Ten ways I managed to ingest sugar as a child, over parental objections

1. Breakfast Cereal

When I was a girl, when we went to the supermarket my mother would come up with an arbitrary number, I think it was around five or six, and say that we could only have cereal that had a lower sugar count per serving than this number. Upon reflection, I suppose it wasn't arbitrary, because it managed to eliminate anything tasty from our breakfast options, including that fence-sitter Honey Nut Cheerios. We were left with a sad array of possibilities: plain Cheerios, plain Rice Krispies, Corn Flakes, and Fiber One. This stopped me from getting the much need morning buzz and was probably the reason I turned to coffee at the tender age of fourteen.

The world seems a lot bleaker at seven in the morning without sugar or caffeine, and this was the state of my life when a babysitter suggested to me, around the age of eight, that I could just dump sugar on my cereal and it would taste better. Oh, Mother, if you only knew how those babysitters corrupted us! Anyway, after that, I would spoon at least three or four tablespoons of sugar onto every bowl of cereal that I ate whenever no one was looking, and by the time my parents actually caved in and started buying decent cereal and snacks I had grown indifferent, realizing that I was master of my own destiny.

2. Cinnamon Toast

Another creative way to eat sugar. Make toast, blob some butter on it, and sprinkle liberally with sugar and cinnamon. Resent children whose mothers bought them Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal.

3. Chocolate Chips

Despite being raised in the house of the child of a health food nut, I am also my father's daughter. Luckily for me and my brother, my father was unwilling to cave to many of my mother's culinary demands. It is because of him that we often had chocolate chips in the house for various baking projects. (I know that my mother is going to jump in here and insist that she was the one who made the chocolate chip cookies, and yes, Mom, I love you for it.) We would raid the chocolate chips in handfuls on a daily basis until they were gone. This was the easiest sugar injection in our lives, and one we had to keep secret from the parents. They at least, to their credit, pretended to not notice our sticky hands and chocolatey faces as we bounced off the walls.

4. Baking Chocolate

Baking chocolate was sort of the child's equivalent of "ghost-busting," where crackheads pick up any bit of dust or gib of dirt off the ground and smoke it "just in case." As I remember it, baking chocolate was unsweetened, but still smelled enough like chocolate that I would attempt it occasionally.

5. Ovaltine

According to the family legends, Ovaltine was the one sweet food my mother was allowed as a child, because my grandmother -- or Ole Wheat Germ, as we call her -- had been convinced of the health benefits of all of those vitamins. As such, we were also allowed Ovaltine as children. Malted Ovaltine actually tastes healthy and is not good. Chocolate Ovaltine, though, tastes like real chocolate milk to a child who has been sugar-deprived. If you added twice as much Ovaltine as recommended, it only gets chocolatey-er.

6. Anna and Jeannette's House

Anna and Jeannette were the twins that lived up the road. They had an elderly aunt to watch them every afternoon who was notorious lax with the cupboard monitoring. Additionally, their mother apparently did not have great refusal skills, as she purchased any snack food that her five daughters may have possibly wanted (and she had five daughters, so resistance was futile). When I went to Anna and Jeanette's, I could have as many fruit roll-ups as I could eat, Oreos, gummy candy, ice cream and any number of treats that would inevitably spoil my dinner.

7. Egg Nog

Another mom-allowed after-school snack born of desperation. Consists of milk, egg, sugar, vanilla, nutmeg, thrown in the blender and add some food coloring to make it seem processed. My mother now denies that she ever made this for me. Then she says that raw eggs weren't considered a health risk back then and kids need a lot of protein so even if she did make it there's nothing wrong with that.

Further investigation has concluded that my mother was once fed this as a child on a doctor's advice (she had her jaw wired shut at the time) and as such, was convinced it was good for us.

8. Sugar Cubes

Yes, I'll admit it. I ate sugar cubes. After about three, it would set my teeth on edge and my cavities would start crying for mercy.

