at maruyu the other weekend, i could not resist this package of choco pies. mochi choco pies! a whole box of ‘em for $2.50! maruyu sits on clarence street, a block west of the queen victoria building — possibly the best city block in all of sydney, with this two-level japanese minimart (that’s, maruyu), an affordable and unfussy french cafe, and a very interesting exhibition space within doors of each other. i’ve gotten many a bargain at maruyu. sure, a lot of it was exotic junk food just past its expiry date, but this one is still good until at least january next year.

so i opened the box, and was somewhat surprised by the size of this little packet. i mean, i assumed each one would be individually wrapped — it’s the nature of this sort of asian snack food, but i really did think that seven to a box would yield a slightly larger pie. what with the plastic wrapper within the carton, and then another cardboard tray in which the little packets of choco pies were nestled, it was a much smaller handful than what i had expected when looking at the picture on the box.

and then when i got that sachet open, all i could do was laugh at the tiny disc inside. choco pie? it looked more like an after-dinner mint.

when i first saw this on the shelf, i was drawn to the mochi part of it, and then the black sesame. that it was covered in chocolate was a bit of a bonus i suppose, but chocolate in asian confectionery is decidedly hit-or-miss. sometimes it’s floury, or grainy, or oily; sometimes it just has a peculiar wrongness. such a gamble, but in this case — chocolate-covered black sesame rice cake — it was a gamble i was willing to take. plus, y’know, two-fiddy.

this particular chocolate — a thin shell — broke with a soft crack when i bit into it, and melted smoothly away. it was not too sugary, and had a rich, dark chocolatey flavour. the soft chewy mochi, which replaced the marshmallow portion of a traditional choco pie, pleased me with its mild sweetness. the inner layer of black sesame paste delivered a nutty taste that lingered, and it was all i could do to stop myself chasing it with another serve.

so i’ll concede that these turned out to be the perfect size after all — the delicate and well-considered balance of the various flavors and textures just called to be contained in a package this petite. and i grant that the individual wrappers make you pause a while, instead of just shoveling the little cakes into your gob, one after the other, until they are all gone, because they are that delicious.

if only they’d thought to put more of ‘em in the box.

i went to singapore, and all i got was this packet of fish pancake gummies.

no, i lie. but four days goes superfast before you have to get on another plane to take you to london, and then if, say, a volcano erupts somewhere in europe and grubbies up the skies, and your flight back to singapore is cancelled for several days, it will not leave you much time to mosey before you are due back in sydney. two days, in fact. ish. it will leave you with many eating plans unfulfilled. ah well.

these fish gummies were procured during a leisurely supermarket trawl during the first couple of days. now see, i like the idea of taiyaki — those japanese fish pancakes most commonly filled with red bean paste — but they are scarce around these parts, and besides, i suspect i would much rather have the ice cream version of it: vanilla ice cream and red bean sauce in a fish-shaped wafer shell.

and now, i would happily have a taiyaki gummy, an adorable little fish-shaped nubbin that tastes uncannily like caramelised batter and white bean paste — a feat probably referenced by the “!?” punctuation on the packaging. it even has the slightly grainy texture of mushed-up beans (the list of ingredients includes bean powder). amazing.

i also found the intriguing pukupukutai air-in-choco strawberry fish, the kind of confection where you tear open the bag, and the air around you fills with the aroma of sweet, sweeeeet fake strawberries. it is a rather perfect rendition of the original pancake fish in crisp pink wafer. encased within is a mass of pink strawberry-flavoured chocolate, the texture of which is that of an aero bar. truly, a stellar light snack for a joyous occasion.

so. i’d acquired these months and months ago, way before the chinese melamine-in-milk scandal, and the melamine-in-white rabbit scandal specifically, and i spent quite a bit of time thinking about whether or not i should eat them. even if they did contain melamine, how much toxicity could there be in a handful of candies? the verdict is still out as of this moment (your counsel would be appreciated, dear reader), but here is something i did decide to eat a couple of weeks ago as i lay dying on the red couch: pearl sago.

i think, at the time, my argument was, well, it couldn’t possibly do any more harm. i was already zombie, and besides, how reassuring is a packet emblazoned with… well, i think it says, “lupenion luality”, which in a parallel universe untainted by melamine in milk, might possibly pass for “superior quality”. maybe.

