Talk About Tuesday

 

In Which My Attention Has Been Pretty Shattered Lately...
Again

Every so often (okay, it's becoming more frequent lately) I have days where I cannot focus at all. I can't play video games, I can't read, I can't crochet, I can't paint, I can't write, I cannot focus on a single thing for more than five minutes... unless I'm so hyperfocused on something that I can do nothing else.

I do not like these bad-attention days. I enjoy being productive. I'd much prefer to do a few things than Just One Thing.

Caffeine does not help. Naps do not happen. I'm snappish and rude and argumentative when I'm scattered.

The good news is, I have been able to focus more today. I'm still a little distractible, but I managed to commit to a strategy on a game I was playing for 2 hours, so that was great.

So that's what happened to Monday's post, I got too distracted and literally could not commit to a project to show you.

Hopefully by Thursday I'll be back in action and able to fulfill any requests made via Ko-Fi. Possible art request categories are: Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Geometric, Place. Just a lil shameless plug there, sorry lol.

Anyway, the weather lately has been pretty good (the sun is very hot, but the breeze is strong and the humidity was low). Sadly, today's weather was awful. The sun was bright, but it's about 73% humidity and windy as heck. Tonight's probably going to rain, too.

My mother went and got her 2nd Shingles shot, so it was a make-your-own dinner night. I made a Mi Goreng and topped it with a fried egg, and I have to say... it looked fantastic.

And yes, it tasted as good as it looks!

I learned 2 things making this egg.

1) Use a lid after the white sets so that the yolk can steam a bit - it's better that way.

2) Use a small pan and plenty of oil or cooking spray.

The 3rd thing I'd say if asked is this: The more saturated the color of the yolk, the more delicious it's probably gonna be, so if it's a yellow yolk, feel free to cook it through.

I let the runny yolk coat my hot noodles and then ate it, and honestly? Best food I've had this week.

I do wish I had a coffee though. Even if it is 7:30PM and my cutoff is 7...

I do have decaf...

I should make coffee....

Anywho, here's the plan for the rest of the week/weekend!

• Art on Thursday! I don't have a theme locked down yet (though I have taken some ideas under advisement!)
• I'll keep looking for games for Saturday
• Hopefully I won't get lost in the dozen or so projects I'm working on and I'll have something coherent for you on Monday
• Blather Next Tuesday!

Wow the sky is yellow now! The sun is setting through the light sprinkle.

I think I'll grab that decaf and settle in for the evening :)

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Talk About Tuesday

 

In Which I've Been Awake Too Long

I'm not a daytime person, really. I've always skewed towards the nocturnal end of things and it's only gotten worse as I've aged, so waking up at 8AM today was... embarrassingly difficult. Part of that was how deliciously warm my thick, fluffy red blanket is, to be fair. It was 39℉ (3.9℃) when I got up, and I dressed for the weather in my thick black jeans and thickest sweatshirt. I chugged a quick cup of my morning mocha (or "gruel" as my boyfriend nicknamed it) and my mom and I headed out to do our civic duty.

Voting day is a shockingly easy affair where I live. If you haven't registered to vote yet (you only have to do it once after you're 18 - just re-register every time you move), you can bring a bill and your driver's license or state ID (they're only about five bucks and ship to you fast) and they'll sign you up right at the polls. If you have already registered, like my mother and I have, you just get into your line and wait your turn. Our wait was about five minutes, so that was pretty great. I'd have to say the only drawbacks are that the polling place is A) not the most accessible (there are stairs, though there are handicap elevators/entrances, the building is from before the ADA, so that doesn't help much...) and B) There's almost no parking. It was designed with a much smaller town in mind, after all!

