Browsing Category

Food

The ultimate Christmas activity: Learning to make candy canes

December 10, 2023

When we talked about the upcoming holiday season, there were plenty of activities to put on our calendar: Light parades, breakfast with Santa, baking cookies, ugly sweater parties, touring neighborhoods with decorated houses.

But my 9-year-old wanted to do something entirely different. He wanted to learn how candy canes are made.

It was a humble request, but it seemed about as possible as making reindeer fly. Where in the world would I find a place to make candy canes?

Turns out I didn’t even have to go to the North Pole. Logan’s Candies, a small, family-operated shop in Ontario, California, has been hand-making candy canes since 1933. Tickets to attend a candy-making demo are just $5 per person.

Nearly everything about the process has remained the same since 1933: Same recipe, same stove for boiling sugar, same marble block for pulling and stretching the candy.

Even sweeter than the candy were the kids, pressing their faces against windows to watch the seemingly magical process.

Owner Jerry Rowley stretched and pulled the warm sugar until it turned stark white.

Then he added stripes of color, used to achieve their signature candy cane look.

Afterward, everyone received a warm candy cane to shape however they wanted. We opted to make hearts, since ours were so full.

If you go

Logan’s Candies is located in downtown Ontario, 125 W B St, Ontario, CA. Street parking was free.

When: The shop does candy-making demos year-round. This time of year is more crowded and chaotic, but it would be a fun activity for someone who enjoys Christmas year-round or for celebrating Christmas in July.

Also good to know: The shop sells 31 flavors of homemade ribbon candy, and it’s also home to the world’s largest candy cane!

Survival Guide to Universal Studios Hollywood: Everything We Did (and Wish We Had Done)

November 13, 2023

Planning a family trip to Universal Studios Hollywood felt like a Choose Your Own Adventure where every option was somehow the wrong choice and would lead me toward doom.

To spend hundreds of dollars for one day at the park, but skip the ride lines, turn to page 17.

To spend slightly less and get a nine-month pass to the park, but waste your one wild and precious life waiting in all the lines, turn to page 23.

We opted for the latter. Instead of trying to cram everything into one day, I figured we could go a few times and focus on a different area each visit. Even though this meant we’d have to wait in line for the rides, it wouldn’t matter as much, since we wouldn’t be on a tight timeline. And who knows? I thought. Maybe we’d luck out and there wouldn’t be any lines.

Alas, that was the strategy of a much more naive version of myself — the Maggie I was before I waited 2.5 hours to get on Mario Kart: Bowser’s Challenge.

Here’s how the day went, where we went wrong, and what I’ll do next time.

What it costs

That’s not so easy to answer. Regular tickets start at $109, two-day general admission tickets start at $159, express passes start at $209, and various other passes go from $179 to $639.

Why do I keep qualifying that with “start at”? Because the price varies wildly by day. Peak times, like weekends, holiday breaks, and more desirable days are significantly more expensive. So while I tried to find that elusive $109 ticket price, it never aligned with our work/school schedule.

Instead, I found a discount on the nine-month California Neighbor Pass, bringing it down to $150/per person. That is still expensive, but I can justify the cost by making multiple visits.

Note: I don’t want to tell you how expensive parking is. I can barely admit it to myself. But you should know that parking is my second-least favorite thing to pay for, because it’s just GROUND that my car is borrowing. Stupid.

Food and beverages

That brings me to my least favorite thing to pay for: Water.

Thank goodness Universal Studios allows you to bring in refillable water bottles. (Maximum of two liters).

The regulations also say you can bring snacks and small food items, and I did that too. But I didn’t bring enough. Later I saw people pulling hoagies the size of Buicks out of their backpacks, so I could’ve packed more substantial items. Next time.

Instead, we ate at Three Broomsticks in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. I had the vegan shepherd’s pie, which was food. It kind of looked like someone started to make shepherd’s pie, then got tired of it halfway through.

Everest plowed through whatever he ordered — a platter of cabbage and mashed potatoes and tomatoes and sausage and peas and some spare change, I think. Jason had a salad, which he regretted because he hates salad, so I’m not sure why that order was ever made.