9. Old German Christmas Cookies

My father, ever the optimist, would often make Christmas cookies for at least a hundred people, despite the fact that we only knew thirty. This would often leave us with a store of hard, German cookies for months after Christmas. They were generally hidden behind the vinegar, because he didn't want my mother pointing out that he had made too many, just like she had told him he was going to. Luckily for him, I would raid these every so often. They were hard as rocks; you'd have to suck on them for a while before even a little bit would begin to crumble. These cookies were a great way to kill time and get a sugar fix.

10. Baking

In the end, I had to learn how to bake. God was not going to bring the cake to me, so I had to learn to make the cake. I think I started baking at around age ten or eleven, in the desperate grip of post-school sugar withdrawal. I started with the Joy of Cooking One Egg Cake which has only eight ingredients and can be made in under forty minutes. I've never looked back.

El Submarino...genius

If the world cup wasn't enough to convince you of the genius of the Argentinians and Uruguayans, check out how they make hot chocolate.



Submerge an entire bar of chocolate into a glass of hot leche. (That's Spanish for milk--can you tell how well my lessons are coming along?) Said leche can contain vanilla, but it's not vital.



Give it a good stir, and if you're an absolute hedonist add the packets of sugar that are kindly provided. Continue on with the stirring until the chocolate bar has disolved. Marvel at the ingenuity of South Americans.

Meiji Lucky

And another riff on the old Pocky tune: Meiji's Lucky.

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Although this is a complete Pocky ripoff, I'm willing to give these guys a chance. Meiji are also the makers of Yan Yan, which are covered in such animal-related witticisms as "Mole, in a hole" and "Rhinoceros, think big."



Yan Yan are basically dunk sticks with a bucket of creamy chocolate deliciousness. These are ones that although I enjoy, I'm generally too ashamed to purchase them as I feel that an elegant lady such as myself shouldn't be seen with my paws covered in brown goo and they're generally disgusting.

But even better than Yan Yan are Hello Panda. I don't have pictures of these but they are small nuggets of joy filled with the brown goo and stamped with a picture of pandas playing sports and things.

So, in summary, these are Pocky rip-offs but I like Hello Panda.

In case you thought I forgot about Pocky...

After my run-in with Chinese Pocky I have pretty successfully sworn off the stuff. And although my fascination with this sugary treat has diminished, it has not disappeared. So imagine my delight when I spotted these counterfeit Pocky in Malaysia. I was very pleased imagining how impressed you, my loyal readers, would be with my find.

As it turns out, these aren't fake Pocky, they are real Rocky. Glico markets Pocky as Rocky in Malaysia because in Malay the word puki, pronounced "pooki," means vagina (more vulgar than clinical). So now you know.

Would you like kidney beans with your iced dessert?

Popular dessert in Malaysia: cendol. Cendol is a shaved ice dessert that is doused in coconut milk, pandan flavored green noodles, kidney beans and palm sugar. Other variations include grass jelly, red beans, durian, glutinous rice and the one that most foreigners gag when they try, creamed corn. Mine came with a healthy serving of chocolate syrup. 

Malaysians aren't the only ones that like beans in their iced desserts--you can find variations on this in Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia.

In the Philippines I had an even more intense version called halo-halo that included garbanzo beans, ube (purple yam) ice cream, condensed milk, mung beans and about a half dozen other unidentified ingredients. It was delicious but definitely has a bit of the wtf factor--I was on a beach eating this delicious dessert and then suddenly I'd remember it was filled with beans. Easy way to get your five-a-day, though. 

Singaporean ice-cream sandwiches

In Singapore recently I had an interesting take on an ice cream sandwich. First, a very old man takes a block of ice cream (I chose mango, Jenn went with chocolate) from a freezer and hacks off the wrapping, leaving a very large block of ice cream. There are two choices from there--the block can be dressed in two thin wafers, or can be wrapped in a piece of multi-colored sliced bread.







