Maruchan "Mike" Green Tanuki Soba Popcorn

On the social media outlet, "Reddit," - that's the one that all of the content aggregaters steal content from - I occasionally see a question to the effect of, "If you fell asleep for a hundred years, how do you think the world would have changed when you woke up?" Being in Japan was a bit like being asleep for 23 years and then waking up and finding out how America changed. One of the ways in which it changed was that popcorn was sold in a popped format, in flavors, and in shelf-stable packaging.

It still boggles my mind that things like "Boom Chicka Pop" sell already popped corn in bags for a high mark-up. One of the best things about popcorn is how amazing it tastes when it is fresh. A second amazing thing is how cheap it is. Third, it's incredibly easy to make. You just need a pot with a lid and some oil, a paper bag and a microwave oven, or an air popper. All of these are fast and easy and you can spend about 10 cents for a vat of fresh, fantastic-smelling popped corn. So, why pay more for old corn? Well, people are just that lazy now.

I will have to be fair and say that it may not only be about laziness. Bags of popcorn come in flavors that you can't easily make at home, though that's less true in the U.S. than of this Japanese variety. This is designed to taste like a particular variety of heat and eat soba sold by Maruchan.

My expectations of this were very low. I'm not a big fan of soba and this has katsuobushi in it. That's dried, shaved fish to you and me in the English-speaking world. It's not that I don't like katsuobushi as part of some dishes, but just that I don't want it on my popcorn. This popcorn does have a slightly fishy ending taste, but the front and middle is a really tasty savory mix of multiple flavors including garlic, green onions, kombu, pork, and seafood. None of those flavors comes through as itself. They are just one unified sense of savory flavor. It's addictive and very tasty.

While I was very pleased with the flavoring, the texture was less crispy than I'd like. It wasn't exactly stale, but it definitely wasn't at crunchy as fresh corn or as I'd hope for a salty snack. Still, I enjoyed this quite a lot and would definitely consider another snack with the same flavoring again. 

Sukiyaki Pringles

I have never been much of a Pringles person. Sure, being a fairly organized person who likes orderly spaces, the concept of Pringles appeals to me. Who wouldn't love an anal-retentive concept in which your chips are well-behaved and identical such that they stack neatly into a canister. What's not to love if you're compulsively tidy?

What has never been for me to love is the texture. Compared to potato chips, they have a crumbly, softer texture because they're not only made with dehydrated potato, but also flour. They are a more processed version of something which is superior in its original form.

All of that being said, I've not eaten deep fried food regularly for a long time and I can't digest it well. My husband is the chip eater in the family and, if I sample just two of his fried chips, I'll be feeling it hours later. These Pringles didn't bring on any digestive problems like deep-fried chips seem to. That's quite the bonus right there. One thing is for sure, gluten is my friend as the wheat flour mixed in these didn't cause one problem for me.

The place where these really shine is the sukiyaki flavor. It's very savory and "meaty" in a way I've not experienced before in a chip. The flavor depth is impressive and I loved that (and I don't even like beef). You get a lot of complexity including onion, garlic, mushroom, and, of course, the beef. I really liked these chips, much to my surprise. I guess that my enjoyment was absolutely amplified by the lack of regret later on.

I did a little research on Pringles because I've always wondered why anyone would try to make a processed chip when natural chips are so tasty. I thought perhaps it was one of those wartime things where a product comes about because of a shortage or, like custard powder in the UK, the product was created because someone had a food allergy. The answer seems to be because a food chemist and storage technician could do it and because people complained about how messy chips could be. It's not the most exciting answer, but it is an answer.

Glico Kari Kari Cheese Pretz

My husband and I have been back in the United States for almost exactly seven years come the end of this month. This has nothing to do with Pretz, but it has something to do with the delay between the last review of the contents of my ZenPop cheese box and this one.

For the duration of our time back "home" (which often doesn't feel like home), we've lived without an actual television. That is not to say we didn't watch any content which is on TV, but just that we did it using a 28" monitor that we hooked up to a PC or our blu-ray player. My husband finally decided he was tired of seeing puny people from across the living room when we sat on our loveseat (Note: we also lived without any sort of "proper" furniture for about six years in terms of seating). So, we bought a 43" TV with the notion that we could now see things on screen more clearly with our aging eyes. Simple enough, eh?

Well, it turned out not to be so simple. We live in a pretty small house with a lot of impediments to furniture arrangement. It was built in 1949 and has few wall outlets, lots of heating vents, and unhelpfully placed doorways. I love the place and the size. I also love the neighborhood, but, boy howdy, is it hard to set up much of anythign in regards to furnishings. I ended up rearranging in anticipation of the TV, finding that failed greatly and then doing it all again three days later. My total investment in time for this game of musical furniture was about 15 hours. The whole experience totally wiped me out and I had no energy left for talking about pretzels.

By the way, all of that effort was for the picture below (cat not really a part of the process, but the thing on the far left is a treat dispenser which she was poking around in). It looks pretty simple, but that was the hard part. Getting it down to this level of sparseness was no small feat.

However, now that it's all worked out, I can focus on more important things like talking about salted snack foods. I love pretzels of pretty much any stripe, but there are two things about them which are missing from these Pretz and that was disappointing.

First, there is the flaky, crumbly interior of the pretzel which yields so beautifully compared the harder baked exterior. These have more of the texture of a piece of raw spaghetti (yes, I've eaten raw spaghetti for reasons which are very sad). They aren't quite that hard and they do yield a little bit, but there is something about the texture which is unsatisfying.