The real winner was butterbeer, something I’ve wanted to try ever since I first read Harry Potter. It was delicious, like a butterscotch cream soda, and I think I could happily live on a butterbeer-only diet. It would be a short life, but a satisfying one.

The rides

It’s been a long time since I’ve been to an amusement park, so I had forgotten what it feels like to wait in line for a ride. And everything in the new Super Nintendo World required a wait. We waited in line to enter that section of the park (sometimes there’s a virtual queue, but it wasn’t an option when we visited). Then we waited 2.5 hours for the Bowser’s Challenge ride. We waited for the interactive games. We were about to wait in line for photos with Mario, but Mario went on a break. Bless you, tiny plumber.

There was another ride in the Super Nintendo World area, but I could actually feel my soul leaving my body, so at that point we left.

Then we waited 45 minutes to ride Revenge of The Mummy.

Later, we waited for the Flight of the Hippogriff ride.

That’s it. THREE RIDES. But those three experiences topped our priority list for the day, and we accomplished that.

The other stuff

Yes, I visited Ollivanders Wand Shop. I was curious how it would compare with what I imagined long ago, when I first read the Harry Potter series. And it was, in fact, pretty darn magical.

The whole point

A few months ago, Everest said he wanted to ride his first roller coaster, and I wanted E to love roller coasters the way I do.

I remember going to King’s Island with my family when I was growing up — devouring hot, greasy funnel cakes, posing for keychain photos in front of a fake Eiffel Tower, riding the Beast and then hurrying to get back in line — those are some of my most treasured memories.

That was the impetus for this Universal Studios trip. The exhilaration of being THIS TALL TO RIDE, the lap restraint pressed a little too tight, the click-clack of cars chugging up a steep hill, and finally, taking flight.

I wanted to give that to my child.

Well, he hated it. On the two coasters, Everest clutched my hand until my fingers turned blue. He murmured, “No. No. NO.” His eyes were as big as saucers, and those saucers were full of terror.

So he’s not a roller coaster kid. At least not right now, and that’s fine. It just means that when we return to Universal, we’ll be the folks enjoying the shows instead.

This sweet treat was born in Chicago

August 30, 2023

You might think you don’t care about the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, which was held in Chicago.

But let me tell you about some of the now-cherished items that debuted there: Cream of Wheat, Juicy Fruit gum, the chocolate bar (Hershey’s), Aunt Jemima Pancakes, the #2 yellow pencil, Shredded Wheat, the automatic dishwasher, Cracker Jacks, the zipper, Ferris wheels.

Also America’s first serial killer.

Right. We could’ve done without that last thing.

One of my favorite books, The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson, delves into that World’s Fair and how it profoundly changed the country. The inventions! The murders! The new foods! The murders! Zippers! More murders!

It’s a gripping and wildly informative read, and it’s also a master class in nonfiction that reads like fiction.

What does all this have to do with a sweet treat?

Well, I was recently in Chicago with my high school girlfriends. As we walked around downtown, we passed by a place that sounded familiar from the book: the Palmer House Hotel.

I pulled my friends inside, not just because it’s a grand building …

And not just because it’s infused with historic details, like Mark Twain’s gallon-sized beer stein, and ostentatious lamps …

but because this is a place in food history!

Palmer House is where the brownie was invented.

As the story goes, the dessert was inspired by socialite Bertha Palmer, who was married to Potter Palmer, the millionaire owner of the hotel. She chaired the ladies’ board for the World’s Fair and tasked the hotel pastry chef with creating something that would be easy to box up and transport to the festival grounds.

Voila, the chef dreamed up brownies! (Although they weren’t called that until 1898, when they appeared in a Sears Roebuck catalog.)

The Palmer House confection is not quite to my taste, as I’m more of a crunchy edge brownie person, and this one has a gooey, fudge-like consistency. But hey, we need both kinds of brownie eaters in this world.

If you want to try it yourself, here’s the recipe. More than a century old, it’s the same one they use today.

