From Latvia

The Baltic country of Latvia was visited by my mom recently, and among the things she brought back was this:



It's popular in Eastern Europe and Russian Europe as a mix between candy and a health bar. It developed as a sweet flavored nutritional supplement--a way to get kids to eat their supplements.

How's everybody's Greek etymological root knowledge?

Hemoglobin comes from the same root, and what is hemoglobin in? Yup...blood. It's made from "coagulated bovine blood products".

These bars are blood candy/supplement bars. My mom brought all of her kids these blood bars, egging us on to eat them. She's like that.

In any case, I ate mine.

I wasn't sure what I was expecting. What it turned out to be was basically tootsie. That's all, a tootsie bar, that faux-chocolate waxy piece of candy.

I was doing research on tootsie for this post, but didn't too deep. What I found was that the tootsie roll candy became popular because it could withstand all types of weather (wouldn't melt, wouldn't freeze solid) and was incredibly affordable. It didn't really state the original recipe, which I'd hazard a guess contained coagulated blood products.

I wasn't a real big fan of the blood bar, but only because I can't eat tootsie faux-chocolate anymore (a tooth needs work).