Ting Ting Jahe!

I journeyed to the South End with L yesterday afternoon to check out the open market. We held middle-school aged chickens, all stumbly legs and stroobly down and mine was falling asleep in the nest I made of my hands. We sniffed soaps and fondled handbags and then walked on, asking for directions to a human bakery at a dog bakery. We also went to a giant Asian supermarket where I was able to introduce L to something Asian and delicious she, who can tell me what to do with all manner of shrunken damp brown stinky things in bags found in Asian grocery stores, had never heard of: Ting Ting Jahe!

TTJ is a swell ginger candy wrapped in edible paper (the inside paper, not the outside) that's spicy and delcious. PolackPappy used to bring bags of it back from his trips to visit the Polack relations in Southie, along with 20 loaves of Polish bread, which was also known as Polish toast when, well, toasted. It was actually a Jewish rye bread according to the label but it was Polish bread to us and it was amazing. Unfortunately, the store where PP went to get that bread, along with kielbasa and other goodies, closed recently after 70-odd years of being in business.

But Ting Ting Jahe remains!