Seafood chowder loses its crunchy companion (Nabisco Crown Pilot Crackers)

[jpak]

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=189467&ac=PHnws

Gulp!

Nabisco Crown Pilot crackers -- the large, flat, plain biscuits beloved by Mainers and other New Englanders for crumbling in chowder -- are no longer being made.

Those rattled by the news include Donna Damon of Chebeague Island. She urged the cracker lovers on Thursday to contact Nabisco to voice their objections.

Understandably, Chebeague residents are particularly upset to learn that production of the crackers recently ceased. The Casco Bay island was the center of a national campaign to save the traditional crackers -- first commercially manufactured in 1792 -- after Nabisco discontinued making them in 1996 as part of an effort to streamline operations.

Damon spearheaded the campaign, which got a huge boost when Maine humorist Tim Sample did a feature story about the crackers on the news magazine show "CBS Sunday Morning."

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