I don’t know these lemon sticks. But I’m going to try them, using those great Meyer lemons I picked from a friend’s tree in Charleston last week. Thanks.
January 15th, 2009 at 8:23 am
I grew up in Baltimore city and had lemon sticks at school fairs – have never seen them anywhere since. Amazing. Thanks for the memory jolt!
January 23rd, 2009 at 7:38 pm
I grew up outside Baltimore and remember lemon sticks at the state fair! I guess I’m lucky b/c they also have them at Linvilla Orchard in Pa. You can pick your own apples there or you can just go and eat funnel cake and lemon sticks! What’s better than that? Do you remember that even though you loved them, at the end you had to be careful not to hurt your tongue on the splintery peppermint stick?
April 4th, 2009 at 7:38 pm
Grew up in Baltimore – Lemon sticks were a staple at our school fare – simply delish! Hurt my tongue plenty of time on those things
June 30th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
We had these every year at our elementary school’s Barnyard Festival (in southeastern PA), but instead of a peppermint stick, ours had a lemon stick. I am making them for our reunion at the end of this month!
June 29th, 2010 at 12:01 pm
I’m on a committee at my hospital planning for lemonstick giveaway for RNs to brighten their day. Any chance I can have permission to use that great lemonstick photo you have posted?