The second point which is missing is the distinctive rye flour flavor that I associate with pretzels. The cheese powder on this is pretty decent. It's got a pronounced processed cheese flavor with the appropriate savory notes and a little bit of a "dairy" kick, but it's not overbearing. It's also not too salty while being salty enough. The main problem is that the delivery system for the cheese flavor, the pretzel stick itself, is too insubstantial to hold its own.

This is not a bad snack by any stretch of the imagination. I just feel like it sacrificed some flavor complexity and textural satisfaction for a stronger crunch. They are more like a thick chip version of a pretzel than a normal Pretz. That may work for some people, but it didn't really do it for me.

Note: This was part of my free ZenPop snack box.

Poteko Cherry Blossom Salt Potato Rings and Calbee Sea Salt Hard Chips

I'm continuing my brisk jaunt through the box of snacks ZenPop sent me with two of the salted potato snacks. Besides being made of potato and containing salt, they really don't have much in common, but it's not like I'm matchmaking them or engaging in little mock wedding ceremonies where in which I put a tiny veil on the rings and a bow tie on the chips - at least not yet. Constructing these things takes time.

The first time I tried Himalayan sea salt, I wondered why anyone would like the taste and smell of sulfur on their food. Sure, it's pink and looks pretty, but - at least to my taste buds - it added nothing to the experience and really took things away. I dismissed it as one of those things all the cool kids were into because other cool kids told them to be into it.

As weird as I found Himalayan sea salt to be, the sakura (cherry blossom) salt on Tohato's potato rings is like a mutant version of salt. Maybe it was formed when Godzilla was percolated decades ago. When I opened the bag, the smell was strongly cherry-blossom-like. It just did not fit the sense of what should come with a potato snack.

Smell isn't everything though. People who eat Durian know that. Taste is where it's at. Unfortunately, this didn't fare much better on the taste front. The first ring is especially odd as it hits you full force with the cherry-like flavor of the salt. After you eat a few, you get a little acclimated and it's more of a bad aftertaste that you tolerate.

I'm not sure what Tohato was thinking with this one. I guess that the fact that this is a holiday release connected to the "doll's festival" for girls (hinamatsuri) made them think the whole cherry blossom concept was a good one. They should have saved it for their sweet snacks rather than Poteko.

While the Poteko aren't inedible, they aren't nearly as much fun as they should be. I'm giving them a little credit there. I think the best use for these is to take them around to your unsuspecting friends and tell them it's a Japanese potato ring snack and ask them if they can guess what flavor it is. Have your camera ready because you'll want to catch the faces they make and post them on social media or future blackmail purposes.

The Calbee chips, by comparison, are a much tamer beast. The "hard" part comes from chips made with a thicker cut potato. Most Japanese potato chips are super thin, light and crispy. These are still crispy, but the bite is definitely less crumbly and more crunchy.

All Japanese potato chips have a particular fresh scent and taste which is unique and these have that going for them. I'm guessing this comes from the oil. However, the bag I had also had an unusual and not necessarily welcome. Honestly, it reminded me of sour milk. I don't know where that came from and I've never experienced that with Calbee's chips before. They're supposed to have Vitamin C added, which is also a bit strange. That might have something to do with it.

Poteko Cherry Blossom Salt:

Calbee Sea Salt Hard Chips:

Karu Edamame Snack

My stroll through the ZenPop box is one that I'm hoping will be far less leisurely so, with any luck, I'll be posting one review a day until I wear myself out, get called in for grand jury duty, or put on too much weight from an abundance of appealing Japanese junk food.

When I first saw the box for this snack, I assumed that the snacks inside were just pretzels flavored with edamame (young soybeans). It turns out that I was mislead by the little brown marks on the sticks (from where they've been baked, not fried, as the box tells me) and the shape. These are actually crispy tubes made of potato, edamame seasoning, and a plethora of other things which, if I listed them here, you'd only want to eat them less. And these are delicious so I don't want to reduce the chance that you'll try them.

The texture is crispy and light. The hollow tube design makes you feel like you're eating an expertly rolling potato chip that is perfect in crunchiness. The flavor has a bit of depth as the front end is a little salty and slightly potato-like. The back end is pure edamame with its verdant qualities. It's exceptionally well-executed to bring the target flavor to mind.

The box has 36 grams at 185 calories. I ate half at one sitting as a side to a tuna sandwich, but I could easily see going through the whole box at once with a cold drink on the side. It takes more than a little self-restraint to not do that.

Tohato Ame Oni Bloomin' Onion Snack (sour cream)

I read a lot of cooking blogs because I'm always interested in expanding my range of cooking skills. There was a time, for instance, when I was trying to master the art of making a really good steam cake. One of the Chinese recipes said something to the effect of, 'We Chinese traditionally ate fruit after meals for dessert, but, ha, ha, Western cuisine has corrupted us.' Every time I read something about how Western food culture has harmed the "healthy" Asian food culture, I get a little peeved.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. If Asians prefer to eat healthy food, no exposure to bad Western habits is going to force sugar, refined flour, etc. down their gullets. If they embrace unhealthy food, it's because it's what they want to eat, not because we made them consume it. They're no more superhuman than the rest of us when it comes to resisting highly palatable food. I also frankly have my doubts that a culture with dim sum couldn't figure out that adding sugary elements to its basic stuffed buns wouldn't be a good idea for a sweet finish without our bad influence. I credit them with having just that little creativity with their own homegrown cuisine. I think they likely figured that out on their own, but we always get blamed for everyone's bad habits... such is the burden we bear based on our generally pretty terrible eating habits as a country. We get blamed for all food crimes, not only the ones we actually committed.