but i’d received a tip from a reliable source championing the restorative powers of a bowl of freshly cooked sago. so i retrieved the packet from the back of the pantry, and boiled (and boiled and boiled) a cup of these colourful little spheres, and after straining them from their supernaturally gooey residue, i stirred in a couple spoons of coconut milk and a swirl of kithul treacle. twas pretty good, and not in the last bit poisonous. i lived to tell the tale after all.

now, about those white rabbits…

here i am, riding the bus, the day after i queued two hours — two — to get into the dinosaur designs sample sale. i didn’t even queue five minutes to get my book signed at the david sedaris reading last month. ok, i didn’t even queue period; deborah held a place while i walked to the front of the line to count how many fans there were ahead of us. roughly 80 made it a quick decision to abandon our posts for a splendid dinner of pasta and chocolate cake. priorities eh?

but thursday morning was a lovely day to spend in the sun, reading “the new yorker” style issue while shuffling forward at a snail’s pace outside the dinosaur designs warehouse.

i’ve wanted one of their bangles for years, but i was always too cheap to spend the big retail bucks on these chunks of plastic, no matter how lovely and handcrafted they are. the warehouse — really, the one room within the warehouse into which a select few were permitted entry every fifteen minutes or so, was the size of an average classroom, with trestle tables set up around the perimeter and an island in the center. atop these were plastic crates, and within these were a jumble of bangles and rings and necklaces and dishes and bowls and platters and vases and jugs, and the sound of fifty or eighty or however many women in total had been admitted, the sound of rifling through these hunks of resin, was like entering a mahjong den. and the jumble was somewhat less lovely (but only a teensy bit less lovely).

and i got my bangle! a pale green, not quite translucent thing, wonky round the edges. it looks like it might glow in the dark, though it doesn’t.

and what does one do the day after partaking of a sample sale, laughing in the face of that resolution to not buy anything for the rest of the year that is not food?

you could buy just over a kilo of jelly belly beans, now 20% off at the david jones confectionary department, in a fetching selection of such matching hues as very cherry, cotton candy, coconut, cream soda and chocolate pudding.

or you could wander up to the newish hawkesbury harvest markets at cook + phillip park, where the sun beats down mercilessly, and there is no shady spot for respite.

what there is, is a dairy stand selling a lightly salted butter churned from the cream of real, live, grass-eating jersey cows. if you stop to have a chat, you’ll be offered a cup of cold milk, sweet and clean. the gympie lady’s been out of butter recently, problems with milk supply and all, so i thought i’d give this one a go.

it was rather good on a slice of soft white sourdough, with a dribble of red gum honey.

really, we can’t get enough of the sprinkles.

so, ho ho, we made gingerbread, at the start of the month, and again on tuesday. any excuse to break out the all-natural-coloured sprinkles, the startlingly fake-coloured flowers, and the silver dragees. that long-ago gift of a tin of pink dean and deluca sugar came in handy too. we even went out in search of tiny candies, and returned with a package of pez (with a very blond disney princess dispenser) and a tube of mini m’n'ms.

small was crucial, because the gingerbread-house cutters i had found were for gingerbread houses about two inches tall. and the gingerbread-man cutter i’d been given for my birthday (thanks, sonya!) were for similarly-statured gingerbread men.

the kid takes a somewhat freeform approach to decorating the little men: as many little m’n'ms as she can fit. which makes for quite a lovely, chocolatey biscuit.

and so i leave you with this: the waitrose gingerbread recipe. i used backstrap molasses instead of golden syrup –

[ now. given the choice between a locally-produced molasses, which is a by-product of the sugar-refining process, or the organic molasses produced solely for its end result of molasses... way the hell over in peru, which would be the ethical choice? do you buy local, or organic free trade air miles? does it make a difference if the organic one has a pretty label, while the local one is kind of plain and has a black trickle down the side of the jar where it has leaked out like a by-product of say, a petroleum-refining process? these are the thoughts that went through my head as i stood in the aisle of the health food shop. imagine the thoughts i had while debating whether or not to use a raw egg white icing recipe! ]

– and a couple more teaspoons of a couple more spices (cinnamon and nutmeg), and ended up with a dark brown biscuit, crisp and crunchy. it was very sweet, and still not really spicy.

my plane leaves in about three hours. my fingers are numb.

