Crumbs

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, the Vermont Attorney General’s office [1] figured out a sweet way to reduce the state’s budget shortfall.

On February 4, the AG settled charges with Russell Stover Candies Inc. and its subsidiary, Whitman’s Candies Inc., to the tune of $10,000 dollars. The problem? The company committed “consumer fraud” by falsely labeling products with the state’s name.

The court docket reads: “Some of the products of Russell Stover and Whitman’s have borne the name ‘Vermont’ on their packaging — specifically Russell Stover’s Vermont Fudge Pecan Roll and Whitman’s Vermont Fudge … None of the ingredients in these products is known to come from Vermont.”

Although there are plenty of references to the pseudo-Vermont Fudge on the web, the Russell Stover website appears to be in compliance: The product now appears there as “maple fudge.”

Wonder where they’re buying all that syrup...

On February 14, Seven Days readers who receive the Merriam-Webster “word-of-the-day” were in for a surprise.

As always, the proper use of the defined term — “dally,” in this case — was illustrated by a sentence. The sentence of the day [2] came from a story by yours truly. It read: “There’s nothing like dallying with your sweetie at an exquisite restaurant on Valentine’s Day.”

The topic of the article [3], published on February 13, 2008, was how tough it is for chefs to celebrate the holiday, since they’re invariably in the kitchen.

The folks at Merriam-Webster must like Vermont. Just five days earlier, they used a line from the Brattleboro Reformer’s Dianne Lamb [4] to put the word “parsnip” in context.