All of that being said, I think we'll have to take the hit for Bloomin' Onions entering the junky and junk food time stream in Japan. They do have their own fried food culture (with tempura and all), but we're the ones who overdid it with breading and size. I honestly didn't know Outback Steakhouse even existed in Japan until several months ago when my brother-in-law (who still lives in Tokyo) posted pictures of a Bloomin' Onion he'd consumed as part of his birthday. And, yes, I know the old Outback is an American notion of "Aussie" cuisine. They're more about the meat pies and the vegemite than the over-sized steaks and bread served cruelly stabbed with a knife.

I'm guessing, possibly incorrectly, that the Outback may be getting a toehold in Japan since this type of snack would need a reference point for those who purchase it. Otherwise, the (misleading) picture of a fried onion flower on the bag would confuse rather than entice. I can say that it honestly enticed me.

I think they look less like Bloomin' Onions and more like low level sea life, but that's just my impression. 

When I opened the bag and gave it a whiff, I got a very strong sense of sour cream. The little snacks themselves are very light and crispy, but have a "soft" rather than a hard crunch. That means they are airier than a dense crunchy snack food despite also being quite thin. When I bit into it, the sour cream was on the front end followed by a whisper of onion and a finish of corn. The onion component becomes stronger as you eat more and it lingers on the tongue. I'm guessing this is how they justify calling them "Boomin' Onion" snacks because they otherwise don't have anything to do with the Outback Steakhouse calorie bombs they're named for (shape of the little cups not withstanding).

I liked these. I'm not sure how much I liked them. I was glad to have them and enjoyed eating them, but I don't know if I'd buy them again. My husband loved them and I think he would be inclined to buy more if we could easily get our hands on them. I liked the flavor complexity that came through in such a relatively pedestrian snack. I think he just liked the salted, sour cream flavor and light crunch. For both of us, this was a winner.

Source: ZenPop box service

Porinki Asari Corn

My friends and I have an inside joke about corn. I'm not exactly certain how this happened, but it is a lot like being a Monty Python fan. The more you say something, the funnier it becomes, but only to you and everyone else thinks you're a dip. So, it's hard for me not to extoll the virtues of anything which is corn flavored in a humorous way that will not be funny to anyone outside of me and the few friends that are in on the gag.

I say all of that to preface that this gets bonus points to begin with for being corn flavored in any way or including corn in the ingredients. I'm sorry if you don't understand, but that's just the way it has to be. It would be against my nature not to believe in the greatness of corn. All hail the all-mighty corn!

With that out of the way, I'll mention the fact that this is made with a flavoring which is very common in Japan, but that I've rarely experienced here. It is what the Japanese often refer to as "corn potage" flavor and would be seen in the U.S. as a corn chowder.

This is made by a company, Koikeya, that I know very well from my time in Japan as they produce some of the most well-distributed salted snack foods. It has several highly recognizable products including "scon", which has nothing to do with what you'd think it might (scones) and is a salted snack food and this product, Polinki. They also sell a brand of chips which is quite uninventively called "Potato Chips." Yes, that's the brand right there.

The name, "asari" or "assari" (not sure how to romanize these things anymore), indicates that it is going to be a plain or clean flavor. This is meant to convey the flavor of sweet corn, pure and simple without a whole lot of complexity. It could also me "light" or "delicate" flavor, but that seems unlikely given that the corn flavoring on this is very present and deliciously sweet and authentic to the flavor of corn (the king of all grains). Also, the ingredients do include various seasonings including citric acid and tomato powder so it does have some depth. This is very savory and tasty in a way that is hard to convey in words.

The snack itself is reminiscent of a triangular Chex cereal piece, but it is pure crispy badness in terms of its contents. As far as I can tell, this isn't even something which contains actual grains and is a totally processed food. The ingredients list is a little confusing in this regard because you'd think the rigid lattice of the snack would contain corn (because it's the king and that's the flavoring of this), but it mainly seems to be composed of modified starches, cornstarch, and vegetable oil. This is not just junk food, it's super junky junkfood.

However, I don't blog about snack foods based on their nutrition profiles. If I wanted to do that, I'd have to wear yoga pants, shop at Whole Foods, and fret about how to prepare my kale this evening. Trust me, nobody wants to see any of those things happen, especially the first one. So, I will evaluate this completely based on how satisfying it is. The corn taste is amazing. The crunch is right on point. This is a great salted snack food and I wish the bag had been a lot bigger.

While I got this as part of the Oyatsucafe Dagashi box, you can find other sellers online. Tokyo Otaku Mode shop sells them, but lists them as currently out of stock. Similarly, a place called Cosme Store also has them listed, but presently out of stock. Amazon has a version of these for sale, but also says they are out of stock. I don't know what is up with that, but these are a popular inclusion in many Japanese subscription boxes. Maybe everyone is buying them up to put in boxes or something. If you'd like to try them, I'd recommend contacting one of the entities who sell them and see when they'll be available again.

Source: Oyatsucafe "Dagashi box" (part of a $15/month subscription box)

Tyrant Habanero Black Curry (product information)

History has seen its fair share of tyrants - Caligula, Stalin, Pol Pot, and, of course, everybody's low-hanging fruit in the game of "name that maniac", Hitler. A lesser-known tyrant is, of course, Tyrant Habanero. It doesn't commit genocide, but rather attempts to slaughter your taste buds with insanely hot, salty snack treats. Of course, what it does to your mouth is nothing to compared to what it's going to do to the end of your digestive tract on the other way out. Oh, the humanity!

