Monthly Archives: September 2013

Oh Yes! (Sweet Potato Creme-Filled Chocolate Cakes)

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There’s a new H Mart not far from where we live – a smaller version of the Korean supermarket in Niles, Ill. It took over space formerly occupied by an independent Asian grocery store (whether that was Korean, I don’t know). I visited the new H Mart over the weekend, and for a discount got some Haitai brand Oh Yes! “Premium Chocolate Coated Sweet Potatoes Filling Cake.”

Oh Yes! A good name. Catchy. Wasn’t that something Molly Bloom said?

I wondered about that sweet potato filling. But for a couple of dollars for 12 cakes, I was willing to give it go. The ingredients are simple: cocoa powder, cocoa mass, white sugar, and sweet potato cream. You get about a third of your DV in saturated fat in each cake, with none of that trans fat. There’s also some carbohydrates in them, but very little else.

Haitai is a South Korean food company, lately owned by Crown Confectionery, another Korean entity. Naturally, I had to look up Haitai’s web site, and found some other product names that I like, all of which look like confections: Baked Potato Stick, Choco Homerun Ball, Bravo Cone, and Babamba.

About Oh Yes!, the web site says (all sic): “Oh Yes! (1984) is our one and only soft chocolate cream cake, which has been on demand for many years due to its soft and delicious taste that melts in your mouth. It is proudly making monthly sales of 4 billions won.”

I liked the Homerun Ball description, too: “The idea of our snack product, Homerun ball, was originated from the Korea Baseball Organization in 1981. It’s unique name was derived from its particular baseball shaped appearance. Homerun ball contains chocolate inside every round ball, and is a easy to-go snack that is great to take out to any event. The Homerun ball is successsfully reaching monthly sales of 4.2 billions won.”

So, a few more Homerun Balls than Oh Yes! cakes sold each month. Anyway, the sweet potato favor does take a little getting used to, if you’re used to regular cream fillings. But the cakes aren’t bad.

The Rookery

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Also during my most recent visit downtown, I swung by the Rookery. Because it had been a long time since I’ve been in the Rookery. The last time might have been the Halloween parties that the concierge service down the hall at the Civic Opera building used to have, when I had an office at the Civic Opera building. The early ’00s, that is.

As always, the Rookery is cool on the outside.

And stunning on the inside.

As you can see, I wasn’t the only person paying photographic attention to the Burnham & Root creation, with its Frank Lloyd Wright filling.

Electric Jellyfish

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Not long ago I visited the J.W. Marriott hotel at 151 W. Adams. It hasn’t had that flag very long — only about three years — and the building itself is the former Continental & Commercial National Bank, designed by no other than Daniel Burnham in 1914. I read that to turn the structure into a 610-room hotel — an upmarket one, since J.W. Marriott is described as the “black label” of Marriotts — and restore the ornate lobby, the hotelier spent $396 milllion.

I didn’t have a lot of time in the lobby, but ornate is a good adjective for it. Mostly I was in one of the larger meeting rooms, which was more interesting than most hotel meeting rooms.

There must be a reason, maybe in the original design of the property, that the ceiling sports arched beams, but I’m not in a position to say why.

Nice lights, too. A bloom of electric jellyfish

What Kind of Passport Does Tinker Bell Carry?

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Lilly took this picture on Sunday, September 1. “Dog on Deck,” or “My Nose in Your Business.” (To give it a dual title like Bullwinkle episodes.)

Lately we’ve been throwing away, or donating, a fair number of unwanted items.  It’s astonishing how many there are around the house. Things have been turning up that we’d forgotten we had — or at least I’d forgotten. Yesterday the flow of debris included a girl’s purse with a Disney label on it. We might have bought it for Lilly at Disneyland in ’01 or Disneyworld in ’05, but it’s always possible we picked it up elsewhere. More recently it’s been with Ann’s things.

Anyway, I noticed something odd about it. It’s a Tinker Bell purse, and it says Tink America. Tink is holding a small U.S. flag, her dress imitates the Stars and Stripes, and the background pixie dust is red, white and blue. “Isn’t that strange?” I asked Lilly, pretty much rhetorically. “I mean, Tinker Bell usually isn’t associated with America, right? I think she’s a citizen of Never Land.” Or, come to think of it, the realm of fairies, but not the United States.

Then again, what about Never Land? I told Lilly I didn’t think it was claimed by any nation, but considering that Capt. Hook, the Lost Boys, et al. seem to be British, maybe Britain did claim sovereignty at one point. Could be that it was even harder to claim than Pitcairn Is., what with Never Land not quite being in the material world all the time. Still, I bet Capt. Cook visited at least once; he went everywhere.

On the other hand, perhaps American whalers visited too, so lost in the annals of U.S. exploration and commerce is a claim to Never Land. Could be that it was the subject of negotiation in the same treaty that fixed the border between Canada and the United States, as part of one of the lesser-known codicils added later. By this time, Lilly had expressed her usual mild bewilderment at my oddball train of thought.