They had COVID procedures in place - socially distanced lines, masks available at the door, hand sanitizer everywhere, and the poll booths were set up a good 6 feet apart from one another. The ballots were printed at about 14-16 font for the most part, and I could read everything even through my fogged-up glasses! After we filled out our ballots, we dropped them in the appropriate boxes and were immediately mobbed by the usual gaggle of Signature-Seekers. The petitions this year were pretty good, from what I recall - urge the govt to come up with a Universal Healthcare plan, encourage better utility competition with a public option, and an election fairness petition to remove the loophole that allows international and interstate funds to be used in local elections (which is apparently illegal at the national level but you could've fooled me...).

I'll confess I made the grabby-hands motion towards the Universal Healthcare and Public Utility Option petitions. Might have had a savage grin as I signed the one against dark funding as well...

Regardless, that took up maybe 15 minutes total of my morning. Then we went to the laundromat and threw in some huge sleeping bags we can't wash at home. That took about 20 minutes. We took the lumpy old things home to dry on the line. I'm super happy we could do that because Sunday was miserable.

That's right, sadly our Halloween up here was practically a bust. We had torrential rains on Saturday night, and when we woke up on Sunday morning, our basement was flooded. To be fair, pretty much everyone we knew ended up with a flooded basement, but if there's one thing you don't wanna see when you peek down into the cellar, it's a blue bucket bobbing along two inches above the floor.

We got lucky. Other people had a foot of flooding.

Even my poor guy got soggy - there was at least an inch in the basement there, too.

Fortunately, aside from a few grocery items and some already-deceased UPS's in my basement, not a ton was ruined. Some cardboard, some birdseed. Even more fortunately, nothing irreplaceable has been harmed. No one was hurt, the floodwaters have utterly vanished (unless you're walking around my yard in boots, then you'll have the mud around your ankles...) and the coast is once more at peace.

Until next weekend, of course >:( we're getting more rain.

I'm done with rain. I'd rather wake up to 39 inches of snow than three inches of rain (which is what we woke up to on Halloween).

Oh, and just in case you thought Halloween wasn't sad enough with everyone getting flooded? We got exactly one trick-or-treater here. Our next door neighbor.

On the plus side, I have more fun-size M&Ms than I know what to do with. Maybe some fun cookies are in my future...

I have some art commissions to work on, too!

And I've got a few crochet projects!

And my mom's mom wants me to make some doilies!

It looks like I'm going to be super busy with creative stuff, but don't worry, I'm also still writing.

Looks like I'm going to be participating in No-Burnout November (which I'm taking as a dare, it seems...)

Oh, and for lunch today I made some Nongshim K-Army Stew, which is very very spicy and available at Wal-Mart. I threw in a slice of American cheese for fun and it completely dissolved into the unbearably hot, delightfully spicy broth, coating the noodles in cheesy goodness.

Taken Seconds After Adding The Cheese

I think that'll about do it for me for today. My eyes are burning slightly and I've been working on my writing all afternoon, though I'm not convinced much of it's any good. My folks are recovering from colds, I've got hella allergies that might be segueing into the cold they've got, and I just want a nap lol.

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Survival Sunday 306: Spinach For The Unwell

In Which I Made Simple Food For Sick People

At some point in everyone's life, they get sick. Sometimes, you're not the only one who gets sick, too, so that makes feeding yourself and others pretty dang hard. That's what happened to me a twice in the last two months. First, someone I care about was sick, then I had my migraine episode last week. Today, I'll tell you how I handled both kinds of illness with food.

The first illness was marked by severe headache, fever, nausea, and a general malaise. One day of misery, then gone. The intention was to make something filling but not too potent so that the ill party wasn't going to barf.

We chose some spinach soba from our Umai Crate along with a soup base that seemed like it would be hearty enough to be worthwhile but not so strong as to upset anyone's stomach.

The broth is on the left, and yes, it's kumamoto soba

As you can see, the somen is meant to support some veggies and spice, but we couldn't do spicy that day.

