Variety Friday: Free Office Supplies from McDonald's

Despite the fact that I review snack food, I'm not a big consumer of junk food. In fact, I cook my own meals 98% of the time. When I get sick though, that goes out the window as I don't have the energy to put together meals, let alone get on my bicycle and shop for food. About a week ago, I caught a cold and we indulged in some rare take-out from McDonald's.

As a weak sop to my cold and a vague nod at nutritional needs, I got a chicken sandwich and a side salad. I'm well aware that I was fooling myself. The chicken sandwiches are as bad or worse for you than the burgers. Mine was a spicy variety that was fire engine red in a way that made it clear that it was made from materials that do not naturally occur on this earth. Also, the salad was pretty much iceberg lettuce with a few scraps of red cabbage, green pepper and onion tossed in like bits of confetti for aesthetic reasons.

My husband feels no need to pathetically justify bad food choices by making anemic menu selections on the rare occasions that we give in to the junk food gods and offer up our arteries for hardening in supplication. He went for the quarter pounder with fries set meal. With the set, he was given a plastic file protector promoting the World Baseball Classic. Not being a baseball fan, I had never heard of this event before, but I say with every hint of sarcasm that it's appropriate that McDonald's should be involved in promoting athletic events.

While I don't find it strange that McDonald's gives away free stuff with food purchases, there's something a little weird about giving away office supplies. Who says to themselves, "cool, I really wanted a file protector!" Somehow I doubt that McDonald's in the West is giving away such mundane stuff. On the other hand, at least it has some utility. I put tax documents in mine.

Calbee Kikkoman Collaboration Soy Sauce Chips

When I reviewed the yuzu soy sauce chips, the great and powerful Marvo from The Impulsive Buy wondered in the comments about soy sauce flavored chips and if they were black. His wish was my command, but only this once. Frankly, I'm a little frightened of what his other wishes might be. If you read his reviews (and you should), you'll understand that that fear is well founded.

Calbee is one of the best known makers of chips in Japan and Kikkoman is known around the world for its soy sauce. Brand name awareness being what it is in Japan, their collaboration is written on the front as if it were a pairing worthy of much rejoicing. I did a little digging around to get some more information about Calbee. The "Cal" refers to calcium and the "bee" to vitamin B1. I'm not sure what chip production has to do with these nutrients, but I'm guessing that at least some of their products are fortified with them. The company was established in 1949 and started out in Hiroshima, but moved its headquarters to Tokyo about 14 years ago. I've been told that companies having a Tokyo address, particularly in one of the major business districts, carries more prestige.


I can now say with certainty that soy sauce chips are not black. In fact, they look and smell very much like plain potato chips. There aren't even any discernible flavoring specs on them. In fact, the soy sauce component in the chips is so faint as to nearly be undetectable. If you cram a few in your mouth at once (not recommended), you get a better sense of the soy sauce flavor, but it's very subdued.

Don't get me wrong, these are very good chips. They are thin, super crispy, and not too oily. Calbee has always made great basic chips, but making these soy sauce flavored with so little soy sauce flavor seems pointless. Perhaps the flavor is so weak because they wanted to push the whole "simple" flavor concept that is mentioned on the bag. These chips will be on sale until early June and I'd recommend interested parties grab them while they can, but you'd probably be just as happy with regular chips and they (plain chips, that is) are not going anywhere.

Kokuto Marubolo (Honey Brown Sugar Soft Cookies)

Brown sugar is supposed to be better for you than white sugar. In fact, the company that makes these cookies, Kurobo, devotes a page on its web site to letting you know how rich in minerals like iron, calcium and potassium phosphate, brown sugar is. Kurobo specializes in a variety of snacks which use brown sugar and honey. Kurobo has been making sweets since 1920. My translations claim that the name means "black bow", but I'm a little dubious of that. "Bo" means "stick" in Japanese and various sweets made in bar form are called "bo", so it's possible that it means "black stick" or "black bar". The company's top seller is a fried dough "cake" which looks a bit like dog dootie. I've seen that style of sweet in markets many times, but was never tempted to buy a bag of dachshund pellets. One of these days though, I'll have to cross that bridge.


