Survival Sunday 310: Dollar Dinner

In Which I Try Cheap Food For You

My family was out of town the other day and the oven was broken, so I had to fend for myself. I did so with the toaster oven and microwave and with about 8 bucks (I bought some snacks). The food I bought for dinner, however, only cost a dollar per serving!

We have a Family Dollar close to my house, which I can't necessarily recommend as a place to buy groceries in good conscience, but the second closest grocery store was a mile away and I was very tired and very hungry and I walk everywhere, so I chose the closer (cheaper) place.

And what a haul I got! A tall can of Coke, a Mountain Dew, and some hot cocoa mix made up my non-dollar purchases, but for a buck each, I picked up a bag of Bugles and two dinner items:

First up we have a Red Baron Deep Dish Pepperoni Pizza

I've heard horror stories about these pizzas, guys. Some people have said they're the worst, and you know what? I believe them. If I'd microwaved this puck of pizza, it would have been viciously bad.

But I used the toaster oven instead because it said I could, so it was actually... pretty okay!

I mean, it's never going to taste like a homemade pizza...

It kind of reminded me of how bagel pizzas tasted as a kid. The sauce was a little overabundant and made the crust soggy under the cheese, but the overall eating experience was pretty decent. I'd absolutely eat that a second time. I will never, ever, ever microwave a dollar pizza again now that I have tasted how much better it is in the toaster oven.

Next Up we have a faintly terrifying meat patty in bread

Guys, I love bbq. Ask anyone who knows me and they'll be well-aware of my preference for bbq-flavored anything (except Frito twists for some reason...) This $1 Fast Bites rib sandwich was not something I'd held out a lot of hope for, though. I've had some meh sandwiches from Fast Bites, so I was anticipating a soggy, gristly mess between two slabs of bleh, gooey bread. I was... pleasantly surprised.

This sandwich only has microwave instructions, so I bucked up and did as I was told, nuking the sandwich in its wrapper (opened) for the required time. When it came out I was happy to find that the top bun was actually quite nice and springy and not wet and gross like I'd feared. The bottom bun got soggy, but that happens with the little White Castle sliders you can get from the freezer section, too, so I wasn't overly surprised.

Then I bit into the sandwich and was pleasantly surprised yet again! It had a good, but not overwhelming, bbq flavor, the meat was obviously pressed and formed but it didn't have any inedible bits in it and tasted like smoky pork instead of depression, and the bun actually tasted pretty decent. For a dollar, that almost tasted like a cheap fast food option rather than a horrifyingly cheap freezer option!

All in all, I'm pleased to see that dollar foods aren't the hellscape they were when I was in college. I'd love to know what changed, but I also don't actually want to know how they're made because I'd probably have more nightmares with that knowledge...

Actually, that's the last thing I wanted to talk about.

Whether it was the pizza or the sandwich, the only downside to this junkstravaganza was that when I finally did sleep that night, I was awakened by a night terror that featured a monstrosity somewhere between the alien threat from XTRO and a locust or grasshopper crawling up the far wall of my room, across the ceiling, and perching itself face to face with me while I was paralyzed. It just... breathed on me until I got annoyed and fell back asleep.

My brain is weird.

So yeah, despite the night terror (which could have actually been caused by having a tall Coke, a blue Mountain Dew, and three cups of coffee, let's be fair) I'd actually recommend these foods to anyone who is on a budget or needs a quick bite to eat. Just... use the toaster oven or a conventional oven for the pizza if you can.

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Survival Sunday 242: More Reviews!

In Which I Nom The Things

Boston was, as I've mentioned, a great trip. It was a much-needed break from the Blanket Fort, and it's always nice to be surrounded by friends. Bringing back a bunch of snax was just icing on the already decadent good-times cake!

Sadly, I don't have images of these last three snacks outside their packaging because my phone ate the pictures (I had slippery fingers while doing a mass-delete and was too dumb to have backed up those images... oops), so you'll just have to deal with my descriptions. Thankfully, with the exception of the mochi, you guys can probably guess what these treats look like - they're very much like the average US equivalents.

First we have tasty Korean Cheetos!

I'm not 100% sure what the flavor on these Cheetos was supposed to be besides awesome and delicious. I saw peppers, a tomato, and some garlic on the bag, which makes sense, because these crunchy little snacks were sweet, garlicky, and had just enough spice to be addictive as heck. As for what they look like... have you ever had a white cheddar version of Cheetos? Or just... cheddar cheese crunch snacks in general? Because they looked like pale Cheetos with maybe a few specks of non-cheese powder.

I could probably eat a pallet of these. They're my favorite Cheetos ever.

A potentially deadly chip...

I've slowly become a spice hound over the years. Yes, my acid reflux has gotten worse. Yes, I'm still a big weenie. But... spicy food is delicious, guys. It's amazing.

These Lay's chips are amazing. They're quite spicy, though it's the kind of spice that creeps up on you. You'll regret shoving a fistful of these tightly-rippled chips into your face within three breaths after swallowing. And it just gets more intense after the first minute. Within ten minutes, however, you're back down to gentle levels of "oh yeah, I ate a spicy thing, didn't I?" so this won't kill you if you're mildly sensitive to spiciness. I think. I mean, sometimes I'll eat a Pad Thai and think it was a little mild, then I'll look over at my mother eating the same thing with tears streaming down her face, so maybe I'm a bad judge of spice levels now?

Regardless, I could eat a lot of these, too.

Of the Lay's we tried, I think my favorite was probably the grilled meat chips we tried in the car on the way home. Sadly, I can still find no evidence of their existence, but if I ever get back to the H-Mart, I'll definitely buy more.

Also, I'll probably get a GoGo Curry Tonkatsu...

Finally, dessert!

I love mochi! Basically, mochi is what happens when you get angry at your rice and beat it mercilessly while kneading it. It's a soft, sweet dough made from glutinous rice rolled in some kind of starch (often potato starch) to keep it from sticking to you. It's about the consistency of a good marshmallow, and I'd say it's got a superior texture, in my opinion. These little mochis are filled with a peanut butter filling, so of course we fell on these like starving monkeys.

Individually wrapped like those big peppermints you can usually find at Staples, these tiny confections maybe didn't look quite like the packaging. Most of the starch had either been knocked off or had absorbed the oils of the peanut butter filling through the mochi making them resemble... uh... uh....

How can I actually visually describe this treat in a way that's appealing?

Ah! There we go!

They kinda looked like a slightly oily cookie dough wrapped around a firm blob of peanut butter! That's how I can describe it!

It's kinda how it tasted, too, which was nice :)

It was lightly sweet, very sticky, with a firm and pasty peanut filling that really satisfied the salty/sweet cravings I'd been having that day. The filling was a little dry, so that was a bit annoying, but I could easily eat a crate of them.

They were also only about the size of a half-dollar, so that's a lot of mochi....


That will do it for the treats I tried!

I hope you guys can get out there and taste-test some tasty treats of your own this week!

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