Celebrating Lunar New Year Through My Childhood Snacks
By Grace Chai
Content
When I step into my local Asian grocery store, I feel at home.
The cluttered shelves, the multilingual chatter, and the bright labels all invoke a sense of nostalgia. When I was little, our trip to the store always followed a routine. My dad would amble down the aisle in search of the pickled vegetables he ate every morning with his rice porridge or a sauce that my mom needed for her cooking, and my sister and I would dash off to find the one or two snacks we would each get to enjoy for the week.
At the end of our shopping trip, if we behaved, my dad would buy me and my sister a pastry each: sometimes sweet buns filled with cream or red bean paste, other times pastries topped with heaps of pork floss, seaweed and sesame flakes.
So when I discovered Mom’s House in Amherst, it felt like a homecoming.
Although I had already been a college student for two years, there’s something special about venturing into a spot stocked with your favorite childhood snacks. It makes you feel a little bit like a kid again, except now you have adult money and can buy more than one snack at a time.
When I was a kid, I don’t think I properly appreciated Chinese food. I was always jealous of the other kids’ snacks — their bright red Doritos, the Lunchables sealed away in shiny plastic, Oreos and other treats. Today, though, I’m proud to be Chinese-American and share my favorite treats with others. Food is such a big part of so many cultures, and I’m excited to share parts of my childhood with you!
Haw Flakes
One snack from my childhood that I feel like is still relatively unknown is haw flakes, or shan zha bing. They’re made from Chinese hawthorn fruit and sugar and come in this packaging that looks like firecrackers. The best way I can describe it is a tarter version of a cranberry packed into a fruit-leather-like texture. One of the core memories I have with this snack is enjoying every little disk one by one, peeling back the packaging and savoring a little bit at a time while in Chinese school on our fifteen-minute break.
Sachima
Another snack I like can be best described as a Chinese rice krispy treat, but without the rice and the crunch. They’re made of this flour dough that’s fried and sweetened with some syrup and are chewy with a pleasantly sweet aftertaste. This was one of the snacks that my parents actually enjoyed eating along with us kids since they’re not overly sweet. A lot of Chinese snacks, in fact, are not too sweet — something to consider if you like sweets but can’t eat too many because of the excessive sugar rush.
Pineapple cakes
One of the first things I would reach for when I walked into the store debating what snack I would eat for the week was a pack of pineapple cakes. Chewy with a jammy pineapple filling, this snack comes in several different flavors, but my favorite is the original pineapple flavor. They’re satisfying and delicious and remind me of stepping into Mei Hua, our old go-to suburban Asian store in my hometown.
Concluding thoughts
It’s crazy to see how much visibility Asian snacks have gained over the years, from only being found in niche corners of places like the small Massachusetts town I grew up in to being sold by major retailers. I hope that when you try these foods, you can feel connected to something — the flavors, the stories behind them, and the joy that I and many others feel when we eat food that connects us to a culture that is thousands of years old.
Featuring
Grace Chai