Tohato continues to expand it's line of mouth-burning snack treats with a black curry version of it's salty pressed food-stuff. The chips are shaped as you see them on the illustration. They're supposed to resemble naan bread, but that wasn't the first thing that came to my mind. Black curry is usually dyed with squid ink or some other coloring to make it that color. Word is that Sri Lanka has an actual black curry with unique spices, but I'm betting more on the squid-assisted variety in this snack than the more exotic option. If I can locate this at a Japanese market, I'll certainly give it a try. If any of my readers have sampled it already, I'd be curious to hear your impressions.

A-sha Prince Katsu Snack Noodles

A long time ago, in an island nation not too terribly far away by galactic standards, I sampled a ramen snack. That snack tasted a lot like regular ramen, only without all of the messy watery part and the need to actually cook. One of the things which I actually am not a fan of is noodles in watery broth and I only had a noodle dish in a restaurant in Japan once, and that wasn't even Japanese, it was Vietnamese. I got a pho-based set there because it came with a ton of other stuff and was super cheap. While I'm sure it was good pho, I wasn't terribly drawn in. So, despite my general apathy toward ramen, I was curious to try this snack.

Previously, I reviewed A-sha's delicious spicy vegetarian noodles which were sent to me gratis from A-sha. After I posted the review, I discovered that I had been sent the wrong product. What they really wanted me to review was today's item as it is, after all, a snack product rather than a "food" product. This was all the better for me, of course, as it meant more free stuff for me. This snack is currently on sale for $3.49 on A-sha's site and it is a freaking enormous bag of individual packets of ramen snack. There are twenty packets per bag and each has 70 calories worth of carbohydrate and sodium.

The small size is nice because this is the sort of thing you don't want too much of at once. It's salty, but not over-bearing, and mainly carries the flavor of chicken with a back note of subtle garlic. The flavor depth is made up mainly of those three notes, but that's two notes more than a lot of salted snacks give you, particularly ramen-based ones.

Since I'm not an enormous fan of ramen, it's hard for me to settle on a rating for these. If I loved ramen, I think I'd be all over this to get a fix without the mess or time involved. Since I'm not, I feel like it's a pleasant enough experience, but not one that I'd actively seek out again. So, I think someone other than me would be really happy with these. They'd go especially well as a little salty bite with a drink. However, me being me, I don't think I'd get them again, but I am happy for having had a chance to try them.

Mizuho Arare Handmade Sembei (Wasabi)

Have you ever purchased a blueberry waffle, blueberry muffin mix, or any commercially produced product which is blueberry flavored? If you've done so, there's a very high chance that the product you've consumed contains no blueberries whatsoever. Most "blueberry" is candies that are flavored to taste like the real thing, but actually have little to do with it. That's because real blueberries are expensive, not particularly sweet, and troublesome to handle in their fresh state (as they will mold or go bad rapidly).

Most people don't realize when they're being sold something as something it's not. Even when they learn the truth, if they're satisfied with the taste, they generally don't care. I think the same might be said for the often faked flavor of wasabi. I've read that most wasabi in the United States is colored horseradish. I have no idea if it is fundamentally different in taste, but I'm guessing it may be different in terms of the overall flavor depth and the experience of eating wasabi.

I've said before that wasabi is different from other spicy flavors (that's spicy in terms of being "hot") in that it burns the back of your nasal passages. Intense wasabi will punch you, literally, in the back of your nose. These rice crackers can be a full freaking assault to your entire nasal system. I found that the intensity varies, but if you get a particularly potent one, it will flood your nasal passages from back to front in a flash of painful intensity and hit the back of your throat for good measure. By random chance, if you get one of the less intense ones, it'll just offer a strong, but relatively closer to average hit toward the back.

The nuggets offer a bit more than just the pain that can accompany wasabi. They smell vaguely of soy sauce and have a nice savory undertone that lingers on the middle of your tongue quite awhile after you've recovered from the wasabi attack. The saltiness and overall savory nature is undercut by the presence of sugar. If you've ever made soup and added a little sugar to it (the Japanese often do), you'll note that it'll mellow out any too sharp flavors. Incidentally, sugar is the third ingredient in these after glutinous rice and soy sauce (and before "wasabi powder"). If you're watching your sugar intake, these may not be the best choice.

The texture of these is hard and crunchy. "Arare" sembei is denser, less airy and spongey, and crispier than what is often called "soft" or "fluffy" sembei. I think these are designed to be enjoyed mainly with drinks, particularly alcohol, but anyone who likes wasabi can dive in without potential inebriation to off-set the nasal beating.

I only paid $1.50 for these at Daiso Japan, and I'm torn about whether I'd get them again. I like them quite a lot in terms of the taste and they are made with real wasabi. However, when I hit a powerful piece, it truly is a bombastic experience in my nasal cavities. It reminds me a bit of snorting soda through my nose and not in any way pleasant. I'm not sure if the price I may pay in pain is worth the experience, but I'd probably go for another round of these in the future after I had forgotten that some nuggets are more pain than pleasure.

Nongshim Banana Kick Snack

I've often thought that it would be cool to work for the art department of a snack company. You can come up with all sorts of kooky mascots for equally kookily (not actually a word, I know) named products. I'm sure someone sat around frowning in concentration to come up with a banana that is kicking into the air at an invisible soccer ball when pondering this bag's design.

The "genuis" of this design isn't the anthropomorphic 'nana. No, that was easy. The hard part was deciding his attire, and, I'm sure, if he might have been a scandalously nekkid banana. I'm sure there was much more frowning and thinking as the designer came up with a little word association to think of what to do besides put on a flirtatious and energetic-looking banana. You could imagine him saying, "hmmm... hmmm... (though likely he said "hmmm..." in Korean since this is a Korean product)... bananas... banana split... banana boat... banana peel... bananas shake... bananas and... bananas and monkeys! Yes, who doesn't associate monkeys and bananas? So, we've got a monkey. Why would a banana hang out with a monkey? Well, he must be on safari. Yay! Ideao acquired!

