moko wants candy

The long walk home

noreply@blogger.com (Moko) — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 13:28:00 +0000

Many a novel has been written about the heartbreak and beauty of returning home.

You see a man observing the landscape. You can read his nervous energy on his face--tense but expressionless. Around him, things are either desolate or beautiful or bursting with energy. But it is all alien to him.

He watches someone walking by, possibly an old person--the figure a metaphor for all that has happened during his absence. The man then attempts to eat/sleep/speak, but to no avail--he is no longer of that place. He no longer knows its ways.

That same sort of poetic melancholy hit me today as I rentered Tesco, the UK's premier bad supermarket. I was away from London for less than two years, and yet all that has changed--and has not changed--in this country was reflected off Tesco's shiny, slightly dirt-specked surfaces. Between the hummus and the digestive biscuits, a small came from a place deep inside me. I stared at the lines on my hands and realized: This. is. England.

I mean, seriously, not a single new candy in two years? How is that even possible?

Love birds

noreply@blogger.com (Moko) — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 23:35:00 +0000

What could be inside this pretty little box??

Oh! Little birds!! Aren't they cute?!? You just want to raise them as pets, don't you?

..or bite their heads off and eat the gooey bean paste within.

One of those things that seemed like a great idea

noreply@blogger.com (Moko) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 08:10:00 +0000

I came back from a recent trip to California bearing a box of Sees, a whole bunch of Jell-O pudding, and a bag of one of my favorite annual treats, Brach's jelly beans. Patience has never been my strong suit, so I opened the jelly beans while I was still in the bus back to Tokyo. By the time I arrived, there were only the black and purple ones left and I was feeling a bit nauseous.

So when I got to my apartment I had the brilliant idea that I would scatter the jelly beans around my rug, then go on an Easter egg hunt for them. I figured that that would at least buy my stomach 20 minutes before it received another sugar rush.

Well, for those of you thinking you might try this at home, let me offer one big tip: don't do this if you have a dark rug...one week later and I have had a few early morning surprises of jelly beans popping up between my toes.

Berry delicious

noreply@blogger.com (Moko) — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 11:27:00 +0000

Berry Cafe on Aoyama Dori, near my house. It was berry delicious!!

...well, not really. It's all gross whipped cream underneath the berries. See?

But the store front itself was very attractive. It's like a 50s diner meets a Southern pie factory!

Sad, sad panda

noreply@blogger.com (Moko) — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 11:41:00 +0000

Nobody knows the trouble I've seen
Nobody knows, but Jesus...

The Moko Eats Away the Chance of Love for Tokyo Singles

noreply@blogger.com (Moko) — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 15:47:00 +0000

And here's how I did it.

This past Saturday my friend Yuki dragged me along to be her "wing woman" at a Valentine's singles party here in Tokyo. I kept my ring on my finger out of allegiance to my beloved L. but I did throw on a few extra rings for good measure as I didn't want to pay the extra entrance fee for being married. (L.--if you're reading this, no that does not mean that I value our marriage less than 1000 yen....it just means I wanted to save money for the large house and twenty children we will one day have.)

Anyway, the party organizers had the creative idea of encouraging mixing by putting different kinds of free food and drink where people were sitting. So some tables had pizzas; others had shots; and mine--and only mine--had a big big box of Krispy Kremes.

The organizers had intended this to act as a natural conversation starter, and I'm sure everything would have gone fine had the Moko not been around. But the moment the Krispy Kremes hit our table I was all over them, and when the first set of guys came over to talk to us, I glared at one of them as he tried to take a donut. The moment they left (boys will do that if you don't talk to them) I lay both arms parallel to the sides of the box, and made it clear no one was to come near them.

While I don't think my single friends appreciated this, I thought it taught them an important lesson: if they really want to snag a man, they shouldn't count on a married woman's donuts to do so. (I don't entirely know what I mean by that, but it's 1am and after a lot of donuts and alcohol it sounds like a very true statement.)

