Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Candy sushi for Halloween

I'm not really into Halloween.  It was not something that my family 'celebrated' growing up, and it was similarly irrelevant to my husband's family.  Actually, I think for most of New Zealand, Halloween had about the same relevance as say, Thanksgiving in America.  In the last few years I've noticed huge pushes in shops to stock Halloween merchandise.  I'm not taking this celebration up, basically because I sense merchandisers would like me to.  Children who get past the security gate on our property will be politely told that we think it is unsafe to request lollies from strangers, and that we additionally don't consider being 'tricked' for not supplying lollies to be an acceptable response.

That being said, I am thrilled to be invited to share meaningful celebrations with other families.  To a friend of the family, Halloween was very relevant to her family growing up.  She has always tried to celebrate it with a giant family friendly BBQ.  We enjoyed the Halloween BBQ last year, and look forward to it again tonight.  It has also proved to be a great way of explaining to our daughter what makes families unique - after all, few Kiwi families celebrate Chinese New Year or the Moon Festival.

A few days ago I was in Auckland and had two hours BY MYSELF to go shopping on Queen St.  I went to my sacred shopping sites of Japanese dollar stores.  I found a DIY candy sushi making kit in the 'Made in Nippon' shop close to our hotel.  We decided to make candy sushi for Halloween as part of our contribution to the BBQ.

It is a bit wonky.  Having a two-year-old yell "TURN, TURN" any time her sister did anything made everything challenging.  My daughter and I both had a lot of fun dropping orange goo into a solution.  When dripped in the goo immediately set as orange spheres.  So I've managed to get a little molecular gastronomy out of the system and the kids have lovely sticky fingers. 

It has made me think though of making some kind of dessert sushi for my daughter's looming birthday.  Coconut in place of rice?  I'll think about it.

2 comments:

  1. That's rather lovely. My mother's friend, when I was growing up, was an American, so we did Halloween every year, collecting candy from whatever families in her neighbourhood thought it was fun to provide. The route was prearranged, though. The whole thing of asking random strangers for candy wasn't part of it.

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  2. In Thailand rice is part of desserts. They generally use glutinous rice mixed with sweetened coconut milk. Classic dish is to have with sliced mango. The travelling ice cream vendors will offer you glutinous rice with your ice cream too.

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