Oriental Gifts

Sunday's shopping trip to Whole Grain market (formerly Diho). It's tougher for me to resist impulse-buying based on package design here than it is at Target, where things leap into my cart with abandon and with no requisite utility.

Here we have the buy of the week: sesame seed oil for $3.59 a bottle. Feels the same, seems to work the same, as the $34 Almond Supple Skin Oil from L'occitanne and my standard winter treatment, the slightly less expensive Sesame Body Oil (picture here but out of stock) from Neutrogena. I poured it into the empty Neutrogena bottle, added a capful of rosewater, and created my own after-shower moisturizer. How to use it: rub lightly all over while still wet from bath or shower, towel dry, and the oil merges with the water to seal the moisture in without leaving you feeling like a turkey being basted. If you want to get fancy, you could buy some essential oils from Whole Foods, or your local essential oil purveyor (I know two, how strange is that?) and add the scent that you prefer. Fancier still is to make it into an aromatherapy experience, but I'm happy enough with that slight hint of Middle Eastern falafel.

And the candles? Destined for an alternative use as next year's Hanukah candles, 51 to a package.

And chopsticks: bamboo, comfortable, reusable, enough if friends come over to eat.

Not pictured: the ingredients for vegetarian sukiyaki, which was my excuse for stopping. Garlic leeks, which look like little green onions but pack a more garlicky whop; pea shoots, to saute with garlic tonight (see the theme emerging?); bok choy; tofu that comes fried and packed into cunning little square pillows, actually intended for stuffing, but so much better and easier to use than the fresh tofu that you buy in square containers, floating in liquid.

And cookies. Mo Chi.

Not sure about these. They're pretty, the packaging is great. But when I think cookie, I'm thinking crumble and sweetness and some butter at work. The cookies that I bought (again, seduced by the packaging) are a jellyish round with a red bean filling. One could tide you over for days at a time.

Or not. I just researched the cookies here, and they apparently are a potential death trap as well as a plot device in a Japanese movie. Hmm, maybe there is a strategy behind this cookie.