happy xmas to you.

tonight i am celebrating the mooncake festival with a wedge of a two-yolk lotus paste mooncake and a pot of tea. the mooncake left an oily slick on my fingers when i removed it from its little tray, so i thought a mean, smoky tea would be good with. and it was: muji pu-erh tea with whole rosebuds — not quite so mean, then.

have you eaten the eggyolk in a mooncake? it is peculiar. unapologetically savoury. tough and dense, crumbly in some spots, and waxy in others. there is something wrong about it — i don’t actually enjoy eating this golden globe encased in the sweet lotus paste. but it is compelling.

anyway.

last night, finally, it was me, david duchovny and the throw-me-down. you know, the adriano zumbo tiramisu: layers on layers of mascarpone creme legere, savoiarde soaked in coffee syrup, and chocolate-coffee sauce. it certainly was saucy! the divine gloopiness of the sauce melding into the foamy mascarpone; the sodden biscuits sending an immediate buzz into my head.

(i know that “gloop” and “sodden” are not normally words that you associate with goodness, but listen: last night, they were!)

riding the crest, impossibly light chunks of crisp meringue that dissipated on my tongue. where does it all go?

actually, yes, i know where it goes. sigh.

i am about to be buried in an avalanche of werk, and will certainly need sustenance. i recently read about someone designing a 144-page exhibition catalogue in four weeks (via india, ink.), so perhaps it can be done after all; i think i have three weeks, for 124 pages.

i wonder, though, if the designer of that catalogue looks after a kid all morning, going to pirate storytime at the library, or two playgrounds on the way to the supermarket to buy watermelon, or like this morning, a meander through the tokyo fiesta in martin place followed by a quick look-in at the lindt shop followed by a sushi picnic at circular quay followed by a clamber up the opera house steps to buy tickets for the babies prom, “yummy in my tummy” in a couple of weeks followed by a trek through the botanical gardens (including somersaults in the grass and duck-chasing) followed by a busride through the city and home followed by stories and successful pottytime and tucking in for naps (followed by eight daims and procrastination reading about the riot at target for stella mccartney frocks. people are crazy.).

my mum has a friend in singapore — her boss, really — whose daughter had twins a little while ago, and worked out this arrangement: the babies stay over at the grandparents’ house during the week, nights included, and then the parents retrieve them for the weekend, unless the boss’s daughter has like, a dinner to go to, or an appointment for a facial or a massage or something, then the babies stay at the grandparents on the weekend too. nightfeeds, night wakings… all done by the grandparents. she’s lucky that way.

because maeve is going through this phase at the moment, where her sippy cup has to be tucked in, and every last finger too, and if something should come untucked during the nap (or, even worse, during the night) then the keening begins.

“maybe her toes are cold,” said my mother, mishearing, over the phone a couple nights ago. “maybe you should put socks on her so she won’t feel the cold and wake up.”

“no, not her toes. she wants her cup to be tucked in.”

my mother is speechless for a time. “wha… her cup?”

“yah.”

“that is sooo funny!”

“funny meh? why don’t you come and tuck her in?”

anyway. so, mother’s boss’s daughter. works in the logistics department at apple. on a whim, i wrote to ask if she could do me an employee discount on an ipod shuffle. she said she had a spare one sitting on her desk, because they just give her one every few months and she’s had so many that she didn’t know who else to give them to anymore. and so she gave it to me. we picked it up on the way to haw par villa. i am lucky that way.

i christened it with “take on me“. mostly, though, i’ve been using it to listen to the mr brown show while doing the dishes after dinner.

i wonder if that exhibition catalog designer has to do the dishes.

the bag says: yogurt gums. soft yogurt confectionery. with real fruit juice. no artificial colours. 99% fat free. less kilojoules than many other treats.

still, the first ingredient listed is sugar, followed closely (in second place) by glucose syrup. and because i’m sitting here (dressed rather fetchingly in the singlet and boxer shorts i slept in, and with my hair in a messy pony tail — oh yes, i feel exactly like heidi klum in the ad) eating them from the bag, my throat has that tight gaggy feeling from eating too much sweet all at once, and my stomach feels raw and empty.

i shall stop eating them now. for now. the yoghurty tang is most compelling, and the pear-flavoured gummy tastes just like a real pear.

