OK, not entirely wordless. But then, it’s not even Wednesday. Kappabashi is the restaurant supply street of Tokyo. Everyone tells you to go and marvel at the many stores full of plastic food. But nobody warns you about the giant chef head and the gigantor coffee cups. To see them yourself: Tokyo metro to Asakusa station.

My friend Eliza gave me these awesome little containers. They are about an inch and a half high and super frickin’ adorable.

Their sole purpose is to allow you to bring a little bit of soy sauce with you wherever you go, just in case. They come with a little tiny eye-dropper so you can fill them up with soy sauce. So far they have never leaked and they always make me smile when I pull them out at lunchtime! Something about those vacant, beady eyes and perky ears- they are really endearing little pals to have around.

Eliza got these for a couple bucks at one of my very favorite stores in the world, Daiso Japan. Daiso is kind of like a super cool Japanese Dollar Store, except most things cost two dollars instead of one. Daiso has a crazy cross-section of stuff, from garden supplies to kids’ toys to dishes to cards (many in hilarious Engrish) to fake flowers to, er, individual soy sauce holders. With ten bucks in hand, you can have a GREAT time in there.

There are 3 stores in the Seattle area and 6 in the Bay Area- here’s a list of all U.S. locations.

I was out in Boston a while ago, and spent a couple hours in Concord, Mass, which is you know, where that whole “shot heard round the world” thing went down. Right in town there’s an old cemetery with some Revolutionary era gravestones. We spotted a couple of odd ones, like this one where they misspelled the guy’s name and had to fix their “typo”:

And this one, which due to the old-timey script, I first read as “Having laid down the f-word with honor…” but it’s sword. Not fword. Heh.

Yeah, I know. I’m immature. What can I say.

And now for something completely different: the GINGERBREAD CASBAH.

The gingerbread casbah came into being because every year, we throw a themed Christmas party for around 100 of our closest friends. Since we just took a honeymoon to the Middle East, we thought we could try out some new tricks at a Middle East-themed Christmas party. After all, that is where the whole Christmas thing started, right? An evite full of bad puns later (”we are Beiruting for you to come”, and so forth) we had our “Christmas at the Casbah” party ready to go, and all we needed was an impressive centerpiece.

This is not really a casbah, but a typical courtyard house. (Casbah sounds cooler though, so that’s more of a marketing-focused name for it.) On our honeymoon, we stayed in a beautiful hotel in Old City of Damascus called Beit Al Mamlouka, and I very loosely modeled the casbah on my recollections of how it looked. I say “very loosely” because their floors weren’t made of sour belts and jujubes, and their walls weren’t edible.

For the gingerbread, I used a recipe that C&H tweeted me- and it was great. Alas, I haven’t actually tasted it, but from a construction point of view it was tops – simple to make, very easy to roll out, not too sticky, sturdy, and kept its shape during baking. Also, it smells delicious, which adds a nice extra sensory dimension to the house. The royal icing that glues the whole thing together is just a stiff mixture of egg whites and powdered sugar with a pinch of cream of tartar, mixed with the paddle attachment of a Kitchen-Aid.

I did most of the shape-cutting freehand, but used a star cutters for the front windows. To make the windows, we rolled out the dough and put it on a silpat. Then we cut shapes out and arranged crushed jolly ranchers inside. When they baked, they became clear and solid. You have to let them cool while carefully loosening them from the silpat, as the candy stays soft and molten for about 30 minutes after coming out of the oven. Once they harden fully, they are structurally quite sound.

I thought that doing this alone would be both boring and incredibly frustrating and also not come out as well, so I assembled a crack team to help out. Rodney the pastry chef is always an excellent addition to this type of team, and did lots of the rolling, fine icing work, and construction assistance. Heather took care of cobblestones and windows, while MJ formed small furnishings including the excellent hookah.

I am a firm believer that everything on a true gingerbread house should be edible, and should be candy. Also, I can make like anything out of marzipan or fondant- ergo, marzipan and fondant are cheating. Sculpting something out of a tootsie roll is so much more impressive. So I refused to allow any non-edible, non-candy/gingerbread/icing objects adorn the house.

I bought electric flicker tea lights to illuminate it during the party, to make the windows shine. Merry Christmas everyone!

Here’s the breakdown of what’s what:

• Windows: crushed jolly ranchers baked into the gingerbread
• Tile floor: rainbow sour belts, jujubes, licorice wheels, and silver dragees
• Balcony floors: red hots, tic tacs, and silver dragees
• Balcony railings: sesame candies, licorice wheels (unrolled), jujubes
• Cobblestones: formed tootsie roll slices with yellow sprinkles
• Hanging lamps: licorice wheels and Haribo raspberry gummies
• Hookah: deconstructed tootsie rolls, sour belts, and licorice wheels
• Table: gingerbread star with dragees and jujubes
• Chair: sesame candies and tootsie rolls
• Tree: iced cookie with Haribo raspberry gummy and tootsie roll
• Camels: iced cookies with sprinkles

I wasn’t able to find any other instances of Middle Eastern gingerbread architecture on the web, but I did come across some gingerbread structures of note. Here are a few of my favorites from around teh interwebz.

• Max’s cave from Where The Wild Things Are, from A Table for Two <<<btw, AMAZING!!!>>>
• Gingerbread Houseboat from Houseboat Eats
• Gingerbread Woodcutters Cabin from Sweetopia
• Not gingerbread, bacon and licorice house from Almost Bourdain
• Cool 2 story house by Brown Sugar Bee

I couldn’t resist sharing these neat and somewhat bizarre foodstuffs (and food-related) stuff I found in Japan…

• single serving glass of wine with sardine-can top from the Muji flagship store

• my favorite- milk in a tube. huh? (ok so it’s condensed milk… but still.)
  

• wasabi-beef flavor chips. yuk.

• a kit to make sushi look like soccer balls, to entice your kid to eat it. you’d have to be a REALLY nice mom or dad to go through all that trouble.

• I have never seen curry like this in Vermont, myself.

• Kobe and Matsuzaka beef for sale at Takashimaya- about $200/lb, raw (they were really mad that I took a picture, but I’m not sure why.)