It didn't have much of a green color to start with, to be honest

I prepped the noodles by measuring out the appropriate amount of water and boiling it. I should have rinsed the noodles, but we were getting pressed for time, and I just wanted to get lunch over with. If I ever got these noodles again, I'd rinse them, but they weren't too salty in the broth despite the lack of washing.

And they were a bit more green when they were done cooking, too!

Overall, the spinach soba were very much appreciated. They were filling, and the soup base was rich enough to be flavorful without being so rich as to overwhelm. The next day, we were able to appreciate the noodles more, since we weren't sick anymore, but in the moment, we were just happy to eat.

As for the migraine?

The problem with my migraine experience is this: all of my senses become extremely over...sensitive? Is there a better way to say that? Regardless, light is brighter, dark is more absolute, colors are more vivid, sounds are clearer and more robust, touch sensation is vastly increased, taste is more extreme, and scent...

Scent is horrifically powerful.

I usually love the smell of a good chicken sandwich, but one whiff of my mother's lunch sent me charging into the bathroom to abandon the three sips of coffee and two ibuprofen I'd taken earlier. But I'm not one to let a little headache and nausea get me down (it felt like my skull was imploding on top of the nausea), so I got myself situated and headed out. After gingerly nibbling some water crackers and taking more ibuprofen, I was able to take a nap and sleep the worst of the migraine and enjoy the rest of my day, but for me, migraine food is: a little caffeine, bland white foods (especially crackers), water, maybe a plain bagel with cream cheese.

The cream cheese was a stretch - it's usually a significant trigger for me - but by the time I busted in on the bagel, I was well on my way to being better.

So that was my culinary adventure recently. Some noodles, and trying not to overdo it on a migraine day. The winter is always the hardest for me, health-wise. I don't get the proper vitamins and minerals from my diet, going outside is a crapshoot for whether or not I'll be getting dampened by the clouds, and I'm always, always stressed about the state of our streets and sidewalks. This is a terrible combination.

But what about you guys? What are your go-to sick day foods?

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Survival Sunday 302: Kumamoto Spicy Ramen

New Year, New... Noodz?

It's time for me to tell you about some tasty ramen from Umai Crate!

That's right, the first thing I've made up for the blog this year isn't some sort of scratch-made treat or easy access meal, it's another random pack of noodles shipped from Japan. If you're studying abroad, live in Japan, or have access to a proper Asian market here in the US, however, you may be able to find this Kumamoto Spicy Ramen, which, spoilers, is delicious.

Here's the handsome package!

Ideally, you'd have some fried meat, some veggies, and an onsen egg to go with this delicious, thick-brothed ramen, but I was feeling lazy and hungry and just wanted to stuff my face with delicious noodles and spicy flavor!

A slightly blurry picture of what was in the package

In this sleeve of noodles, you get a robust handful of noodles (which are slightly salty when dry and are addictive to snack on while you wait for the water to boil), a powder flavor packet (the red one), and a packet of hot oil - probably hot sesame oil, if I had to guess.

The instructions from Umai Crate!

I looked up the conversion for 500ml because I didn't know if I'd have access to a measuring cup with ml instead of "cups" (thanks US Imperial system...), and it turns out that 500ml is about 2 cups (2.11 to be more accurate...).

Lucky me, the kitchen I was using had a multi-measure cup that I used to pour about 450ml of water into the pan, since my partner's not really a broth person and I was in the mood for some extra-thick soup. You can, of course, cook your noodles how you like.

I let the water boil on the stovetop in a fairly small pot (I figured that since it was a simple packet of noodles I wouldn't need much of a pot, and I was right). Once the water was bubbling around, I put the noodles in.

I don't break my noodles when I put them in the pot. I know some people do that as a space-and-time-saving method (shorter noodles cook faster, I guess?), but I'm more of a naturalist and allow the noodles to slowly wilt into the pot like a grumpy toddler slipping into dreamland.

Except I don't want to eat a toddler, and I really, really wanted to eat these noodles.