Colonoscopies - the best excuse ever to eat candy

noreply@blogger.com (Moko) — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 03:29:00 +0000

Hollywood types and readers of Gwyneth's GOOP love their enema and detox diets, but for most of us regular folks, the idea of laxatives, colonoscopies, and enemas is rather distasteful--and certainly not something you'd bring up at the dinner table, in your newsletter, or on your blog.

Until now. Because, ladies and gentlemen, I have seen the light at the end of my large intestine and I'm a colonoscopy convert!

First, and most importantly, there's the drink. Now everyone had told me the colonoscopy drink is the most disgusting thing ever--viscuous and slimy all at once. But really it was like liquid sugar. I loved every minute of it.

Second, you get to eats tons of candy. You're not allowed to eat anything substantive before a colonoscopy, and the doctor's instructions specifically say, "only tea, water, sports drinks." It's the only time any doctor's going to tell you to eat candy, so you really have to make the most of it. And I did.

And finally, there's the anaesthesia, which floats you right on up to happy land. I was in such a good mood that it didn't even bother me when I heard the nurses whispering that they weren't quite sure how to best arrange me on the examination table because my "foreign butt" was so large. (I thought about providing a picture of my backside to prove to you all that my butt is really not large by anything but Japanese standards, but I think this post is already pushing it as it is...)

Now if America could just get their health care sorted out, you too could enjoy this experience for free!

Das schmeckt (and sounds) gut

noreply@blogger.com (Moko) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 08:20:00 +0000

I was pretty unimpressed with this German chocolate man until the last 20 seconds of this clip. When I was little I tried to build a record (and a brick house, and a robot, and...) but I never quite figured out how to get those nifty sounds to come out.

New Year, New Country, New Husband, New Candy

noreply@blogger.com (Moko) — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 01:11:00 +0000

Hi everyone. I know it's been a very, very long time since I last wrote. But I have plenty of good excuses...

First, I got hitched. The ceremony was wonderful, the husband was/is wonderful, etc etc...but the thing you really need to see is my wedding cake, which was certainly the most ridiculously wonderful waste of money in which I've ever indulged. I actually cut a bunch of things from my wedding to pay for this thing, which had three flavors (chocolate chocolate, pistachio and strawberries, and carrot cake). Usually, wedding cake isn't very good, but I must humbly say that mine was delicious.
I agonized over what I wanted for a cake, as I knew I didn't want some frilly white flower number. As my future husband heard me (day after day) going through my various ideas (at one point we were having a giant Buddha cake), he finally (and perhaps with some exasperation) said: "why don't you just do an enormous cupcake?" And that's when I knew that I was marrying the right man.

Anyway, after the wedding, I became English, which involved enduring months of paperwork and a 2-hour ceremony (played to Beatles music) in which I pledged allegiance to the queen and promised I would never complain about the weather again.

Then I had to go to Paris for work, and was super excited to see my book selling at Shakespeare & Co., where I used to go to feel young and literary and tragic back when I lived in la Ville-lumière.
Then it was off to the US for Christmas cookies at my brother's place in Portland. Why do so many people in Portland look like the Unibomber?
Then, we moved to Tokyo, which is where I'm writing from today. I actually like Tokyo even better the second time around. I'm able to walk to work, the sun is out even in the winter, and the food, the food...

Me and my Japanese sweet gazing out our hotel window

So there you have it. Given that I'm back in the land of all things delicious I'm sure I'll start blogging more frequently. Hopefully. ;-)

Turron for the holidays

noreply@blogger.com (Moko) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 21:03:00 +0000

I was introduced to the Spanish nougat-y treat called turron back when I lived in Madrid many, many years ago. At the time I didn't really get it: nougat and nuts (one of my top five worst things in the world) do not an elegant delicacy make. In fact, the Internet has proof that I really found turron to be quite unexceptional.