Now that I've gone through the sophisticated creative process, I'm far less certain of the cool factor of working in the art department of a snack company. Perhaps it would be better to design the flavors or food varieties, but that's a post for another time. I've procrastinated long enough and it's time to talk about the actual food contained within the bag.

I bought these because, frankly, they sounded awful. I picked them up at a Korean market for about a dollar and I did it because it was too strange not to. It's not strange because it's banana, but rather because it's a banana salted snack puff. We don't tend to put fruit flavors on our puffs here, so this seemed like a chance to try something quite different.

I assumed this would be sweet, and I'm not exactly a stranger to sweet corn puffs after living in Japan for awhile. It is sweet and has a strong, but not particularly fake, banana flavor. The puffs themselves are super light and crispy. I've had this bag sitting around for more than 2 months, but it stayed fresh (shockingly). That being said, the date was July 11, 2014, so I beat the expiration. Of course, it was sealed.

The banana aspect of these reminds me a great deal of the type of banana chips that are shellacked with sugar on the outside and that people eat because they are supposed to be healthy. There is also an undercurrent of basic corn puff flavor. This could be a cereal, except that it is sweeter than even something like Cap'n Crunch.

The first ingredient in this is corn flour followed by sugar, rice bran oil, banana powder, palm oil, skim milk powder, artificial flavor, salt, lactose, egg white powder, and turmeric (no doubt for color). It's no shock that these are so sweet given that sugar is second on the list. They are surprisingly not so fattening. The entire bag (45 grams or about 1.5 oz.) is only 190 calories. For a salty treat, that's not bad.

These are not bad really, but it is too sweet for my tastes. I was never a fan of banana chips in general, but I could see this really appealing to someone who loves them. Not only does it tastes like them, but these are more fun to eat due to the light texture. They're very close to being something I like, but ultimately, just too sweet to merit a "happy" rating.

Tyrant Habanero Guacamole Rings (product information)

I can get my hands on no small amount of Japanese snack food. In fact, I could fill this blog with daily reviews if I wanted to and never run out of options just based on what can be had locally. However, that would be problematic because I'd have to eat an entire package of food or toss a lot of stuff out (not to mention that it'd be expensive), so you get two reviews a week and news pieces like this.

One of the things that I haven't seen available, however, is the line of super spicy Tyrant Habanero salted snack rings. In Japan, I loved these things. They are super hot, and I'd have to be careful not to eat too many (because, as one of my web acquaintances remarked, they taste good going in, but aren't such a great experience coming out), but I really had a thing for them. I tried some of their other products with mixed results, but the rings never let me down.

Tohato has released a line of these spicy rings coupled with the creamy flavors of avocado. As you can see by the pepper scale on their ad above, this is a three out of five, so not as hot as their usual fare. I would be all over trying this is I could get my  hands on it.

If you're interested in a little Tyrant Habanero fun, you can play a Space-Invaders-style game here. You don't need to understand the Japanese. You just click to choose your ship style when the option comes up (and click "skip" on the intro since you can't read it anyway). You can also download some, frankly, pretty ugly wallpapers if you're so inclined. Those can be had here. Note that the top ones are movies. The bottom ones are images that you can download.

Kettle Foods Corporation Cheese Kornados

Some natural disasters are sadder than others. I don't mean to belittle the effects of any unfortunate instance when nature unleashes her fury on man, but I can't think of anything more devastating than a kornado. Kernels are whirling at high speed, pelting each other and innocent objects like the ammo from millions of BB guns. On hot days, they can get up enough friction to fling popcorn everywhere. The next day, you'll be overwhelmed by enough hungry birds to remake one of the scarier Hitchcock movies.

OK, some products beckon to me by name alone and this is one of them. I have a "special" relationship with corn, or at least the idea of corn. I think it is the king of grains, or at least the evil overlord of them depending on your perspective. I like the flavor of corn in various foods, but I'm not a fan of corn itself unless it is pureed in a nice potage. It's something about the texture. It just grosses me out.

Fortunately, the "kornado" has not only removed those pesky fibrous kernels, but rolled them into little semi-cones. This is called a 3-D snack because these are supposed to resemble tornados, but they look pretty flat. Fortunately, they taste better than they look. The "risk" with salty snacks like these is that they won't have enough cheese flavor, but the flavor powder is very reminiscent of "Cheetos". It's salty and cheesy in that fake way we all know and love and has a very nice, light crunch.

No one is more surprised than me that such a cheesy concept (truly, no pun intended) works. Perhaps they can try other natural disaster-themed snacks? Rye-phoons... Corn-canos... Wheat-storms... OK, none of those works as well as a kornado, but that comes as no surprise.

Random Picture #201

I went to an area in San Jose called "Little Saigon". I perused a supermarket there which offered a lot of durian-flavored items. This one stood out to me not because it was a durian salted snack, but because it is designed for the Japanese marekt. On the left side, it says "durian maki". There's a little cartoon man with a headband that has the Japanese flag on it in the lower right. "Maki" means "roll" in Japan and I'm guessing the little fellow is supposed to represent a sushi chef. Perhaps these are supposed to be a snack version of a sushi roll made with durian? Any way you look at it, this is one scary-sounding snack. And, no, I did not buy it.

