Kooky Japanese Snacks #3

So my supervisor at work is a fan of the H-Mart in Wheaton and a good sport in general. Terry, you rule. To keep things sorta cheerful at work, bless her, she and her mom and dad, have taken to choosing crazy snacks from the H-mart on Sundays and leaving them on my desk Monday morn..... These were picked because....



......as you can see below they resemble something. Her dad thought that was really funny. For the next photo I set my camera to the "1970's" setting so everything would have that creepy, retro orange color that saturated that miserable decade.


I plucked up the courage and tried them. The translation on the back simply said "Rice Cracker" and the list of ingredients was long and included rice flour, honey, corn syrup, millet, and on and on. They tasted sweet, kinda burnt, crunchy, a bit bitter, actually really complex for a snack. Their appeal grew with the passing moments but I limited myself to three, they are quite substantial. Strangeness factor: a very solid 7.5!

Kooky Japanese Snacks #2

I'm grouping two candies into one post since there's a leit motif (sp?). Hard candy. Below, Asahi cider candies. Pretty average. Slightly tart. Melon, pear, and, um, I forget. Strangeness factor: 1.5.



Now Milkita Melon Milk Candy kicks the strangeness up a notch. These are actually from Indonesia. I really never would have thought to add melon to milk. It tastes like what it's made of: sort of tart, milky, creamy and unappealing, at least to me. Oh yeah, love the baby cow playing soccer. What Melon Milk Candy and soccer have in common is lost to me. The packaging and the product give this a strangeness factor of 5.

Kooky Japanese Snacks #1

Came into work on Monday and found this lovely little treat courtesy of boss Terry.




Yeah, they didn't even bother to pretty up the photos of the dried cuttlefish. Now I'm a big fan of cephalopods: squid, octopus, and cuttlefish when it's served fresh or boiled as sushi. This sun-dried stuff kinda jeebs me out a bit. This snack will most likely remain unopened and play the role of conversation piece in my office.

Eyes bigger than my belly....

Alright, Wayne decided to make a pot of spaghetti since, well, that's what he wanted. He doesn't usually do things small so two boxes of spaghetti were boiled up and he commenced to choppin'.........below the red and green peppers I had cleverly saved a few weeks back. Peppers freeze really well. These were from august.



One of his signature moves is to add chopped onion. Below, in the mini-blender.


A healthy dose of garlic and a whole box of mushrooms.



Those are some nice mushrooms. Cremini?



Below, a really unglamorous shot of the final pot. He adds the sauce right into the pot of spaghetti and mixes it all up. I ate spaghetti for the next three days straight.



Can't have spaghetti without some sort of toasted bread. This already made, although contradictarily named "New York Texas Toast" is fantastic. It's simply really thick pieces of bread with seasoned butter all set to go.

I Went to Viet Nam to Spite This Weather....

In an earlier post I spoke about how October is a summer month around here. I'm eating a little crow at the moment as I sit in a darkened room looking out at a wooly, overcast sky, shivering in the 42 degree cold. This is the third straight day of this and it's gonna stick around all weekend. The good weather's gonna roll in on Monday. The cavalry arriving a day too late. I was gonna move furniture today but the rain was too heavy so, instead, I met my brother-in-law Roger up at the Viet Namese place for another bowl of pho. They have a case on the front counter that sells already cooked spring rolls, dumplings, and a bunch of stuff neither Roger nor I could figure out.



These were the things that got us scratching our heads.



And these.....


Obligatory shot of the pho. I got chicken again. I'm really a creature of habit and I'm trying to change that. Next time it's beef pho....



Obligatory shot of the sprouts, cilantro, and lime.



Couldn't resist these, of course. Despite the winteryness of the day, for 45 minutes Roger and I were in a bustling little restaurant in Saigon, sweating over bowls of pho.

Again with the eel?

After watching the football game the other night down at the local bar we affectionately call "The Clam" in honor of Peter Griffin, I was overcome by a hankering for eel, yes, again. Thankfully the Maruichi Market was still open. Took a few quick photos of the noodles for sale, grabbed some eel and headed home.

Below is the famous UFO. It has, I think, squid as the main flavor ingredient thingy. It isn't a soup so much as noodles in sauce. I'm not too crazy about this one.


Below is an old favorite.


These big bowls for udon need to be augmented by some leftovers. They're also under-seasoned so when I have them for lunch I bring along a little tub of left over vegetables and chicken with a healthy dose of soy sauce and dashi. Actually, it's a bit too substantial for lunch but, you know, I do it anyway......


Here are my purchases on my counter. This one has a sweetened soft tofu cake. On a scale of 1 to 10 this gets a 6.5.



This one has a huge rice cracker with little shrimps in it. It's an attempt to mimic tempura. It's one of my faves and gets a solid 8.



To speed the thaw with the eel I floated it in some tepid water. It was ready to cook in about 10 minutes.


A snap of the fridge door, if you look closely, scattered amidst the Michelob Ultra bottles is a bottle of sake and a bottle of sesame oil (top shelf); Viet Namese Sriracha, Japanese chili paste, and Japanese mayonaise (second shelf); and more Sriracha, dashi and a huge tub of Kikkoman soy sauce (third shelf).



Ta dah!

A Little Levity....

I saw this when I was out on a run last Spring. I ran by and something caught my eye. I stopped and walked back and laughed out loud.


"Hi there, If you take anything from this fence, I promise you will die in 7 days. Thank you. Smiley face." Then the translation in Spanish. Note in the upper right hand corner the funny/creepy skull and cross bones with the note "You" in both English and Spanish pointing to it.



This was outside my office. Self-explanatory.