Twinkies!!!

One thing that we love around here at JustSON is sports. Another, is Twinkies!

I came across this article today about the Twinkie King. It ran in the Seattle Times by Nicole Brodeur. It was a great article.

When it comes to Twinkies, it's just cruel to keep count.

The calories per cake, the ingredients keeping those spongy bars of gold so ... spongy. The number we eat in a lifetime. Counting is a buzz kill.

Joe Traxler, on the other hand, is all about the numbers.

The bags of flour and sugar used to make Twinkies? Fifty pounds each. The pans they bake in? Each holds 36 cakes. The number of pans Traxler fills a day? Four thousand or more.

The years he has been baking them? Fifty as of Thursday, his last day on the job.

Call Traxler, 68, "The Twinkie King," responsible for helping make a billion or more of the things and sending them into the world.

"Anyplace I go, a ballgame or a park, any place where people are enjoying themselves, the Twinkie will always be around," he said the other day over coffee and (!) banana bread at his home in Mountlake Terrace.

"They taste good," he said. "If I have a Twinkie and eat it, I thoroughly enjoy it. Simple as that."

What's hard to wrap your mind around is the years Traxler has spent behind the mixer, in a building that has sent sweet smells over Aurora Avenue near Seattle Center for generations.

View the rest of the article here.