Rice Cracker Arare Mix

When I was growing up, my mother was the queen of buying off-brand and store-brand snacks. I'm pretty sure that we never once procured a bag of Ruffles or a Lays brand product. I'm certain we never purchased anything from Hostess. For us, "Little Debbie" was the highest rung, on the rare occasions when we got that far up the economic snack ladder. I think that we dwelt more in the zone of "Mrs. Freshley's" - that's the "Dollar Tree" brand for those of you who don't find yourselves mucking about at the lower end of the shopping spectrum.

I imagine Japan has its equivalent of "Mrs. Freshleys" (or in the case of salted snacks, Granny Goose), but we foreign folk don't know the difference between their Lays brand (it's probably Calbees) and their cheap brands as we didn't grow up with advertising and pricing fluctuations. Even after having been in Japan for 23 years, I still just grabbed whatever suited my fancy and ignored the price differences. Of course, the price differences weren't nearly as broad there between the high and low snacking ends.

I mention the branding issue because I believe today's snack is the equivalent of the lowest of the low on the sembei front. I paid only a dollar for this at Marukai market and it's the sort of thing that I tended to completely ignore in Japan. The main reason it didn't appeal to me was that there is no specific flavor mentioned. It's just a generic mix of different flavored rice crackers. The only identifying information is the use of the word "arare". That simply lets you know that they will be hard and crunch little bites instead of puffy and airy things.

My expectations of these were suitably low. They got even lower when I gave the back of the bag a closer look and saw that they were made in China. I don't necessarily think that makes them bad, but it does mean that they are made with only the cheapest ingredients and for the least fussy of Japanese consumers - think drunken old men living on limited pensions who will take the cheapest nosh as long as it's salty and crispy.

I should have expected one thing and that was that the pink crackers would be shrimp-flavored. I'm not a fan of shrimp, so this wasn't the best of news. The seaweed-wrapped ones were incredibly fishy and the ones with little dark specs were mainly soy-sauce flavored, though it was rather mild. The light ones were pretty "plain", but most of them were contaminated to some extent by a fishy flavor. This is one of the risks of any sort of mix. In fact, when my husband bought a mint candy at See's they suggested he bag it separately so that it didn't infect every other chocolate. The shrimp and fish insinuated their way into everything in the bag.

Even though I'm not mad about fish and shrimp flavors, I would have found this far more likeable if it weren't for two things. One, they weren't salty enough. All of them could have used a heavier shellacking of soy sauce or salt. Two, they were slightly stale or their texture wasn't as crisp as it might have been. I can forgive and tolerate the flavors infecting one another, but I can't excuse the poor texture. That meant I couldn't finish the bag, much as I hate to waste any food.

Taro Net Seaweed Snack

The snack I'm reviewing today comes courtesy of KS Snacks who kindly sent me a box of goodies from Indonesia. If you'd like to know more about their service, you can check out their web site or my review of their service from a few weeks ago. 

Let's talk about seaweed. I spent many years of my time in Japan turning my nose up at anything that included seaweed. In fact, when I first arrived and had onigiri (rice balls) from the local 7-11 as lunch or a snack, I never used the included seaweed paper to cover it because the whole idea of eating that stuff with my smattering of tuna salad hidden in an enormous amount of rice just grossed me out.

My idea of "seaweed" was based on seeing a pile of kelp on a beach. It was wriggly, smelly, and not a little scary looking. I felt like it's scraggly tentacles were going to wrap around my ankles and drag me through the sand into the bowels of a cruel netherworld. Surely the reason that such plants found themselves suicidally stranded on the beach was that they dreamed of escape. They broke through to our world only to find that they were the horrors to our kind.

OK, not everyone thinks of seaweed as a horror. In fact, some people think of it as "lunch", but I was not one of them. It took many years for me to find it less than repulsive. I started to leave the wakame in my soup or not pick the seaweed flakes off of my rice. I wanted to give it a chance. Though it always tasted like roasted grass to me, I got used to it. I can't say that I ever learned to love it, but I definitely stopped hating it. You can only imagine how that left me poised to experience this snack.

I was very surprised that I didn't hate these immediately. They actually don't smell seriously strongly of seaweed nor taste overpoweringly of it either. They mainly smell like the grain component that they are made up of. I can't read the ingredients list, but I think they are processed potato. I've had this style of very light salted snack before and that's what they are usually made of. The base is light, crispy and salty and the seaweed is only a hint. As seaweed snacks go, this is very palatable, even for someone who is as seaweed averse as me.

That being said, there was a problem with this which I've experienced with similar snacks. That is, there is an odd chemical aftertaste which either comes from the processing of the potato or absorption of the materials used to make the bag. It seems a bit like "plastic" to me, but that could just be my particular perception of things.

The maker of this, TPS Foods, has a web site which is in a state of incompleteness. They have "lorem ipsum dolor" messages all over the front page and their product link is dead. That being said, they picture a bag of this same snack which seems to be called "Cowboy Steak". That name alone would make me want to buy a bag of that flavor. Note that you can get any of the flavors of this snack from KS Snacks for $1.29 (and their prices are now represented on their site in dollars so you don't have to do a currency conversion). While I'd certainly like to try other flavors to see if they do not have the aftertaste I associated with these, I don't believe I'd try this one again.

Nongshim Sweet Potato Snack

One of the lessons that I used to teach Japanese students had to do with symbolic hand or finger gestures. The sign for "ok" in America, creating a circle with thumb and forefinger and raising the other fingers, means "money" in Japan (or so I'm told). Humans do not naturally fall into the same sensibilities about symbols. However, due to globalization, we are coming to share more and more of the them.