There are eight cookies in each packet for about 200 yen ($2.23). The primary ingredients are flour, sugar, eggs, brown sugar, honey, "sugar water" (syrup) and vegetable shortening. The package doesn't give specific calorie details, but based on the calories per 100 grams and my rough guess of the weight of one cookie, I'd put them at 50 or so calories per cookie. Each cookie is individually wrapped in a Japanese paper packet, but they are not airtight as you can easily smell the cookies through their paper wrappers. I have a suspicion that these would dry out if not kept in a plastic bag.


The cookies smell like gingerbread, though that is mainly because the dark brown sugar used in them smells like molasses. There aren't any of the spices you expect in gingerbread. When you remove the cookie from the packet, it sticks a bit to the paper. The surface of the cookie isn't sticky, so I'm guessing that this is just accumulated moisture.


When I tore the cookie in half to take a picture of the inside, it was actually quite tough. In fact, it felt more like I was ripping it apart. The texture is very coarse and the cookie is soft, but dry. It's easy to chew, but it's more like bread than a cookie or cake. The flavor is very nice. It tastes of brown sugar and honey and is just right on the sweetness. I really enjoyed the flavor of these, but the texture leaves a lot to be desired. They are so tough for a cookie.

These are like a different version of a black sugar "stick" cookie which I have reviewed before and are readily available from various manufacturers. The difference is that these lack the sugary, semi-crispy exterior that those have. I probably wouldn't buy these again, but I will certainly consume the rest of the bag through time. If I was going to buy something along the lines of this cookie, I'd go for the sugary version over this plain version.

Blog Changes

Due to this site's visitor traffic patterns, I'm going to be changing the posting structure and increase the frequency of new posts. Starting from tomorrow, I'll be posting as follows:

Monday through Thursday: a new review posted each day (rather than the every other day schedule I've been using)

Friday: One of a variety of miscellaneous posts related to snack food or junk food

Saturday and Sunday: no new posts

This means that the number of reviews per week will remain the same and there will be one "bonus" post per week relative to the current schedule. The reason I'm removing weekend posting is that traffic drops so much over the weekend that it is clear most people are too busy to catch new posts at that time anyway.

Thanks for reading!

Umeboshi (Pickled Plum) Potato Sticks

When I was a kid, I didn't care much for pickles, but I did like to drink small amounts of the pickling juice from the far as it emptied of cucumbers. I like to think that the ability to consume something so intensely salty and sour at a young age paved the way for me to enjoy umeboshi when I got to Japan. Umeboshi are tiny little pickled plums that are often placed atop the rice portion of a bento (box lunch). You also see them set out on tables in little covered dishes at restaurants for patrons to partake of with various dishes. They're small, wrinkled little fruits which look like a red raisin that has bloated up to about ten times its normal size.


Since umeboshi are so sour, Japanese people delight in asking foreign folks residing in Japan if they can stomach them. It comes in third place in the "can you eat it" game. For the record, natto (fermented soybeans) is number one on the list and sushi is two. I can eat them straight with no problem, but I think many people find them too intense to eat even as an accompaniment to other foods.

Enter these processed potato sticks by Calbee. They are advertised as tasting "faintly" or lightly of umeboshi. These snacks don't smell much at all like anything other than fried potato snack, but not in terms of smelling much like chips. They smell like generic processed fried food with a vague hint of vinegar if you stick it right up to your nose and inhale deeply (the things I do for these reviews). I don't think umeboshi carry much of their own smell, so not much can be expected on that front.

The sticks are super crunchy and lightly salted. They taste mostly like potato, but there is a slightly sour finishing taste. Even though there are little flecks of plum in them, the taste is very subdued. These are clearly designed for umeboshi sissies who can't take much strong flavor. Since I like the intense sourness and saltiness of umeboshi, they seemed about a half step removed from plain Calbee sticks to me.

These weren't bad, but I wouldn't buy them again. The main reason for that is that these are fairly densely caloric at 287 calories for 58 grams (2 oz.) and I don't especially prefer slightly greasy straws of processed potato to chips or rice crackers. I'd go for something with more flavor or with less processing. However, if you want to dip a wary toe into the waters of umeboshi consumption, these may not be the worst place to start.