Grocery Ninja: Maltose Memories
The Grocery Ninja leaves no aisle unexplored, no jar unopened, no produce untasted. Creep along with her below, and read her past market missions here.
For years, my mom would not allow my brother and me to eat what she called "Western candy." No SweeTarts, Life Savers, Milk Duds, Tootsie Rolls—nothing that had a colorful wrapper and could be bought at a regular supermarket. She had somehow been persuaded by some heartless dentist that eating the same kind of candy everyone else in school was eating (you hear that, Mom?) would give us a mouthful of rotten teeth. Instead, whenever we whined about it heartily enough, she would hand us a stick of candied winter melon (after it had been boiled to death and leeched of all its sugary goodness in barley water) or a handful of honeyed jujube dates and dried longans.
However, if either of us scored full marks on a test, she would bring out the tub of maltose—the same syrup she would use to marinate her char siu (roast pork)—and let us poke a single chopstick in and attempt to twirl as big a glob of the sticky, golden stuff as could be supported on it. The resulting "lollipop" would keep us happy and sticky-fingered for a good 20 minutes—it being a lot more "lick-resilient" than honey.