I never thought too much about this point until I investigated the web site ran by the  South Korean maker of this snack. I saw that this company is a distributor for American brands that I would not have expected to see abroad. In particular, they sell products made by Welch's, V8, McCormick's, and Kellogg's, and, most strangely to me, Morton. That logo of the little girl with the big umbrella walking through the rain? I'm guessing they must recognize that in South Korea, too. It's weird to consider that they know salt the way I know salt. 

This is my first experience with a product by this company and they lured me in with the promise of a sweet potato experience. The potato on the front is the equivalent of a stick figure in potato form, but he does look pretty happy. I'd like to join him in yam happiness.

I should have looked at the ingredients list before forking over my 99 cents for this 55-gram/1.9-oz. bag of salty snackness. The first item is not sweet potato, but rather is "flour". This is supposed to be a sweet potato snack, not an alchemical abomination! You can't make sweet potato gold out of ground wheat. That is madness.

The second ingredient is sweet potato, but is listed as "white sweet potato". When it comes to sweet potato, I'll admit that I'm a bigoted woman. I like them yellow or orange and am fully prejudiced against white ones. If it's white, it ain't sweet in my opinion. So, I've already gotten off on the wrong foot with this snack and the other ingredients including one that takes up an entire line by itself - fructoooligosaccaride - is not encouraging me to go on.

Nonetheless, I tried to approach this mutant snack with an open mind, and then wished it had stayed closed. The substance within is fried, no doubt, and it is lightly salted, but it is far from being "sweet" or "potato". In fact, what it mostly tastes like is frying oil that has seen far too many re-uses. If you're really eating slow (which I don't recommend as then that frying oil taste is in your mouth all the longer), you can get a very vague somewhat sweet potato-y after taste, but your taste buds have to be flexing all of their buddy muscles to catch this. On a "lucky" bite, you may get an errant bit of sesame seed (a few pieces have one) and it'll taste better. Some are also sweeter than others (no doubt due to getting more sugar-coating), but they'd need a lot more than the occasional extra bit of sugar or sesame seed to make me decide not to throw most of it away.

This was a major disappointment and I won't be finishing the bag. It's not so much that it lacks appeal as the frying oil flavor makes it actively unpleasant. I'd rather have it tasteless than taste like French fries made in oil that had been used all day without a change. It's been awhile since a product has been bad enough to  warrant an unhappy rating, but this one easily took the "prize."

Calbee Yakimorokoshi Corn Snack

Sorry for the mangy picture. I had a shot of the unopened bag and lost track of it.

When Japanese folks eat rice, they generally eat it plain. Occasionally, they'll garnish it with a bit of sesame seek or place a pickled plum (umeboshi) on the top. I'm not sure if these things are added to enhance the rice or just for the aesthetic appeal of the contrast between the snowy white rice, black seeds, and red plum. The idea that one would put soy sauce in the rice is abhorrent to most Japanese people and the notion that you'd butter it is downright insane, yet many Americans have been known to butter their rice. It's little different than adding it to potatoes or spreading it on bread. Adding fat to starches is what we do.

The way in which we conceptualize cuisine is far more limited than we imagine because we get into habits. Those patterns are governed by what is placed in front of us from childhood. When we had roasted corn, it was delivered with salt and/or butter. Oh sure, occasionally somebody's grandma may have rubbed it with beet juice or rhubarb pulp or some such esoteric combination, but it isn't common.

For most Americans, it doesn't occur to us that we could brush it with soy sauce and that would add a rich, savory, salty dimension that could be incredibly delicious. In Japan, it is not uncommon to see roasted corn brushed with soy sauce, but I have never seen it here. This being a Japanese corn snack, it's going to go with what they enjoy on their corn, so that's soy sauce.

This corn snack is infused with the flavor of roasted corn brushed with soy sauce. Actually, it's a little low on the "roasted corn" angle and higher on the salt, soy sauce, and, yes, even a little sweetness aspect. It's a flavor combination with depth that plays well with the crispy corn base.

One thing I love about Japanese savory snacks is that, most of the time, they have a fairly rich flavor blend. Many American snacks of a similar bent are one-trick ponies - fake cheese flavor, fake "barbeque" flavor (usually heavy on the smoked paprika), etc. In Japan, I find there's generally a richer mix of things like meat-flavored powders, onion, garlic, soy sauce, and yes, even fish powders. This mix includes bonito (essentially fish flakes) broth and kelp powder as well as soy sauce, sugar, and shiitake mushroom powder. You don't have to love any one of them because they come together in a rich melange of savoriness which is unique.

I really liked these, though the hit of sweetness at the end came about as close to undoing the happy rating as it could come. It just wasn't quite powerful enough to step over the line, fortunately. I found this at Nijiya Japanese market for a mere 99 cents (it's a small bag at 26 grams or just a shade under an ounce) and it was well worth the investment. I don't know where others can locate it, but the package size and design screams typical "konbini" (convenience store) fare in Japan.

Denroku Kaki Pika Ultra Mini

Image from Denroku's web site.

I wonder how many companies out there make variations on what appears to be Japan's most available, if not favorite, sembei (rice cracker). That would be, "kaki no tane" or "persimmon seed" crackers. They seem to be sold everywhere I go, even in mixes at Walmart here in California. Most Japanese markets regularly carry both a "regular" (soy sauce and slightly hot and spicy version) and wasabi. I think of these as the Japanese version of popcorn. It's something tiny that you can cram into your mouth by small handfuls and it provides salt, crunch, and a certain satisfaction to compulsively eat without getting your mouth terribly full.

