"Can it be that it was all so simple then..." --Barbra Streisand

When I was a kid, my Mum would slice a lemon in half, pour sugar on a plate and give it to me. I'd dip the lemon half in the sugar and lick it. This was a treat. The original sweet-tart.

I still love really tart/tangy lemonade: lots of lemon with simple syrup and water, but I have a hard time imagining sitting down with a plate of sugar and half a lemon and going to town at this point in my life. It sounds like a strange thing for Mum to do but I have to believe it was probably better for me than the Pixy Stix and the Wax Bottles and the Zotz and all the other candies I happily ingested as a child.

[Anybody remember this candy? I always wound up peeling bits of paper off the back of the buttons. And I don't remember it coming wrapped in cellophane--just sort of dusted with cornstarch. At least, I want to believe it was cornstarch.]

I don't know anyone else who ever dipped lemon in sugar and licked it. I know people that sucked lemons through peppermint stick candy, but that's as close as I've gotten. Of course, I never put my question out to the interwebs before.

Have you ever dipped lemon in sugar and licked it? Did you enjoy strange treats as a wee bairn that you (probably) wouldn't eat today?