And once the noodles had been in their spa for a couple of minutes, I grabbed the red packet.

Opening the soup base on one of these Umai Crate packs is always exciting. It's basically a party every time, and you never know what you're going to smell, really. This time, the rich umami flavor came across in the scent of soy sauce and some meaty undertones. It smelled salty and savory and delightful, and I made sure to sample some of the powder that was left behind on the packet when I dumped it in the noodles. It was absolute heaven.

Salty, faintly sweet from the small amount of sugar in the soy sauce, meaty, soy sauce-y... perfection.

I turned off the heat and stirred in the flavors.

The water was almost completely opaque once I added the broth packet.

By now, the kitchen was filled with the wonderful smells of cooked noodles and rich broth, so I dumped the whole thing in a large bowl.

Look at that glossy, oily sheen!
Gorgeous!

Of course, there was one more step to add to this wonderful ramen - the spicy oil!

I tore open the sachet of oil very carefully, because that stuff is no joke to get in your eye, man. I promise, chili oil is a nightmare that you'll never forget when it's in your eyes.

Thankfully, though, it cooperated perfectly and drizzled into the bowl without fighting me at all.

Beautiful.

The oil itself has a very neutral flavor, since it only exists to lend spice, but once it combined with the actual noodles and broth? Call Guy Fieri, because that's a one-way-trip to Flavortown.

Oh god. Why did I write that...

But seriously, that's some addictively spicy, perfectly rounded deliciousness right there. If I could, I'd eat that once a week. It's the flavor equivalent of a sweater that, yeah, can sometimes be a little too warm, but it's so comforting to wear that you can't stop putting it on, even though it's mid-April and you might get heat stroke!

Mind, this isn't crazy hot. It's spicy, don't get me wrong, and if you get it down the wrong pipe, you're going to feel it for a while, but this isn't Shin Cup spicy in any way. It's not even as spicy as a Tijuana Mama sausage. It's just... comfortably spicy. It's the kind of spicy you keep going back for.

If you do live somewhere that carries this Kumamoto Spicy Ramen, then please do pick it up. Even if it's just to shoot a pack my way...

mmm....

noodles...

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Survival Sunday 252: Parmesan Spaghetti Ramen

In Which This Is My Last Noodle of 2019!

Well, here we are, two days out from the end of the decade. It's been a wild year, guys!

I figured we'd round out the year with the last of our East-Meets-West noodles - a spicy Parmesan pasta! This came from another one of our Umai Crates, and we had very high hopes for it, since the last few Italian-inspired bowls had been so freakin good. This was a pretty standard setup, too, which was good, because I was already tired from putting together Christmas gifts and we made this a couple of weeks ago!

As you can see, it warns you that it's spicy, but it's also welcoming and cute.
Very Japanese.

It's a 3-minute bowl, so I pulled out the packets and poured in the hot water and let it sit for the full three minutes.

Which was just enough. If you like your pasta very soft, go for 3:30.

Since we're al dente people, it was time to drain the pasta and add the flavor packets! I was at a loss at first as to what the green packet could have been, but that's because I don't read instructions very well, lol.

On the left is the tasty spicy tomato sauce in the red packet.
The green packet on the right was the Parmesan cheese!

A word from the wise: Don't fiddle with your lid too much before you drain the water, because it will detach too much, and then you'll be constantly fighting to keep the noodles in your bowl without scalding your fingers.

Overall, I'd say it was worth it, though!

Almost finished! Look how quickly that cheese started melting into the noodles!
Seriously, there was about 50% more of that before I picked up the camera!

A closeup so you can see just how good this looked...
Or you would see that if the color balance wasn't bad on my phone...

I should probably mention that we had this with some leftovers from a really great Christmas party we'd gone too earlier that week (the day before, in fact!)

Since there was a fair amount of food in the leftovers box, we picked out some of the choicest sausages and added those to our spicy Spaghetti Ramen experience!