But I've since come around to liking turron--as is clearly reflected in my choice to pose this delicate package on top of my sophisticated fireplace grill. Why the change? Well...I think I've just become more tolerant in my old age, and have decided that sugar, in almost any form, and even when involving nuts, is a good thing. I guess that is what they mean about the wisdom of old folks.

Counting down the days with Chrome

noreply@blogger.com (Moko) — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 00:07:00 +0000

When I was a kid I envied the teenagers who got to drive around with branded cars that had the name of a pizza place or a blow-up animal on the roof. Whether or not this was actually effective marketing never really crossed my mind, but I will say that in the 15+ years since seeing my first-ever Red Bull car, I've never managed to work for a company who's done flashy marketing or has let me drive a neon-colored car.

...particularly now, as I work for a tech company that rarely does any offline marketing or fancy promos. Until, until, until, dear readers, they came up with this: the Chrome advent calendar. I was so excited when I saw this that I tried to sweet talk several colleagues into donating their calendars to moi. Inside each box is a chocolate Chrome icon.

Now, to the degree I can be objective about these things, I do think Chrome is the fastest browser out there. But the fact that it now comes equipped with a chocolate advent calendar makes it 100% clear that this is the best browser in the world! (P.S. Why can't all tech products be rendered in chocolate....it'd certainly be better than chocolate trying to be tech!)

Fauchon en France

noreply@blogger.com (Moko) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 21:52:00 +0000

See the shiny floor? Bet your bathroom floor's not that shiny. Mine certainly isn't.

What you're looking at is the floor of Le Meurice in Paris, where the floors gleam so much that it makes perfect sense to put your fancy Fauchon jelly and marmalade stand directly on top of them and take a picture, fully confident that even if your stand fell over, and all the jellies spilled on to the floor, it would be so clean that you could just lick everything up!

Or at least that was my interpretation.

The point of the post, however, was to sing the virtues of confiture de lait. Despite having once lived in Paris, I had never come across it before. It's sorta like milk meets caramel..in other words, a lot like dulce de leche, but I think the latter is a wee bit tastier. A bit too sweet for me for breakfast, but it'd be great on a croissant in the middle of the day.

5 Things

noreply@blogger.com (Moko) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 18:27:00 +0000

My dad, a doctormologist, was telling me tonight that back in med school the classic drinking game they'd all play was, 'What 5 medicines would you bring to a desert island?"

Sounds wild.

In any case, it got me thinking about what kind of sweets I would bring...

1. Cookie dough batter

2. Cheap, American supermarket icing (that would double as insect bait so that I could also get my protein)

3. Cotton Candy (which I could also use as a cocoon to keep warm at night)

4. Chocolate caramel fudge sundae (hey, if I can transport an infinite number of sundaes I can certainly figure out how to keep the sun from melting them)

5. Haribo strawberries (also to track my trails and not get lost)

Your turn! What would you bring?

...btw, in case you're interested in the top medicines, they apparently are an antibiotic, an anti-inflammatory, and a pain pill...considering that pretty much any doctor should be able to figure that out I'm not quite sure where the drinking game part came in!

Lessons from Thanksgiving

noreply@blogger.com (Moko) — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 10:52:00 +0000

Hello Moko-ites,

I had all my Irish family over for Thanksgiving this weekend, and in making my first-ever Thanksgiving meal I learned a whole bunch of things I'm passing on to the troops in the hopes that it can be of use for Xmas:

1. Turkey is negotiable. I always assumed everyone loved turkey. But when I suggested we have a Moko-friendly Thanksgiving by skipping it this year I was surprised by the number of people who came out of the woodwork to confess how much they dislike the "dry," "gamey," bird, which "makes you fall asleep before you even get to the end of the meal." (Separate note: wouldn't it be great if Zagat would extend their empire beyond restaurant reviews? I'd love to read their company or government guides....'Wacky living' meets 'oppressive regime' in Turkmenistan, where the king 'names the month and breakfast cereals after himself'.' Some say it's 'stifling to the point you want to kill yourself', but most 'love the food and all-night laundromats.')

