Good Day Carrebian Nut Instant Coffee Beverage

Recently, I acquired some samples of General Foods International Coffee including the Suisse Mocha variety (one does this by asking for them - it's no great feat). About 20 years ago, I was an enormous fan of the sugar-free Suisse Mocha. It seems that a sugarless version is no longer being produced, but I did want to try the regular version to see if it held up over the years. It did not.

The flavor of that instant coffee seemed thin and despite my carefully measuring the water, it seemed very diluted. My guess is that the coffee didn't really change, but I did I've since spent years drinking real coffee. It's not like I'm guzzling down espresso or black coffee, but rather I tend to mix half a cup of good, strong-ish coffee with a half a cup of almond milk. Still, my diluted coffee is stronger than Suisse Mocha. It disappointed, but it's not like I was thinking about going back to drinking it regularly anyway. Still, I like to have a solid instant coffee option (as well as a hot cocoa one) because sometimes I'm either too tired to make the real thing and I'm not too infrequently in a place where that is not an option.

After the Suisee Mocha disappointment (which would be a good name for a suspense movie), I was very much looking forward to trying this instant coffee which I received from KS Snacks in Indonesia. As some may recall from the "service" review I wrote of them, they sent me a big box of intriguing goodies and this was one of them. There are four flavors of "Good Day" instant coffee and, luckily, this would have been the one I was most curious to try given that I'm a huge fan of hazelnut.

Preparing the coffee is simple. Add 150 ml. of hot water and stir. It's pretty simple stuff. I usually add a touch of milk to instant coffee on those rare occasions when I have it, but I wanted to try this straight up the first time. It didn't need the added milk.

The ingredients list is quite short and simple. It's instant coffee, sugar, non-dairy creamer, and hazelnut flavor. That should give you some idea of the sweetness level of this. It is intensely sweet, but not in a bad way. In fact, my first sip made me think of "liquid Nutella". Though there is no chocolate in it, the roasted flavor of coffee can sometimes take on chocolate flavors and the pairing with hazelnut as well as the high level of sweetness brought that yummy treat to mind.

I don't want to be misleading. This isn't really liquid Nutella. It just brought the notion to mind. There is an intense hazelnut flavoring at the end of a sip which hits you with a strong dose of flavor. If you've ever bought or tried brewed hazelnut coffee, this is it with a milder coffee flavor, more milkiness and more hazelnut.

I liked this a lot, but it is like liquid candy. It's very sweet and intense and more of a substitute for a treat than a beverage. Still, if you like hazelnut a lot, quite sweet drinks, and coffee at least a bit, you should enjoy this. You can get it here for 14,900 rupiah or $1.28 for five packets.  I wouldn't drink this everyday, but I would drink it as a dessert.

McDonald's Chicken Egg McMuffin (product information)

Do your remember making lists of desert island objects when you were a kid? That was what you did before you made lists of desert island songs and books as a teenager. In such lists, you'd think about what you'd need to survive and use those ten items to make a nuclear reactor out of a coconut so that you could live in style in exile.

McToast is sad toast. It's what you'd make at home if you were out of bread and had nothing but stale burger buns to work with.

Sometimes it feels like fast food places are working with the same limits. They have a short list of food stuffs and they keep juggling the mix around to create "new" menu items. This breakfast option from McDonald's Japan feels like a dance card shuffled into the wrong place. It is their fried chicken patty added to an Egg McMuffin. I guess that someone at corporate asked, "what do we have that we haven't swapped into the morning menu?" Still, it's less pathetic than the "McToast" option. That's a burger bun flipped around so that the inside is toasted and filled with ham (Canadian bacon) and cheese.

This probably seems less strange in Japan than it would in America. They already have hot dogs on their regular morning menu there and it is a culture which includes fish and rice as part of its traditional breakfast. To me though, fried chicken, even in the form of a patty of pressed meat, is just "wrong" for breakfast. I'm guessing it's pretty good though if you're hungover, as no small number of businessmen are inclined to be.

Random Picture #190

Some time back, I reviewed the liquid version of one of the three candies pictured above. These three flavors are super pickled plum (umeboshi), super soda (ramune - like lemon lime usually) and, rather obviously, super lemon. On the first bag, the caption is, "Ah, suppai," which means "sour". It can also  mean "acidic" but umeboshi are quite sour. 