Very superstitious

January 1, 2018
Bunches of green grapes hanging on a vine

New Year’s Eve 2017: A brief screenplay

INT. MAGGIE’S HOUSE – NIGHT

ME: We have to do the thing where we eat 12 grapes at midnight to bring luck in the coming 12 months.

HUSBAND: What?

ME: It’s a thing. They do it in Spain.

HUSBAND: But why do we have to do it?

ME: I’m not going to risk it. I’ll take all the luck I can get.

HUSBAND: Fine.

ME: Oh, we also have to sit under the table when we do it. Or leaping over the threshold of our home? I can’t remember. Anyway, I have to wash the grapes. Meet me under the table in 5 minutes.

INT. UNDER THE KITCHEN TABLE – FIVE MIN. LATER

HUSBAND: Are you sure we have squeeze under the table to do this? My back hurts.

ME: Pretty sure. Now hush. Eat your grapes.

HUSBAND: I don’t even like green grapes. You’ll have to finish mine.

ME: Great. I’ll be the only prosperous one. Fine with me.

HUSBAND: It’s not even midnight.

ME: It’s well past midnight in Spain.

HUSBAND: (chewing)

ME: Maybe we could have just had a glass of wine instead.

HUSBAND: (still chewing)

ME: Also I think I made up the table thing.

 

On Shrinking Women

October 24, 2013

I watched this video from a poetry slam the other day, and it left me in tears.

Poet Lily Myers talks about body image and how it affected the women in her family, especially her mother: “Nights I’d hear her creep down to eat plain yogurt in the dark, a fugitive stealing calories to which she does not feel entitled, deciding how many bites is too many, how much space she deserves to occupy.”

 

My mom was strong and tall, a German woman who survived World War II by walking over a frozen lake. She could do anything — open stuck pickle jars, lift all the bags of groceries at once, push me higher than any other kid on the swingset. One time my plastic digital watch stopped working, and my mom slapped it across her palm so forcefully that it turned her hand pink. “Just needs a good German touch,” she said, as the digital numbers reappeared.

As much as her body could do, my mom was never satisfied with it. My house was a world of weekly weigh-ins, diet gum and Tab. I don’t remember my mom eating bread, only thin Wasa crackers at 35 calories each. Sometimes she binged on candy, then immediately berated herself. She was hungry for years, skipping breakfast and only eating the tiniest of lunches. This magnificent, accomplished woman was consumed by her own consumption.

 

It’s strange. I loved my mom because she was elegant and exotic. She tucked me into bed every night and whispered prayers in other languages. She was proud and loyal and she loved me fiercely. I don’t remember the shape of her thighs or the roundness of her belly. I remember her crinkled fingers that felt for fever on my forehead. I remember the arms that held me. The swoop of her freckled shoulder.

You could say my mom died of Alzheimer’s Disease, which is what gnawed away at her mind and body for 10 years. But really she died of starvation, which is a terrible irony. In the final stages of Alzheimer’s, my mom’s brain could no longer send signals to her organs, so her body couldn’t process food anymore. My family decided a long time ago that we did not want to prolong her life with feeding tubes, and eventually her body shut down. In her final days, she had been whittled down to a thin, pale shape. And she was beautiful.

That’s the awful thing. When I looked in my mom’s coffin at her funeral, my first thought was, “Wow. She would be so happy.” She was finally skinny. She would’ve loved that.

Somewhere along the line, I picked up these unhealthy thoughts and made them my own. I’ll eat something delicious, then complain to my friends that I’ve been “so bad.” I do regular detoxes and cleanses, the more modern, acceptable version of diets. And I look with longing at tiny, slim-boned women, and I wonder how wonderful it must feel to be so small.

Now my husband and I are trying to start a family, and he says he hopes we never have a girl. “I don’t want a daughter to grow up with your body issues,” he says, a comment that is so distressing in its truth. I could be one bad-ass mother to a girl — and instead I want to be small? Why not focus on being substantial? Something is very wrong here.

As that poet says, “I wonder if my lineage is one of women shrinking.” I wonder if my lineage could become one of women who are larger than life.