2. Cranberries are the easiest things to make in the world. Seriously: cranberries, sugar, boil them in water. Done. I threw in some orange peel just to make it seem like these had taken me longer.

3. Carnivores can be fooled. My vegan nut roast was the hit of the evening, and on first taste many people thought it had the touch of bloody flesh. Triumph!

4. Making your own pie crust is super simple and tastes way better. Here we go: 1 cup flour, half stick of butter, kneed kneed kneed till it's crumbling, then mix in the egg, fridge for 20 minutes, roll out, then bake for 35 minutes.

5. Could candy duplicate the flavor of buttery mashed potatoes. Maybe a Jelly Belly flavor?

6. Candles make all meals look more presentable.

7. Boo to whipping cream (meaning, cream you buy on the Old Continent that is called whipping cream, but it really is cream-to-be-whipped and not wonderfully sugary Cool Whip)....is not worth anyone's time.

8. Double the spice in your pumpkin pie recipe. Whatever recipe it may be, doubling the spice makes it that much better. That's a tricky I learned from my mumsy.

9. If you're the one cooking, only invite your side of the family to your house. That way, your spouse/partner will inevitably get bored at some point and will voluntarily take to the kitchen to do the dishes for you.

10. Skip the veggies. They just take up more time, no one really eats that many...Thanksgiving is about heartiness, not vegetables!

The Moko Breaks her Silence

noreply@blogger.com (Moko) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:04:00 +0000

From the mess halls of East Coast prep schools to the peaks of Kilamanjaro; from the intersection at Shibuya station, the temples of Tibet, and the set of Gossip Girl...the big question on everyone's lips for the past three months has been, "where is Moko?"

It's true: I vanished without a trace in August, leaving you all with a Miette candy posting and no warning that I would be leaving you sugarless for the fall. The truth is, I was travelling a lot for work in August and September, and then went off and got myself hitched, so inbetween it all I found it difficult to post...not to mention that I was still officially practicing sugar sobriety, so I didn't have as much "raw material" to work with.

But if there's anything that married life has taught me, it's that old habits die hard. I'll never get him to put the toilet seat down, and he'll never to manage to break me free of sugar's grasp. (A more realistic goal would simply be to try to get our relationship to the point where, if both of us were on a sinking ship with a life-sized bag of sugar and only two lifejackets, it would not take me too long to make the right decision.)

So here I am...rock you like a hurricane.

The Moko is back!!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Moko) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:36:00 +0000

...and this is what she's just made---christmas cupcakes...in November!!

miette candy tasting

noreply@blogger.com (Moko) — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 09:13:00 +0000

The worst thing about planning a wedding is, well, the planning part. But whenever there's a worst thing there has to be a best thing, and that's clearly the fun stuff along the way that you weren't even expecting. Two great examples:

1. The man at the corner store gave me a free pack of Orbit gum tonight when he saw my engagement ring--and he gave me 20p off on the second pack I purchased. What a bargain!

2. The Baron--paragon of good taste, and one of the early inspirations for this blog--threw me a wonderful candy tasting/ bachelorette party at a pretty candy shop in San Francisco called Miette.

Now when The Baron first mentioned her idea to me, I have to admit I had a little laugh inside the mean part of my brain. How could the Moko possibly have anything more to learn about candy? It ain't wine, after all: in my book there's basically sweet, sweeter, and sweetest, with subcategories of sour, liquid, fluff, and stale.

Nevertheless, I thought it was an excellent excuse to break my candy fast and spend the day in Miette, the decor of which, in floor-to-ceiling technicolor gumballs, is like complete Mokoporn.

We started out with grapefruit "infused" cotton candy. I would have been content to eat just that the whole day.