[ i also found, in kmart, peach yoghurt chupachups, but perhaps that is a story for another day. ]

but the yoghurt bounty continues. trawling the aisles of another supermarket on sunday, i found biore with yoghurt extract. i’m not sure exactly what the yoghurt does in the facewash, and the packaging blurb doesn’t go into such detail; maybe they don’t know either. maybe it is just a cunning plan to sell facewash.

the thing is, a girl needs to wash her face when she’s in singapore, all hot and sticky. yes! here i am!

can i do it: three posts in a day? it’s just, i was in the asian supermarket at world square today, and right after i paid for a tin of maccha, a box of 30 assorted mochi, a biscuit that maeve had chewed to smithereens in its packaging (45c was a small price to pay for twenty minutes of quiet, contented child), and the shiny green box you see here, containing maccha and red bean flavoured chocolate mushrooms… i saw the shiny pink pouch you see here, containing happy candy. happy cherry candy. i had to join the queue again.

what is a blog for if not to taunt a sibling on the other side of the world about treats you just found on a chinatown expedition? after a wanton display of white rabbits — lychee white rabbits — which i instantly coveted, nellie was nice enough to actually send me some.

you know white rabbits, no? the milky chewy candy wrapped up in a slip of rice paper? i was about to say that the lychee ones are even better, being somewhat less cloying and milky, but perhaps it is more accurate to say they are different. a little sharper with a mysterious and subtle… hmm, what’s that flavour? aahh. lychee!

a package of candy in the mail is a sweet surprise, but candy arranged snug in a blue leather candy purse (from orla kiely no less) is an interactive experience involving placing said purse on a worthy surface and savouring its beauty, unzipping and zipping and unzipping and removing piece by piece the candy, noting the differences between the original white rabbit wrappers and these ones (smiling lychee duo atop a banner reading “lychee” in chinese and english, with a tiny white rabbit logo along the edge), and then placing each little baton neatly back in its place. and then repeating the sequence over the next couple of days before finally unwrapping one and eating it, slowly. well, that was my experience.

a much more awful experience is taking a dud powerbook into the apple service centre at broadway, where the girl on reception will negate everything the phone support guys have told you over the last two days, and ask if you would like to book your brand new dud in and have the problem assessed in seven to ten working days.

“you ask like i have an option,” i said. “why, what else can i do?”
“yeah, no, yeah, you have to book it in.” she was blonde, but also, she was young.

if i want it seen to faster i can pay $80 for a rush service. she will not let me use her phone to call the support line, or the store, to verify all she has told me. “the apple shop and the apple phone support and us, we are all separate agencies and have nothing to do with each other. and we cannot call and speak on anyone’s behalf. ever. we can’t let you use our phones because it will tie up our lines. and we do not seem to have a phonebook we can lend you.”

resisting the urge to break her or the shiny white computer on her desk — or let’s be honest, the chunk of aluminium alloy weighing me down, i embarked on a chinatown expedition of my own. specifically i wanted meats. chinatown meats! but i was open to anything else that might throw itself in my way.

in front of a sweet shop i made the kind of abrupt stop where your whole body goes rigid, and then anchored at the feet, the top of you wobbles a bit and vibrates to a halt. they had constructed a stove in the window and were cooking up a storm of obanyaki. four flavours of obanyaki: redbean, custard (“the best in sydney”, is what the sign said), chocolate, and green tea. “delicious!” said mr. sign, and “buy three for $5!”, which i thought was diabolically clever, because which flavour does one leave out? in fact, none, because i played into their dastardly plan, and came away with custard, redbean, two chocolates and two green teas. “thank you. have a great day,” said the smiley counter girl.

and then meats were procured: char siu and siu yok and, because i couldn’t decide between soya chickane — i typed chicken, and this is what came out instead — and roast duck, i got a half of each. and green sauce. and because the bubble tea merchant is just a few doors down, and there was a sign outside that said, “happy 4th birthday easy way, 20% off all drinks”, i added some mango blended ice (for the boy) and pickled plum blended ice (for me) to my trusty shopping bag.

who’s the postergirl for that modern affliction of buying stuff to make you feel better? that would be me, doing lucky dips for obanyaki at the bus stop. it was the custard one, and may well have been the best in sydney, still warm and cakey on the outside, and creamy-gooey hot custard within.