10/10 do recommend!

In the end, the sauce was just tomato-y enough to get the tomato-ness of it, but not so much so that it overpowered the meat, noodles, and spiciness! Actually, I was unimpressed with the spice-factor at first, but it was a sneaky spice that crept up on you the more you ate it. I really like this bowl, and I thought that, while there could always have been more cheese, what we got was really nice and went well with everything.

Overall, I'd have to say that this particular fusion was not only successful, but it's something I'd buy regularly if it was available locally! Really nice.

That'll about do it for me, today, guys.
Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Survival Sunday 247: More Noodz

In Which I Try More Umai Crate Noodles

So, you know how adding stuff to noodles usually means good things? Uh.... unfortunately that didn't work out very well this time :(

Left to right: Healthy ramen, Tanuki Soba, and Canadian Bacon

We've never had too much luck with the health food ramen with the guy on the package - it's usually pretty bland. Tanuki soba, on the other hand, is usually really good! I mean, it's soba, so what's not to love?

And this kind had both crunchy puffs and fried seaweed! Score!

It was easy enough to prepare the soba, since that's just an "add hot water and let sit" kind of cup. I was a little annoyed that you can't see the fill line on this one, so I probably added a tiny bit too much water. Also this is maybe the second or third time we've received this kind of Tanuki Soba alone, so... not the most adventurous of Umai adventures...

I set about 2.5 cups of water to boil in a pan on the stove, ladling out enough to cook the Tanuki once it was hot enough. Then I set to work with prepping the healthy ramen so that it absolutely wasn't. My partner tore up the Canadian bacon and set it marinating in spicy sesame oil and the last of our soy sauce.

A simple marinade but one that smelled incredible!

Then I cracked some eggs into the water with the noodles and let those cook before dumping in the Canadian bacon. I should've added in the marinade, but hindsight is 2020...

The noodles cooked up fine, and I added in the flavor packet, but... it didn't really smell like much of anything.

This should have alerted me to the coming meal.

The flavor packet in any ramen should smell like something, but this one was just... vaguely sweet/salty smelling. It should have been strong enough to smell without stuffing my nose into the foil packet.

Sadly, even spicy curry, ramen pepper, and garlic powder could not save this ramen :(

The healthy ramen was, without a doubt, the most disappointing ramen I've had that didn't come from Wal-Mart.

It had absolutely no flavor, the noodles were limp (despite cooking for less time then they should have!), and the broth was basically taupe-colored water. We had to add salt.

At least the eggs were fantastic, though! Possibly the best eggs I've ever scrambled into ramen!

As for the Tanuki Soba? It was fine.

The Tanuki soba still had that nice buckwheat flavor with a dashi that, while not the strongest, was still flavorful and pretty decent. And the veggies were really pleasant, too!

So basically that was a bit of a flop of a meal :( That's too bad, since I was looking forward to the flavors.

As a consolation for the middling-to-disappointing fare from this blog, here's a picture of my cat in full snuggle-drunk blep mode:

yeaaaaaaaah, them's good tummy rubs....

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Survival Sunday 245: Missing the Point of Vegan Noodz

In Which I Make Vegans Very Unhappy - Sorry!

Let me begin by saying this: I love vegans. I love vegan food. I love the tenets upon which veganism as a cultural movement are based. I am not, however, a vegan myself. I enjoy too many animal-based products and legitimately cannot afford to enjoy a 100% plant-based diet without being 100% miserable and living entirely off of tinned veggies, which... aren't ideal.

So when we wound up with the Samurai Ramen - a 0 animal ramen with no garlic or onion or msg (the last three of which I actually quite like) - I was a bit skeptical.

Because for me, garlic and onion are nearly my lifeblood.

And generally, "healthy" ramen is pretty bland even with the addition of either garlic or onion.

But it did look pretty amazing...

So we decided that the best way to round out this wonderfully well-intentioned noodle concoction was to add both deli chicken and egg.