The pictures don't really give a sense of how big these things were. They were a bit much, even for my big fat face.

(The wikipedia page on ice cream sandwiches contains an interesting list of regional variations.)

Filled with mom's heart

I love my mom, and she's got a very big heart, but I don't know that I'd want to eat it inside a pastry.

Single-serving Oreos

In the Philippines, people love small packages of stuff. They sell shampoo, condition and laundry soap in tiny, one-use packets. I was particularly pleased to see the single serving packages of cookies and biscuits. Now, I know this is bad for the universe. I really do. But backpacking as I am, I can't buy economy-sized packages of everything, and I like to have a snack in my bag in case of emergency.

The emergency tends to be an overwhelming frustration with the culture of the country I happen to be in, and I've learned that Oreos are a good remedy. In China I found myself eating an entire package of Oreos every two to three days just to deal with China, which may be why the one pair of jeans I brought on my trip have split open. So imagine my delight when I found that in the Philippines I could buy just three Oreos at a time. Luckily I have had few frustrations with the Filipino culture and have not yet sampled one of these delightful little packets, but I'm sure when my purse finally gets stolen I'll be happy to have a couple of Oreos in my back pocket.

I'm going to qualify this post by pointing out that I have not lived in the US for three years, and even when I did, I didn't buy Oreos. So if this is old news in America, I have an excuse. I know that they have those "100 calorie bags" of cookies, but you have to buy ten at a time! These little guys are sold individually.

Chinese-style egg custard

I love egg custard. This is genetic, I think. At least I am fairly certain that my mother feels the same way and I have fond memories of eating the stuff as a kiddie. So I was interested to hear how Chinese-style egg custard compared to my childhood memories. As it turns out, it's exactly the same! Or at least, I couldn't remember my childhood well enough to come up with any differences. I'm probably blocking out some sort of traumatic memories and managed to erase those as well as the egg custard.

But don't they say that replacing old memories with new memories is the way forward? The custard in Hong Kong was yummy.



But then at Lei Garden, a Michelin starred dim sum place, the custard turned sublime. Custard dim sum.



I love you, Hong Kong.

Sago, mango, coconut juice--what's not to love?

The best part about Hong Kong food is how much healthier it is than Chinese food. Case in point, Hui Lau Shan: Healthy Dessert, of which there are at least three in Mongkok.



Best health food ever--a giant glass of mango juice, chunks of mango and tapioca (sago) with a floater of pure coconut cream. You can also get mango jelly added, if you're feel adventurous. 1500 calories minimum, I'd wager, but worth every damn one of 'em.

...and corn candy

I'm not one of those people that has high standards when it comes to sweets. I'll neck a Hershey bar like it ain't no thang. I'm not the sort that demands any sort of exacting quality in the sweets department. But as I mentioned before the candy in China doesn't do much for me. I'm a big fan of corn in real life, but not so sure about it in my alternate reality, China. First, there was the corn ice cream. Now there's the rubbery gummy candy, texturized to look like an ear of corn. I sent some to my mother, a woman of decidedly questionable taste, and she said it was "weirdly appealing."

That's not a bad way to describe it, though. It's so disgusting that it is almost good, like those really sour candies or stinky cheese. I felt like it was teetering on the line for me, and if I were in a more tolerant state of mind I'd be showing off about my new favorite food, corn candy. But then I ran into a bowl of these in the Air China lounge in Chengdu and a moment after depositing one into my big fat face I ended up spitting it out into my big fat hand. Mission aborted.



I emailed my mother for her final word on this candy and she wrote back: "I'd have to eat another one and I can't face it so early."

Corn ice cream

When I was in the 4th grade "Gifted and Talented" program (seriously) we had an assignment to come up with an invention. My invention was vegetable ice cream to help encourage kids to get their 5 a day. Obviously China ganked the idea from me because they have green pea, red bean and corn ice cream in their freezer cases. Despite having my million dollar idea stolen, it's slightly gratifying to realize that my invention was as brilliant as I had believed twenty years ago, it just needed to be executed in China rather than the Napa Valley.