The interesting thing about these intense candies is that the brand given here is "Nobel". The liquid version, which is clearly the same brand as the graphics are identical, was made by Japan Tobacco. I'm guessing JT licensed the flavor for a beverage because Nobel (or "J-bel" as it sometimes calls itself) has been making candy under that name since 1949. 

One interesting thing about the web page for all of Nobel's hard candies is that they have little descriptions under them and one or the other is highlighted to tell consumers what sort of product it is. The options are "basic", "healthy", "handy", and "fashion & casual". These candies are all listed as "basic". It strikes me as a way of marketing which essentially says, "this is our boring" candy, and a very strange way to promote a product. I'm guessing this is one of those cultural differences that I haven't figured out yet.

KitKat "Merry Christmas Happy Box" (product announcement)

All images come from Nestle Japan.

Some of my readers may recall that it is common around the end of the year for merchants to sell "lucky" or "happy" bags or boxes. They are usually associated with the New Year and are sold on or after the first. This one, by Nestle Japan, has "Merry Christmas" above it so I'm not sure if they're targeting Christmas or the New Year. My guess is that it's both, but it is mostly for Christmas.

The assortment that you can buy via mail order includes 1102 grams of candy for 2500 yen (about $24). Shipping is "free", but my feeling is that the price of what you're getting essentially more than encompasses the cost of postage. The thing is that the collection isn't really anything special. It includes the commonly available "adult sweetness" KitKats (vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, green tea), Nestle Crunch bars, Milo, and Aero plain chocolates. It's a little like receiving a bag or box of Hershey's candy that anyone can buy in a regular supermarket. 

This is not necessarily a bad package, but it's nothing special in terms of contents. Certainly, a recipient would be "happy" to get it, but there's nothing "lucky" about it - unless they put some sort of golden KitKat in every millionth box.

Glico Hiroshima-yaki Pretz

Recently, I went a little crazy buying vegetables. Yes, I'm one of those freaks of nature who actually enjoys them and going overboard set me up for days and days of eating eggplant, spinach, brussel sprouts, lettuce, and tomatoes (not all in one horrible salad) before they went bad. The truth is that there are few vegetables that I don't enjoy in one form or another... except peas.

Why has the pea been placed into veggie exile in my mind? It's not because of the taste necessarily. I'm not a fan of the texture, but I'm mainly thinking of canned peas and not fresh ones. I hate peas because my mother tried to force me to eat them when I was a child. When I think of them, I think of being forced to sit at the kitchen table with a plate of them in front of me. I played a power game with my mother on that day and I won. She and the peas both lost.

So, a lot of our food preferences are about taste, but some are about experience. I should probably give peas another chance, but then they (and my mother if she found out) would "win" and I'm not going to surrender my victory no matter how much time has passed. Okonomiyaki, the Japanese "pizza", "pancake", "omelet" or pile-of-stuff-that-looks-like-barf -(whatever you want to call it ) has a similar negative memory associated with it. If you don't want to read the linked post for the story, I'll say that I hate the connection between idiot school girls and okonomiyaki more than I dislike the taste of the actual dish.

Fortunately, I don't connect Pretze with school girls of any kind so I was willing to try out this "Hiroshima-yaki" with a picture of okonomiyaki on the front variety. Apparently, the Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki has a layer of yaki-soba noodles as well as bean sprouts, omelets, eggs, onions, and other typical ingredients. Incidentally, this is a "regional" Pretz. Yes, there are those just like there are regional KitKats.

I suspected when I bought this that it wasn't going to possess a rich flavor depth that included all of the involved ingredients. Pretz is, after all, a pretzel dusted with flavored salt. I don't think they carefully integrate seasoning into the dough before they bake the pretzels, but rather just use different flavoring on their basic pretzel. And, I was right. This has a light dusting of seasoning that gives it a mild okonomi sauce (that's the brown goo that is on top of the pancakes) flavor and not a whole lot else. It's got a little hint of Worchestershire sauce and soy and not nearly enough salt. The pretzel itself has a nice quality which is fresh and light, but nothing really to get too excited about.

If you are scared of something exotic, but want to fool yourself into thinking you're being adventurous with food, this is a great choice. It's a bit expensive for a fairly basic pretzel (I paid about $1.50 for this) and only worth it for the novelty factor. While I thought this was fine, I certainly wouldn't buy it again because it's just not that remarkable.