I was at a Lindt outlet store recently. The buckets of truffles, dark and white, hazelnut and pistachio, the pralines, the beautiful chocolate figurines, the Swiss Luxury Selection, the large, blue Champs-Elysses Box, the smell, that sweet, velvety, luxurious cocoa smell. Heaven. Growing up, the closest I came to this experience was the Cadbury’s Eclair. Wrapped in purple cellophane, it was a hard caramel candy that the advertisements claimed had a soft, gooey, center. More often than not though, the ones we got at our neighborhood store, aptly called Poona Cheap Stores, had a stale, doughy, crumbling inside that had a slightly bitter after taste. But the Eclairs were expensive at fifty paise. The more affordable candy, at five paise each, was an orange hard candy that was shaped to resemble a slice of tangerine and tasted like, well, sugar. These were sold loose in large jars swarming with flies, right next to another jar filled with Bulls Eyes, a hard peppermint flavored candy in the shape of a rounded cube, white in color with bold black stripes. Now we did have chocolate bars, like the four piece Cadbury’s Milk Bar wrapped in a silver foil that we spent hours smoothing out to create bookmarks that were never to be found again. And of course, the Five Star, the first real Indian chocolate, a caramel nougat covered with smooth milk chocolate, which at five rupees was way beyond our budget. We also had Gems, our version of M&Ms, that we nursed for weeks eating one multicolored button a day, slowly nibbling at the outer hard cover until finally we reached the milk chocolate in the middle. But all this nostalgia pales in comparison to alay paq that we used to get at ST bus stations or paan shops. Wrapped in flimsy paper, these cubes of crystalized, candied ginger were cheap, delicious and supposedly healthy. When I had a cold, my mom used to take out the Vicks tub and generously lather that white gooey paste across my chest, and when that didn’t help, some squares of sweet, spicy, throat numbing alay paq. We didn’t buy our alay paq at a store though, my mom insisted on making it at home, a recipe she inherited from her mother. I have vivid memories of the two of them arguing and gossiping as they stirred a paste of pureed ginger and melted sugar, in a pan on a small kerosene stove hissing out a ferocious blue flame. The smell of ginger, the smell of sugar, the smell of kerosene. Intoxicating. So as the temperature continues to drop here in Chicago, I thought I’d try this out myself. Grind a cup of ginger into a pulp. Add twice the amount of sugar and heat the mixture in a pan and keep stirring until the sugar begins to caramelize. According to my mom, to know when it’s done, you take a dollop of the steamy mess and plop it in a cold bowl of water. If it sinks, continue stirring, if it floats, hooray you’re done. Unfortunately I followed a recipe from the internet that included a cup of milk and a tablespoon of ghee, before calling my mother. My mixture has been resting for over three hours now and is the consistency of jello. Oh well. It’s going to be a long winter and you know what they said on The Simpsons, I suggested feather touch, you selected power drive. The ball is in the parking lot.