Candy Castle Keep

Lolly sits in the keep of Candy Castle with her candies-in-waiting. On the other side of the keep, Queen Frostine drinks chocolate milk from a long-stemmed glass. A stern-faced gingerbread man stands beside her with a jug of Moo Milk. She calls to Lolly.

QUEEN

Come here, my little crumpet. (To the gingerbread man) Pour another glass.

LOLLY

(She goes to the queen)Yes, my lady?

QUEEN

Sit down. Have a drink.

LOLLY

I’m… not thirsty.

QUEEN

If you were thirsty, I wouldn’t have offered you milk. Drink.

LOLLY

(Takes a glass from the gingerbread man) Thank you.

QUEEN

I would rather face one thousand armies then be trapped in Candy Castle with these trembling truffles.

LOLLY

But the candies-in-waiting are under your protection!

QUEEN

I’m just doing what is expected of me. I can’t just let them melt in the heat of the battle. You will have to live up to certain expectations, too, if you marry King Jellybean. (She guzzles the rest of the chocolate milk and hands the glass to the gingerbread man) If my little brother somehow manages to win the battle, the kingdom will sing songs of my inspiring bravery.

LOLLY

But what if Candy Castle falls?

QUEEN

You would like that, wouldn’t you? If anyone but Lord Starburst were attacking us, I would appeal to his natural cravings, so to speak. Are you shocked, my little crumpet? Here’s some advice: the best weapon is your creamy center. (To the gingerbread man) Pour Lady Lolly another drink. (To Lolly) If Candy Castle falls, we’re in for a bit of a rape. When those Wonderballs roll in from battle, even the stalest morsel looks sweet. Why, you’ll look just like a slice of cake. You can be sure that there will be a special prize hidden inside of each of these ladies by morning. Then you’ll be glad for your cordial cherry filling.

Lolly takes a glass of chocolate milk from the gingerbread man and gulps it down in one shot.

You can read the epic conclusion of the battle here.

Dresden, Part One: Coffee and Cake Town

I went to Dresden because a well-traveled friend said that if she could live anywhere in Europe, she would live in Dresden. Also, I wanted proof that it still existed. “You can’t possibly be referring to the Dresden that was completely decimated by British bombs in World War II. Isn’t it just ruins?” I wondered. She asked what made me think it was just a pile of rubble. “Kurt Vonnegut,” I responded.

I am happy to report that the bus did not drop me off at a pile of ruins and a vitamin syrup factory, but in a fully functional city with buildings in their vertical positions. After getting myself lost in my customary way, I eventually came to my hostel, Lollis Homestay, which seemed to have a bolted gate and a sign that directed me to go through it and take a right. I was rather annoyed that they hadn’t emailed me about how I would have to break the chains with my teeth before I could sleep there. (I eventually got in through an entrance on another street that I hadn’t noticed before, and I stayed in an all-female room full of Orlando Bloom posters and middle school lockers.)

With my duffle bag slung over my bruising shoulder, I decided to explore the New Town. I wandered aimlessly into an alley called “Kunsthofpassage.” I discovered a courtyard of modern architecture. A bright yellow building seemed to have little ribbons peeling off of it. Across from it a blue building was covered in a marble track system of metal pipes that turned into a fountain at the bottom. One building had a stone giraffe lifting its head to some monkeys dangling from the wicker balconies. Inside of the buildings were some very colorful craft shops. Neustadt won my heart after all.

The next day I went to a flea market. I’ve never seen so many creepy naked dolls in one place. If I had been on a search for wooden trees and German language books, I would have been in luck.

The Old Town was next on my agenda, but it got dark quickly after I arrived. This part of the city looked gloomy in the gray weather. The buildings were reconstructed after nineteen eighty-nine and many of them are still black from the bombing. The Church of Our Lady, which was completely decimated, was built with a mixture of black and white bricks. The rest of the architecture is looks new and clean, and the Communist buildings look rather bleak as always, but some of them are painted in rainbow pastels to make up for it. Dresden has done a lot of work putting itself together in the past twenty years.

I spent a good part of the evening searching for a public restroom. I was eventually directed to a mall, but when I finally spotted the restroom sign hanging from the ceiling, its arrow cruelly pointed me into a café.

The Germans call Dresden a cake and coffee city because it’s more relaxed than Berlin or Munich and people laze around eating cake and drinking coffee. This is a culture that I adapted to with remarkable ease. The first night I had a cake that was filled with cream and had a raspberry jelly on its crust. Some Germans at the hostel informed me that the cake was actually Dutch. Naturally, I had to give it another go. The next night I walked into a café and asked the woman at the counter what her favorite cake was. She mumbled something in German about not understanding, so for the next ten or fifteen minutes I tried to mime my question to her with elaborate gestures to avoid making the decision myself. Eventually she gave me a cake with some sort of coffee mousse inside. I ate it with hot chocolate and it was very un-Dresdenly of me.

