San Francisco-based candy brand / FRI 8-27-21 / Chef Lewis who wrote The Taste of Country Cooking / Product whose name comes from the French for without caffeine / Bread whose name derives from the Sanskrit for bread / Unit of measure in a tongue twister / Greek goddess who could turn water into wine / Choreographer who posthumously received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014

Constructor: Robyn Weintraub

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: EDNA Lewis (19A: Chef Lewis who wrote "The Taste of Country Cooking") —

Edna Lewis (April 13, 1916 – February 13, 2006) was a renowned American chef, teacher, and author who helped refine the American view of Southern cooking. She championed the use of fresh, in season ingredients and characterized Southern food as fried chicken (pan-, not deep-fried), pork, and fresh vegetables – most especially greens. She wrote and co-wrote four books which covered Southern cooking and life in a small community of freed slaves and their descendants.

• • •

The longer answers here (gorgeous as always from Ms. Weintraub) end up overcoming what feels like a tidal wave of short fill that inundates the grid. There are only six 3's, but there are roughly [starts counting, gives up, takes a guess] six thousand 4's, and a small wheelbarrowful of 5's, so that for too much of this solve I felt like I was hacking through undergrowth. It's got kind of a boring shape, more like a generic early-week themed grid, and the result is a lot of short answers. Now it's definitely got a themeless answer count (this one's 70—typically, themelesses have to have 72 or fewer entries), which means we still get a sizable number of longer answers—the flashy stuff that generally makes the Friday (and if we're lucky, the Saturday) worth doing. But for some reason this particular 70-answer grid looks and (often) feels more like an early-week grid, which in this case means it's chock full o' the short stuff. Now, the short stuff isn't particularly bad. As usual with this constructor, the grid is very nicely polished. I just felt like I was kind of slogging through a FEN of 4's and 5's to get to the good stuff. And yet I still say: worth it. Because the good stuff is truly vibrant, and the colloquial phrases in particular are original and refreshing ("OH IS THAT SO...?"; "BEFORE I FORGET..."; "ANSWER ME!"). You've also got CAKE TOPPERS and SEX TAPES and RED HERRINGs flying around the grid (propelled by TELEKINESIS, no doubt; everyone knows SEE'S candy gives you TELEKINESIS).

Never thought I'd say this, but Horsefeathers McGee is right
(1A: What takes a licking and keeps on sticking)

I was slower than I ought to have been today because of two perfect yet somehow wrong long answers. First, I wrote in CLEAR NIGHT before CLEAR SKIES (17A: Stargazer's need). I was sad to see my answer go, as it felt more evocative and poetic to me. Also, more directly related to gazing at stars (you do that at night, generally, right?). Then I wrote in ROSE GARDEN instead of ROSE BUSHES (27D: View from the Oval Office), and in that case I definitely think my answer was better. It's literally the ROSE GARDEN that you look out on from the Oval Office, isn't it? I've never been ... but ... I thought that's what it was called. Yes, here ... google seems to think that's right:

Now I can't argue, those roses do come in bush form, but especially if you are cluing it as a "view" (which implies a kind of aesthetic totality), I think the answer has to be ROSE GARDEN. "Bushes" was a hard landing, a very rough return to earth. 

The only other struggle I had was the NE corner, where the TOAD clue meant nothing to me and OENO, same (I know OENO as a very very crosswordesey prefix, not a goddess ... I have read a ton of Greek mythology and yet seem to have missed her entirely). Then I also did not know EDNA and calling GRIT a [Sandpaper specification] just seemed bizarre to me ... is there non-GRIT sandpaper? Does it come in Low-GRIT form? Sandpaper Lite? If you'd said "property" instead of "specification," well then now we're in business. I follow you. But "specification" just threw me. And so I spent most of my stuck-time stuck in a patch of 4's. A bit of unpleasantness. But all in all, this was fun.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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