Then came the sugary candies (below). This was heavy on dainty French cuteness (yes, those are Carambars you see on the far right), and all quite tasty--particularly the lone Italian sugar fondant, which is my new favorite thing ever. My only wish was that they could have added in some sugary Haribo numbers, letting the German octane offset the flirty pouts of the French flowers....I swear it's like candy that will try to steal your boyfriend.
Next came the caramels, which I have not included a picture of here because I feel that caramels are a bit like brownies in their wholesome boringness. (Well, that and the fact that I've left that photo on my camera and it's in another room...) That said, the Miette ones rated really highly in our group, as did the chocolates, which included tasty London-based Rococo, reliable Gianduja, and a challenging, crusty number that made me feel like I had been asked to appreciate contemporary art.

Finally, the Miette ladies broke out loads of salty licorice. These things tested even the bravest of my friends. I warned everyone off the Nordic ones--since it's a proven fact that they lead to suicide--but I was surprised to discover that the chocolate licorice (bottom right hand) was actually quite addictive.

A big thanks to The Baron for organizing the most perfect day for the Moko!

On globalization, architecture, and chocolate

noreply@blogger.com (Moko) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 17:56:00 +0000

Greetings from Prague, Mokoites!

I actually meant to post something last week, but I was in Milan and utterly uninspired...who would've thunk that Italy could make an ugly city? Duomo aside, the highlight of my trip was a motorcycle tour of fascist architecture in public transport structures. And that was as interesting for about as long as it took me to write that sentence.

But Prague, oh Prague! Prague is all things to all people. The romantics among us love it for its historic cobblestone and charming buildings; the English for its reputation as a cheap place to get drunk; and for Moko as the home of many heavy pastries that remind her of the Prussian Empire.

...but that actually wasn't the point of this post.

The point, of course, was that I've now been able to find Thomas-themed Pocky in three countries - UK, Japan, and Czech Republic.

More proof that sugar is bad for you

noreply@blogger.com (Moko) — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 18:56:00 +0000

According to this BBC story, a New Jersey chocolate factory worker died after falling into a vat of chocolate. I always thought this could be an ok way to go, but I think the chocolate was so hot in this case that it would just have been painful.

But given my tasteless title and picture for this post, I can at least now prove to the mysterious Purple People Eater that I'm just as dismissive of human life as animal life when it comes to death by chocolate!

The Moko gets swindled

noreply@blogger.com (Moko) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 07:47:00 +0000

About a decade ago, I spent a summer volunteering in Morocco. In addition to memorizing all the guide book tips, I had learned from my Moroccan co-volunteers the dos and don'ts of being street smart in the big cities, where foreign tourists were less numerous than they are today.

So at the end of her volunteering stint, savvy little miss Moko took herself to Casablanca, as she wanted to see the famed city, as well as explore the possibility of doing a PhD at the university (at which point, any listener of my story usually interrupts me and asks, "Oh, did you speak Arabic?"...at which point I blush and then wave aside their question as if irrelevant).

Anyway, on my first day in Casablanca, I was relaxing in the shade of an olive tree when a man approached me to ask the time. He then proceeded to tell me he was a professor at the university. We kicked off a conversation during which I impressed him with my (not so) extraordinary knowledge of Maghreb literature, and eventually he invited me and my then-boyfriend to dinner with him and his wife later in the evening. Of course! This is what the guide books said might happen--"Moroccan hospitality is well known"--and so we accepted, and then set out to buy something to take to his house as a housewarming gift.

Now I was in Morocco only shortly after finishing college, and I had very little money to my name. (In fact, so little, that I got mad when my then-boyfriend spent the equivalent of 25 cents on an ice cream in Casablanca. Sorry Mr. Ex...though only kinda.) But I really wanted to make a good impression on the professor, so I went into the most luxurious bakery in all of Casablanca and bought up a whole array of sweets, including the ones in the photo of tasty fig and marzipan numbers.

