Random Picture #208

What is pictured above is called "educational confectionary" according to its  maker, Kracie. I call it "playing with food", but I'll run with Kracie's description. On the left is a donut decorating kit and on the right is a candy bento one. This leads me to believe that Kracie is thinking Japan's children need to be educated in the ways of food service. I guess if your dream is working at Mister Donut, then the donut one would help set you up nicely.

This is one of those rare items which is actually available at Amazon. You can get the bento one here for an exhorbitant price and the donut one here for an even higher price. If you buy one, let me know if you learned anything. ;-)

Kracie Man Banana

Doing a rough translation of the name of the this product, which literally is "man banana" (男バナナ), I realize there is an unintentional implication there. If you're expecting something remotely phallic, you're in for an incredibly big disappointment. I think that a better translation would be "banana man", but where's the fun in that?

This product seems to have been inspired by the episode of The Simpsons in which Homer decides to get in shape and climb "The Murderhorn". While he's getting in shape, he tells his wife, Marge, that he will only eat food in bar form in order to release its awesome power so he takes two pounds of spaghetti and compresses it into a bar which he eats and then calls the hospital. This candy is trying to release the awesomeness of bananas, raisins, and mangoes by compressing them into little 30-calorie cubes of chewy candy.

My husband found this candy at NewDays convenience store and was drawn to the banana aspect of it. If it weren't for him, I wouldn't be reviewing this since I'm not a big fan of banana snacks. That being said, he ate one piece of this and then never went back for more. To him, it tasted like nothing more than hyper-concentrated banana. This is no surprise since it is 90% fruit. A sniff tells you that banana is definitely the main component, but I could also taste the raisin's telltale sweetness and strong over-ripened flavor.

This candy is not your typical soft chew. It's rather more like a block of dried fruit/fruit leather. It's a little difficult to bite off a bit, but not exactly tough. Because it doesn't have much except fruit, dextrin and gelatin, you can get some idea of what it might be like to eat.

This reminded me a bit of eating banana chips without the added sweetness or crunchiness. It wasn't bad, but I am not the biggest fan of dried fruit flavors. To me, a lot of the value of fruit is in its moist real textures, not in hyper-concentrating those flavors by drying them out and squashing them. Though this isn't bad, I can't help but give it an "unhappy" rating because neither my husband nor I will eat the remaining 4 pieces of the 6 piece pack. Fans of dried fruit may feel otherwise, but I would really rather eat an actual banana than eat something like this.

Kracie Muichaimashita Chestnuts

There are two ways to look at natural food like raisins or dried cranberries. You can consider that they are merely meant to be components of some more complex dish or you can see them as snacks unto themselves. In the case of the aforementioned items, they clearly fall into the category of being both. In the case of today's product for review, my sense of whether or not this was meant to be a snack is rather muddled.

On the side which indicates "snack", I look at the fact that this is sold in quite a small foil pack (35 grams/1.2 oz.). There's also the fact that the chestnuts are next to preserved foil-packed chunks of sweet potato that I have bought and eaten as a snack on occasion before. I think these things should be in snack happy shape simply because of their size and presentation.

That being said, I think that both the sweet potato and chestnuts are meant to be used as a garnish on rice or as a component in a more complex dish. The web site for this product features various recipes, some of which portray this as a garnish and others that show it as an integrated component. That being said, I think I can treat these as a snack just like I did the sweet potatoes and would regard other types of nuts. You can decide for yourself if this is misplaced or not. I like chestnuts, and I wanted to give these a chance as a healthy snack. They only have 66 calories and have 1.4 grams of protein.


I got these for 100 yen ($1.11) at a local convenience store. I'm guessing they are so cheap not only because the portion is small, but also because they are from China. The web site says that they are organic and are baked and roasted using "infrared" techniques. I'm not sure what that means. I had never heard of this type of cooking before, but apparently it's all about reaching high temperatures quickly. It's supposed to be good for dense foods, but carries a risk of burning or charring. Since chestnuts are cooked in their shells, this is probably a safe, quick method for dealing with them.

The chestnuts themselves seem pretty bland and not too dissimilar from raw chestnuts, though the texture is much more palatable. When I lived in Pennsylvania, I used to pry open and eat raw chestnuts when I was a kid so it's a familiar flavor to me. Whatever the cooking method used for these, it didn't seem to impart much added flavor to the chestnuts. Their texture is fine, slightly firm, but crumbly. They are dry in the same way that a sweet potato is dry. The flavor is subtle and earthy, and screams for enhancement with sugar and vanilla or brandy.

These were fine, but completely a flat experience. They didn't work at all as a snack, but I think they'd be good if crushed, mashed, or chopped and added to oatmeal, rice pudding, etc. They just aren't going to work as a snack by themselves.