[Sca-cooks] Chocolate Moose. Roadside America

[Laura C. Minnick]

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
--
Here's the Chocolate Moose for Olwen and everyone! -'Lainie

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/MESCAmoose.html
--
[ Converted text/html to text/plain ]
[home] roadsideamerica.com: Your Online Guide to Offbeat Attractions[1]
Lenny the Chocolate Moose.

Lenny, The Chocolate Moose.

Field review by the editors.[2]
Scarborough, ME[3]
Depending on your trajectory, the world's only life-size chocolate moose is
either the first or last worthy Roadside attraction you will find in Maine.
"Lenny," as he has been named, is a mute-but-cheery ambassador for The Pine
Tree state and a confection of Maine's most marketable civic animal -- if you
don't count the lobster -- with the insatiable sweet tooth evident in most of
its inhabitants.

Lenny draws the tourists to Len Libby Candies, a store that sells handcrafted
chocolate and ice cream just south of Portland. Locals were jammed into the
store on the evening we visited but ignored Lenny, their attention drawn to
the display cases of candies and butternut crunch. Perhaps they needed a sugar
burn to stay warm; it was a cool night.

Lenny up close.Lenny's sculptor, reportedly a former Fulbright fellow,
traveled to Freeport to study the stuffed moose on display in the lobby of L.
L. Bean. He then spent a month slathering, slapping, and dripping 1,700 pounds
of "superlative grade" milk chocolate over a wire lathe to create Lenny --
eight feet tall and over nine feet from nose to tail -- a process documented
lovingly in a video that loops endlessly on a TV monitor next to his creation.
Lenny stands in the Len Libby ice cream parlor, behind a wooden fence to
prevent licking, in front of a mural of a log cabin and -- no surprise -- pine
trees. His feet disappear in a pond of white chocolate, dyed blue.

Lenny was unveiled on July 1, 1997, and seems to have held up remarkably well,
especially given the tragic track record of some other giant roadside food
attractions[4]. One of the store's clerks told us that the temperature around
Lenny can never rise above 70 degrees Fahrenheit, which is not really a
problem in an ice cream parlor in Maine.

Aside from Lenny's principal claim to fame, he is also reportedly "the world's
largest chocolate animal sculpture" -- which makes us wonder what other
animals are out there, waiting to be discovered, rendered out of the sticky
stuff.

(Chocolate Moose: Len Libby Candies, Route 1 south in Scarborough, exit 6 off
I-95. Open daily, 9am-9pm, year-round.)

navbar.

Comments? Seen something odd on the road? Send us mail[5].
Terms and Conditions[6]. © copyright 1996-2001 Doug Kirby, Ken Smith, Mike
Wilkins. All rights reserved. No portion of this document may be reproduced,
copied or revised without written permission of the authors. Credits/contact
info[7].

===References:===
  1. ../index.html
  2. /review.html
  3. ../map/me.html
  4. /roger/QueryTips.php3?tip_AttractionName=cheese&tip_Town=Berlin
  5. /mail.html
  6. ../terms.html
  7. ../credit.html

--