Later that day, we met the "professor" in a very chic suburb of Casablanca. After 15 minutes of my babble about literature, he suddenly asked us whether we would want wine with our dinner. "As a Muslim, I cannot drink it, but I can purchase some in a secret bar up the road if you give me some money."

The distinction between buying and consuming struck me a bit like a religious friend I had in high school who refused to have sex but had no issues with giving oral pleasures--but hey, I wasn't going to question it. After all, the thought of having wine in Morocco seemed thrilling given how taboo it was (again, this seems to have changed quite a bit over the past decade), so I said yes, and promptly handed over the equivalent of ten dollars---a total fortune for me then, and no doubt a bit irksome to that ex-boyfriend who was still smarting from his 50-cent purchase.

The man stood up and as he made to leave, he stopped and eyed my box full of pastries. "I will take this to my wife on the way," he said smiling.

...And, well, you already know how this story ends. The man never returned, we never got our wine, and I never got to try the marzipan figs until I returned to Morocco earlier this year.

Oh, and my boyfriend and I broke up.

I still regret the part about the figs though.

Macha McVities

noreply@blogger.com (Moko) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 18:01:00 +0000

McVitie's are one of England's few great contributions to modern society (other contenders: porridge, builders tea, and sunlight until 9pm in the summers). For those of you who haven't had them, they're like fake cookies that are great to dunk in tea or hot chocolate, or even to pair with sharp cheese just for a zingy taste pow sensation.

That said, I've always thought it was a bit disingenuous the way McVitie's would call themselves "digestive biscuits" as if they were somehow healthy. Let's call a spade a spade here: these things are really only connected to digestion in that your stomach needs to digest them.

Now McVitie's has found a new gimmick: Matcha McVities---kinda like standard McVities meets Oreos meets matcha. And matcha--as McDonalds and Starbucks and 1 million years of Eastern medicine would have us believe--is a magical, magical thing.

Well guess what? They're really, really tasty. (And totally not healthy.)

My soulmate

noreply@blogger.com (Moko) — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 15:36:00 +0000

Today I looked in the mirror and saw that I'm actually not a ghostly pale blonde girl: I am Lamar Odom.

Take a look at this post, sent to me by the Quiet Quieter. Lamar and I walk alike, we talk alike, we certainly eat alike, and we get distracted alike due to our sweet tooth.

All that's left is for me to grow a foot taller and take up basketball.

More fun with wafers

noreply@blogger.com (Moko) — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 21:14:00 +0000

Under my new sugar ban I'm not actually allowed to eat any of these things I get but just ogle them (and ok maybe take an occasional taste in the name of science). So I had to keep adding things to the blueberry wafer treat from the other day to get it to a point of complete inediblity where it didn't matter how big my craving was.

So I decided to glue on my little people friends...because glue is not tasty (unless it's sugar glue like the kind you use in elementary school).

So here you have my New York City block. The person in the middle on the right-hand side is actually an angry mother. She's (clearly) climbing up the scaffolding to get up to the roof so that she can drag down her pot-smoking teenager.

p.s. I'm sure this sugar ban stuff will end soon. I'm as bored with it as you are ;-)

What! Is! This!?!

noreply@blogger.com (Moko) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 17:58:00 +0000

I had imagined this would be a ccrispy wafer full of oozing blue soda-y goodness. Alas, there was no ooze or soda, but points to them for making a sucker out of me!

But that reminds me, does anyone know of any good blueberry candy? Why is it such an un(der)appreciated fruit? Texture-wise, they pop in your mouth and go all gushy. And if you get those great GMO ones you can get them as big as your fist. No joke.

Modern art made from...what?

noreply@blogger.com (Moko) — Mon, 25 May 2009 18:03:00 +0000

Any guesses as to what candy I've used to create this Edward Hopper-esque portrain of alienation in a furniture store?