That night I went out for cake with two new friends from Australia. I vowed to eat no more cake that day, but I did have a little bite of lava cake. After the café we moved onto a club where I coolly sipped my fizzy water until I was too tired to socialize. On my last day in Dresden, we also spent some time eating cake in other cafes. I’m noticing some predictable patterns in this trip, mostly involving cake.

After all that cake nonsense, we hit up the Hygiene Museum...

How Prague Will Make Me Gain One Thousand Pounds

My Czech-English tandem partner—I’ll call her M. for the sake of privacy and mysteriousness—brought me to a Czech restaurant to eat a typical Czech lunch: Three dumplings the size of baseballs filled with strawberry jelly with strawberries, syrup, chocolate sauce, powdered sugar, and several mountains of whipped cream covering every inch of a rather large plate. The meal was so large that neither of us could push ourselves to eat a third dumpling. 

While we practiced our Czech, I asked her how to say “candy” and related stories of delicious Hungarian pastries filled with a sweet ricotta-like cheese and slices of peach. Lately I’ve been compulsively turning the conversation to food—food that I’ve eaten, food that I want to eat, food that I want to make. Right now my focus is on pumpkins. With a pumpkin sitting on my counter, looking delicious, how can I possibly refrain from daydreaming about a whole week of eating pumpkin soup, raw pumpkin (it tastes like carrot, only better), stuffed pumpkin, baked pumpkin (it tastes like carrot, only better). M. said, “You’re rather skinny for someone who likes food so much.” “Not for long,” I answered with my mouth full of whipped creamy goodness.

This morning I went down to the breakfast room of Komenskeho and discovered that, in the night, all of the fresh oranges and peaches had magically transformed into chocolate cake with a layer of creamy mousse, all of the yogurt had become pudding, and all of the cereal had become Coco Puffs. “Is this all for me? Am I dreaming?” thought I, making my usual cucumber sandwich. Who am I kidding? I went right for the cake. I prudently cut it in half and proceeded to eat both halves. The Komenskeho staff has always graced the buffet with danishes and doughnuts, but things are getting increasingly out of hand. I suspect that they may be fattening us up to roast us for an upcoming holiday feast.

I rode my sugar high to a gallery with my dorm mother and some friends. After an hour or so of looking at Andy Warhol and Rene Magritte and having security guards mock my name in Czech, I met the rest of the group in the gallery’s restaurant. Every establishment in Prague comes complete with its own dining establishment so that you’re never more than ten feet away from your next diabetic shock. I asked if there were any vegetarian meals, and the woman pointed me to a smaller version of the fruit dumplings from before. These were more like ravioli than baseballs, little pockets of fruit jam or sweet cheese covered in cream and chocolate and almonds. My friend and I split an enormous plate and finished every one.

Tonight I’m editing some scholarly documents that have been translated into English, and I may have absentmindedly consumed half of my groceries.  I cringe with every bite of leftover pasta and musli, imagining the staff of the Ruzyne Airport rolling me through the terminal like Violet Beauregard and strapping me to the tail of the airplane. Then I say to myself: Tomorrow I will exercise.

Confections

It has been a decadent week and my body will never be the same. It all started when I made chocolate chip zucchini cookies and at them as appetizers, snacks, desserts, and the occasional breakfast. Guilt never dared pierce me as I ate them, because these cookies were made with a vegetable and favorable sugar substitutes like honey and maple syrup. Therefore, I can eat as many of them as I want. 

Today two of my friends visited me. I brought them to the Chocolate Mill for the food group that traditionally follows a meal of macaroni and cheese: chocolate. Here I ate half of a double chocolate brownie and half of a German chocolate cake. What makes German chocolate different from other chocolate, I imagine you asking? My initial thought was that it must have some sort of beer hidden in the creamy frosting and possibly ground pork. After some scholarly research on Wikipedia, I was astonished and scandalized to discover that German chocolate is not even German. It’s named after someone called Samuel German, a man who likes pecans and coconut and impersonating countries while baking. I wonder if the Germans know.

I hope my illusions of Black Forest Cake are never shattered in a similar manner.

For dessert, we made ice cream. One of my aforementioned friends is a recreational pastry chef and Food Network connoisseur, and while she is residing in my basement I have every intention exploiting her skills. We chose a recipe for honey ice cream, which turned out to be rather vague once we began to follow the directions. It called for two kinds of cream using a strange British dialect that I found impenetrable despite my fluency in the language of Jane Austen.

 

After spending about a half hour watching my sister try to whip the half-and-half with a hand mixer to no avail, we tried it with the heavy cream instead. We weren’t certain where the half-and-half was supposed to come into play, so we poured it into the honey that was simmering on the stove. Other recipes in the same book advised the reader to “add several handfuls of flour and, whatever you do, don’t add chives."

Somehow the ice cream turned out to be a success, and one that neither of us felt like eating because of  heartburn and painful spasms. I, myself, only had a few spoonfuls and I didn’t even dip my finger into it more than ten times.

Tomorrow, I am leaving my oven-mistress a bag of flour, a muffin tin, and a few pounds of zucchini so that she might bake me bite-sized chocolate cupcakes while I’m at work slaving over a hot cash register. Then we’ll probably eat some ice cream.