Which is pretty morbid when you think about it...

Deli chicken breast, which I sliced up and soaked in the egg

I enjoy the occasional vegan ramen, to be certain - they're usually beautifully put-together with some really fascinating soup bases and flavor combinations. However, I was... incredibly hungry the day we made this, and I find these ramens to be usually a little hard to fill me up. So I decided that the animal proteins would serve as filler here. Delicious, delicious filler.

The noodles were thin and only lightly salted, and the soup base
was liquid, so I couldn't open it ahead of time to check how it smelled.

I was very, very excited to try this ramen, so I started up a pot to boil on the stove with about 1.5 cups of water for each sheaf of noodles (3 cups total). Meanwhile I grabbed a small knife and sliced the chicken into thin strips and cracked a pair of eggs into a bowl with them. Then I broke the yolks and got everything mixed together. At this point, my partner decided that the "no garlic/onions" thing was not for us, so in went some garlic powder and a little curry powder as well. I loooooooooove curry, so I was all for that.

No joke, I actually kind of wanted to just... dig into this as it was.
And I'm paranoid about raw eggs.

So here's the thing about adding eggs into ramen while it cooks: The water immediately clouds as the proteins in the eggs meld into the boiling water, and the noodles become coated. This means that every bite is filled with eggy goodness!

Though it does look a bit... nightmarish.

I really liked how the boiling action changes the texture of the chicken lunchmeat! Like with ham or roast beef, boiling the precooked chicken breast toughens it and makes it stand up better against the smooth slickness of the noodles.

I mean, look at this... it's gorgeous!

The soup base was very flavorful - almost intensely so. It had a lot of soy sauce flavor and was filled with umami. I may have to cry bull on the "no MSG" thing, since MSG comes from soy sauce (and mushrooms, and other umami foods). That's like saying there's "no vitamins" in orange juice...

Regardless, it's a really good ramen even on its own, but making it a ramen egg drop soup makes it even better! Since there were so many ingredients, we only wound up with maybe a half cup of liquid out of three cups of water! I cannot believe how good it was, too. Warm, rich, and incredibly satisfying, if you can get your hands on some Samurai Ramen, then you absolutely should.

So thank you, Umai Crate. That was awesome!

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Survival Sunday 241: Boston Trip Taste Testing!

I went on a trip and forgot to take pictures!

It's not often that I venture far from the blanket fort, but the opportunity to go explore Boston, Massachusetts came up and I absolutely could not say "no". On this trip I tried a lot of food:

• a delicious Butter Milk roll from a bakery in Chinatown
• cold and herbal matcha rolled ice cream topped with mochi and condensed milk and black sesame and grass jelly (which is shockingly tasty) at a place called "Juicy Spot" (which Leonardo DiCaprio has visited in the past!)
• spicy kimchi miso ramen and tonkatsu curry from the food court at an H Mart (the curry was from Go Go Curry!)
• some comically large pork rolls from a place I think was called Viet Pho in another food court
• comically bad pork cookies (like, super not good and yes you read that right)
• some tasty peanut mochi
• some tasty strawberry daifuku mochi
• an obscenely large bowl of bibimbap from somewhere called "Reliable Mart" (where I also tried a friend's spicy beef bulgogi and now I'm an addict)
• some fabulous tofu teriyaki from a really nice Japanese restaurant whose name I'm forgetting...
• some Lays potato chips that I think were called "grilled beef" or "grilled steak" but I can find 0 evidence for on the internet
• some chocolate-covered cookie tubes with creme brulee pudding inside them
• more things I'm forgetting right now, I'm sure!

The point is this: I went, I ate, it was delicious.

