Random Picture #173

This picture is courtesy of Coca-Cola and it's not a product announcement because the contents are nothing new. This is a limited edition design for cans sold only in Okinawa. It's a limited edition, so it won't be around forever. The illustration is of hibiscus flowers and they are apparently quite popular in the region as part of gardens and parks. They are not originally from the area as the plants were brought over from China and transplanted there.

I'm not using this picture because I want to give botany lessons. The truth is that the only thing I've ever successfully grown is green onions which pretty much thrive if you put them in a glass of water and leave them alone. I'm using this picture because the can is pretty. :-)

Family Mart Bububu Curry (product information)

People love to show rarely eaten and even more rarely offered food monstrosities in the U.S. and say, "this is why Americans are fat!" They hold up these foods as if they were commonplace in the Western diet. Similarly, we often see weird Japanese food that is quite uncommon offered as an indication that those wacky Japanese are so strange from the rest of the world.

I say this because I want to be sure that my offering this picture and information is not misconstrued as saying this food is common in Japan in any way, but it is, nonetheless, being marketed by convenience store "Family Mart". The item pictured above is a curry which features bacon, sausage and lunch meat. As a serving suggestion, crushed potato chips are placed on top of it. The information on the left tells you that the chips are not included, but this curry dish is only 530 yen ($5.30), so you can probably afford to buy a bag of chips for 100 yen ($1.00) and perform a do-it-yourself garnish.

I had to search a little hard to find out how many calories are in this. Without the chips, it's 1400 calories, so this is really good if you plan on skipping dinner or have to run a marathon. 

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.

Artek Chocolate Wafers

From my extremely limited experience with Russina sweets--that is, two whole reviews--I have already learned something. If there is a "P" in their writing, it means an "R" in English. That being said, you'll note that the picture of the package shown above does say "Artek". The sides, however, say "Aptek" as does the Russian product information. Look ma! I'm learning Russia through junk food! Who ever said that this stuff is bad for you?

I found this 130 g./4.6 oz. packet of chocolate wafers at Crossroads Specialty Foods. This was the same place at which I procured the tasty Russian butter and cream cookies. Like those cookies, these were very cheap at 99 cents (about 100 yen). Compared to cheap store brand wafers which you can buy seemingly by the pound for about a buck, these might seem a little expensive, but they are cheap compared to other European wafers. The question is about quality.

It should be noted that I am an enormous fan of wafers of all sorts. I like bad ones, sweet ones, bad ones, high quality ones, vanilla, chocolate, fruit flavors, etc. Because of the light, crisp texture and my being a texture junkie, it's hard for a wafer to go wrong with me, though there is absolutely a threshold at which the calories are not worth the experience. If I didn't have the metabolism of a moderately active middle-aged white lady, I'd eat whole packages of wafers no matter how flavorless they were. I can say that with confidence because I had more than my share of experiences in Japan with said types of wafers and making a package of them "dinner". I'm just too old for that now. Neither my metabolic rate nor my digestive system would tolerate such happy nonsense anymore.

Fortunately, these wafers are well worth the 115 calories per half wafer. That may sound stingy, but this package only contains three very big wafers. If you were to divide them into more standard size ones, they'd probably each make three or possibly four more American or Japanese size ones. These shine above the conventional in a few ways. First, the ratio of filling to wafer is very good. Japanese ones were often too stingy on the filling. The filling is flavorful, fatty, and even creamy. It's a bit closer to ganache than your average wafer filling American ones are too sweet and chalky in their filling. The wafers themselves are fresh, crispy and satisfying.

These remind me of the venerable Loacker variety, though those are much more airy than these. There's more heft to these, but they aren't especially dense. The thicker, creamier filling stops them from being too hard. 

I thought these were excellent for a consumer level wafer. If you gave me a selection of all of the wafer cookies I've ever had, including all of the sugar wafers I can try in the U.S., I'd choose these. considering my appetite for wafers, that's a pretty ringing endorsement. That being said, I'm judging these as a wafer among wafers, not as a snack among all other snacks. I'd still take a mont blanc or a good bit of cheesecake over something like this, but it's unfair to hold a cheap consumer level shelf stable sweet up to freshly made pastry.

This line of wafers, though not this particular presentation, is available online from the Russian Table. 

Morinaga Summer Amazake (product information)

One of my former coworkers, a British woman prone to stealing our German potatoes when we went out to restaurants to eat with her, told me that her grandmother was sick and likely to pass away soon. I told her how sorry I was, but she said that there was no reason to be sad because her grandmother was "ready" to shuffle off this mortal coil. She said that her grandmother, who was in her late 80's, had seen the world change so much since she was born that it exhausted her. When her granny was born, there were no airplanes and her son ended up being a pilot. The world had come so far so relatively fast that she felt out of place and ready to move on.

We often don't think about how fast things have changed because they do so seemingly gradually within the span of our lifetimes. However, even within my 48 years, lifestyles have dramatically changed. If a person could live to be 300, I'm sure that their 20-year-old self would find the world that their 299-year-old self would mundane was amazingly different.

When we think about such changes, we usually focus on technology - computers, internet, cell phones, locks that no longer require keys and shopping that no longer requires cash. However, there are other ways which take a little more attention to detail and one of those is seasonal food. When I was a kid, we could only get oranges "in season". These days, you can get nearly any food year-round (though location does matter to some extent), but the price is affected by availability. The world has grown smaller in such a way that produce that can be grown somewhere far away can make it to our local stores before it spoils, at least with the help of some chemicals.

I thought about this when I discovered that Morinaga is selling summer amazake (a sweet fermented rice drink with a low alcohol level). Usually, amazake is sold as a warm drink in winter and is fairly common at shrines during New Year's celebrations. It's a winter seasonal thing, but not Morinaga is offering it chilled, freeze-dried, and frozen for summer enjoyment.

The question I thought about was why this drink hasn't been positioned this way regularly for decades. Why limit it to winter consumption? Well, the reason is that we get into habits and forget to change. We build a little mental box that says there is a time and a place for such things even when there is no longer a reason. Frankly, I like it when companies do things like this because I think that thinking outside of that unnecessary box is good for us. I know they just want to sell more drinks, but, if it gets people thinking about doing something outside of routine, it's all for the good.