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How to Wrap 5 More Eggs

To celebrate traditional Japanese packaging, Oka Hideyuki collected thousands of everyday objects throughout his long and creative lifetime. Sharing over two hundred of his favorites in this book, Oka highlighted the intimate connection between form and function in such things as dried fish carriers, rice containers, pickle buckets, candy boxes, noodle trays and tea canisters. The book has a spare style that allows the objects to speak for themselves: large photos remain unlabeled, while explanatory text appears as numbered notes at the end. In my 1975 edition, Oka, one of Japan’s leading graphic designers in the mid-20th century, added new photos and text to selected pages from an earlier book, How to Wrap 5 Eggs. Both are out of print and in high demand, so be prepared to wait—and pay—for a copy in good condition. Fortunately for me, the Marin County Library was getting rid of theirs, complete with bar code and plastic cover protector and a rather emphatic number of DISCARD stamps.

Label Art

I once worked as an assistant for a Vietnamese author who kept an entire shelf in her kitchen stacked high with oval tins of dace fish in tomato sauce. Open her cabinets looking for food, and those red labels would stare back. A small rice cooker and a bottle of soy sauce completed her low-maintenance approach to eating. So, when I saw these colorful paper-mache bowls at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, I knew I had to have one. All proceeds benefit Wola Nani Embrace, a South African nonprofit that offers counseling, care, training, education and community support for people living with HIV.

Jaggery

This unrefined sugar, made from sugar cane or the sap of palm trees, has a complex flavor that hints at caramel, smoke and molasses. Also known as gur, it’s used for sweet and savory cooking throughout South and Southeast Asia. Look for it in Indian, Thai and Indonesian markets, where it can be molded into cone or cube shapes, packaged in a roll of thick coins or appear loose in bulk as large, irregular pieces that resemble rocks. The sugar’s color, which can range from light amber to a deep brown, generally reflects the intensity of its flavor and the coarseness of its texture. Use a knife or grater to scrape off the amount required. Try it for depth of flavor in curries, chai, desserts or any recipe that call for brown sugar.

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