But we also brought back some snacks to try at home, so here's my reviews of these snacks:

A comically large 13+ oz bottle of original flavored Ramune

I. Love. Ramune.

Ramune is, for those not in the know, a Japanese soda best known for being sold in glass bottles that are stopped with a glass marble. This marble is forced out with a plunger that comes attached to the bottle top. Sometimes, it takes a lot of pressure to force the marble out, since it's being held in place by a combination of tension and the pressure of the carbonation. Regardless, it's a soda that sounds like a faint gunshot every time you open one, and it comes in a plethora of flavors, some of which are so bizarre the Jones Soda Co would lose their minds. Like... pandan, lychee, or even durian (only one of which I've drank...).

The Original flavor of Ramune is somewhere between bubblegum and vaguely citrus. It's flavored with citric acid and sugar. Ounce to ounce, there is slightly less sugar in Ramune than there is in Coke. It also tastes better and is caffeine free, and (if Original flavor) has absolutely no food coloring. It's basically the perfect soda, to me.

So when I saw that there was a comically large bottle at one of the stores we went to, of course it came home with me.

It was exactly as I described - vaguely citrusy, sweet, and refreshing. Perfect for what we drank it with...

A big yakisoba!

We brought yakisoba home with us, since the Blanket Fort lacks any kind of Asian market, and interesting noodles are few and far between unless you have an Umai Crate subscription. So we each got ourselves some good dry noodles. I didn't eat the one above.

I ate this one, purchased at the H Mart.

They were pretty self-explanatory, to be honest. Open the lids halfway, remove the packets, dump in the veggie packet, boil water, fill to line with water, close lid, wait 3 minutes, open vent (there's a vent, I promise), drain water, remove lid completely, add in sauce and/or spice, then artistically add the mustard mayonnaise.

See? Pretty self-explanatory.

These noodles were incredible. The yakisoba sauce was sweet and tangy, the cabbage was reconstituted perfectly, and the noodles were firm, but the real star was that mustard mayo. You'd think it would be zippy, but not too rough. You'd be wrong. It was almost horseradish-levels of spicy, and it was the perfect foil to the dark, sweet yakisoba sauce. It really, really made me wish I could eat it every day. I'm craving it right now.

Of course, I can't just give you my impression of instant noodles. That would be boring.

Korean Crackers? Okay, I'll bite!

I'd never had these before, but they're basically little cracker puffs held together with some sort of sweet coating. They're pretty bland and inoffensive, kinda like a super-crunchy popcorn ball! I'd absolutely use these for a party treat! Very nice.

Just be aware that they're really, really hard and crunchy.

Next I tried something that I knew would be good.

I mean, how bad can roasted chicken wing flavor be?

I'm used to chicken flavoring like you get in Maruchan ramen - salty and not much else. These had a definite "roasted poultry" flavor to them, and they were perfectly crisp and tasty! I was very impressed, and I'd love to get these again.

Big cronchers!

And then I broke out the chips I'd been worried about. We bought Numb and Spicy Hot Pot Flavor, but I don't fear that heat. I don't fear them being stale like some friends warned us they might be either. These are not the Numb and Spicy Hot Pot chips.

You read that right.
Grilled Eel.

I was very nervous about these. I hate seafood flavored chips. Shrimp, clam, crab - it doesn't matter. It all tastes nasty to me. These were much the same, but... I couldn't stop eating them. These are very much in the same vein as the Crab Seasoning chips you can sometimes find up here. You know, the Utz ones with the Chesapeake Bay Seasoning? Old Bay chips? Yeah, those. They're not good. I don't like them, but they brainwash you into finishing the bag regardless.

To be honest, they tasted like a lot of nori and eel sauce.
And I love eel sauce. And nori.
But there was definitely something... seafoody about them.

So that's what I've worked through so far, as far as snacks I brought home. Hope you got some ideas of what to get the next time you're at an Asian market!

I strongly advocate for mochi, by the way, because it's squishy, sweet, and delightful. I've been fortunate enough to never have bad mochi.

That's all from me for today!

Go Enjoy Something!!!
FC