The nice thing about this ice cream is that it is seriously corny. There's happy corn on the front, it's shaped like a corn cob and when you open the package you get a serious bang of canned corn off the whole thing. The smell was enough to inspire a small, ladylike gag.



What I assume must represent the husk is something that is similar to a very thin layer of regular (as opposed to sugar) ice cream cone or possibly styrofoam. Once you get through this, the payoff is pretty intense. The corn smell which just a moment earlier was enticing me to vomit in my mouth was now calling my name and filling my mouth with sweet, creamy goodness.

Much like my ice cream invention, the ratio of vegetable to sugar and fat was low, thus making it a truly enjoyable and completely non-nutritious treat. The corn flavor isn't overpowering; it's much more ice cream than it is a can of creamed corn. It was actually pretty good--if it hadn't had that weird corn husk coating and the rancid smell, I would actually eat it again. If anyone has any idea how I can get my royalty check for this idea, I'm all ears.

Counterfeit Oreos

Ords. I very nearly purchased them thinking they were the real thing.

**Travel Tip** China survival mechanism: eat (real) Oreos often.

Prawn candy?

The Chinese are very interested in candy flavors that I, myself, am not interested in. I have bought giant pick-a-mix bags of sweets at supermarkets a couple of times in the last month, and every time I am annoyed with myself for doing so. It's always low-quality, like that fake chocolate that leaves a film on your tongue and tastes painfully artificial.

They've got remarkable flavors like corn, red beans, milk, ginseng and lima beans. I've only found one candy I like, a peanut nougat, and the rest has been decidedly unappetizing. So by the time I saw what appeared to be prawn candy, I had exhausted my internal resources and was unwilling to go through the process of buying it, trying it and hating it. I just had to trust my intuition on this one.

Chinese Pocky

In China they have Pocky just like they do in Japan, but more. This is true of a lot of things in China. There are more people, there are more cars, there are more feral dogs in the street but most importantly, there are more flavors of Pocky. Way more.

Coffee, strawberry, blueberry, strawberries and cream, banana, milk, chocolate, green tea, caramel (?) almond, chocolate on chocolate, and then there are the mousse varieties, which have double the flavor coating (too much in fact): mango, almond, milk, chocolate and several variations therein.



I took home four flavors (the ones pictured above plus chocolate) and spent the next 2 days making myself sick on them. I am hoping if I just eat enough of these I will tire of them and move onto something less blatantly unhealthy like cigarettes or hot dog eating contests.

Korean Autumnal snacks

In Korea, they celebrate the the changing of the seasons primarily at the convenience store Family Mart with atumnal-themed snacks.

Here we have a pumpkin drink (pretty good) and a chestnut pastry (nothing to write home about). No idea what soborou means.

Dunkin' Donuts presents...the kimchi donut

Of course the minute I heard about Dunkin' Donuts' special kimchi donut, I knew that I had to get one into my bloodstream as quickly as possible. Not for myself, dear reader, but for you.

That's why I do these things. I don't go into Dunkin' Donuts and order a kimchi croquette (as they are called due to their lack of hole) for my own pleasure. No, I sacrifice myself on the alter of faddish fast foods just to keep you entertained.



The kimchi croquette is part of Dunkin' Donuts' donuts of the world thing. They've got a yogurt-filled one for Greece and a lentil one for India and blah blah blah. Frankly, none of them seemed particularly appealing, but probably wouldn't be too inedible when washed down with a coffee "Coolatta" or two.

So how was it? Remarkably decent. It was 70% savory to 30% sweet and had a pork (I think) and kimchi filling. Not actually a donut, and not great compared to the abundance of street food around, but a lot better than the abomination than I had imagined (and secretly wished for).