The problem with this type of thing as well as our venerable popcorn, is that it is too easy to overdo it. It's all so small. I couldn't possibly have eaten that much, could I? Well, yeah, you could, but it doesn't feel like it. The calorie pile up is insidious with kaki no tane, much as it is with M & Ms or other deceptive tiny candies that beckon you to shovel mounds of them into your yob. Denroku has figured out a way to help you take control by putting portions into a tiny little "ultra mini" package. The contents are enough for a small handful. If you want to put away a lot, you'll have to rip open little bag after little bag of them.

As a fan of portion control, I approve of this choice. As a fan of reducing waste, I'm not so happy about it. As someone who lives in a country in which portions are out of control, I'm thinking that recycling can handle the waste and such packaging really does encourage us all to eat less. You can see, I'm clearly torn... over a packet of sembei. I live a complex emotional life, a dumb complex emotional life, but a complex one at that.

The little crackers in kaki no tane mixes come with different degrees of saltiness and heat. These fall more to the salty side and less to the hot. This is not a bad thing. They are very savory with a deep soy sauce flavor, a satisfying crunch, and a generous number of peanuts to provide a balance both in terms of protein and rich fattiness. In fact, this is definitely one of the more balanced mixes of nuts with sembei and that's a good thing. It means they're not going on the cheap, though, if you aren't a fan of peanuts, you might not be especially happy with the distribution. I also believe that these have a better and more developed flavor depth than the Sweetbox version that I reviewed previously.

I received my samples of these kaki pika ultra minis as part of the Skoshbox that I was sent gratis and I'm very pleased that it was a part of it. It's not only that I enjoyed the salty snack itself, and I did, but also that it was a trip down memory lane for me.

Denroku offers some adorable downloadable stationary with their mascot for download for those who want to print out some envelopes (top ones are for New Year's) or note paper for date books.

Yaokin Ebi Mayo and Chicken Curry Umai Bo

You can probably tell that the one on the left is the chicken curry since there's a picture of a chicken on the package, but I'm going to tell you anyway because I'm pedantic like that.

Today's items come to you (and me) courtesy of Skoshbox. These were part of the monthly goodie box that they sent me a free sample of and reviewed last week. 

When I was a kid, growing up in a run-down rural area of Western Pennsylvania, my parents used to "go out" in the only manner in which someone could in the area in which we lived. The only type of social experience that one could have there was at one of several little watering holes. There weren't any restaurants in the town, at least not at that time. You could go out and eat frozen, deep-fried food out of a plastic basket lined with paper and have a beer, you could stay home, or you could drive about a half hour to an hour away and look for something marginally better. 

My sister and I were too young to go out with our parents, and I imagine it would have been a colossal bore if we had; no kid wants to sit around a dark, dank, smoky room while a bunch of men and a handful of women get either quietly or noisily drunk. The highlight of my parents going out was that they'd often placate us for sitting at home with a babysitter who we hated (and we hated all of them) by bringing back tiny bags of Wise potato chips. I remember being happy when my mother would hand over 1 oz. bags of barbecue chips, and annoyed when she'd pony up plain ones.

For me, Wise brand potato chips are indelibly linked to my childhood. It's not only because they were something that I only ate as a kid, but also that they are associated with the region I grew up in. You can't get them in California. I'm guessing that, similarly, Japanese kids might connect their youth with Yaokin's umai bo. It's a salty snack "stick" which is made of puffed corn, comes in a variety of flavors and costs about 10-20 yen a stick, depending on whether you buy them individually or as part of multi-packs.

The fact that these are designed for kids is clear based on the colorful cartoon designs on the outside as well as the fact that no calorie or nutrition data is included. Kids, after all, do not have to worry about calories, right? That doesn't mean they aren't good for adults, though. It's not like there aren't people of all ages out there who are still eating Cap'n Crunch. 

Sorry for the blue cast. My photo taking situation is a bit odd at present.

The ebi mayo (shrimp mayonnaise) stick was the one I started with because I am not a fan of shrimp and I wanted to get the one I was least likely to enjoy out of the way first. I gave it a sniff, twice, and my suspicion that this was going to be very "fishy", or perhaps more accurately, "seafoody" was confirmed. I was encouraged, however, by the large amount of red powder on the outside. I associate that with "hot" and "spicy", but, on second thought, I figured that it is also a color that may be associated with, well, shrimp.

Though this smelled incredibly strongly of shrimp, the actual flavor was more balanced than I expected. The mayonnaise aspect was much more present than the shrimp. It had a nice savory undertone and was ever so slightly sweet as well as salty. Even though I hate shrimp, I really didn't have a problem with this. While I wouldn't seek it out, I wouldn't turn my nose up at it either.

The chicken curry was something I was actually looking forward to as I love both flavors. Just as was the case with the shrimp mayo version, the animal product portion of this was muted next to the other flavoring. Curry is definitely the dominant flavor. In fact, this tasted very much like Japanese curry roux. That is not to be confused in any way with Indian curry, but it is a nice flavor. This has curry flavor on top with a savory undertone and a little sweetness. 

The "umai bo" series of snacks is not meant for adults, but is marketed toward children. To that end, these are not snacks with serious flavor depth or intense or strong flavors. They are still very, very tasty and have a nice, almost fresh, corn flavor with good crunch. I like how airy these types of snacks are. They're giving you texture and the illusion of volume, but are not especially filling. 

I like these, even the shrimp one, and I hate shrimp. This is the sort of thing which I will always associate with life in Japan and a childhood there which I didn't actually experience. They're light, tasty, crispy, and portion-controlled. They're pure junk, of course, but a little junk now and then is unlikely to send anyone to an early grave.