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.

Bourbon Horo Buono (Cheese Balls)

My expectations of these were that they would be a variation on conventional cheese balls in the U.S. By that, I mean a version of a cheese puff in ball shape. My supposition was incorrect by and large. This is one of those snacks which is unique and defies comparison because we don't have anything like it in the U.S.

These are little balls of softly crispy rice with a cheese coating that resembles white chocolate in texture. The inside is airy and isn't exactly crunchy because it's not brittle, but it's a little crispy. It's like soft sembei.

My guess is that the texture is achieved through using a lot of oil as the first ingredient is soybean oil. The interior is reminiscent to the melt-in-your-mouth texture of the fluffy sembei made by Echigoseika. It's not quite as soft and decadent, but it's on the spectrum.

The exterior texture is very yielding and seems soft, but it doesn't melt despite having a soft texture. It's cool on the tongue, and mildly cheesy. The description calls it "cheddar cheese cream" which sounds about right for the profile. The interior has not strong flavor, but is mainly a textural element.

I really enjoyed these and was delighted by how unusual the combination was. This is a big part of what enjoying foreign-made snacks is all about for me. I love it when I'm offered something which defies description or comparison as opposed to being a variation on a familiar theme.

Note: This was part of my cheese "sweets box" provided free of charge by ZenPop.

Calbee Potato Chips Giza Giza - Cheese and Black Pepper

The site for the "giza giza" (ridged) potato chips that Calbee makes encourages you to enjoy the chips slowly one by one. I don't know if they are letting you know that the experience is better if you eat them slowly or if they care about your health and are encouraging moderation, but it's pretty sound advice in either case. I imagine that American companies would encourage you to cram as many down your gullet as possible so you would go out and buy another bag. Cha-ching!

Most of the Calbee chips that I've had have had a "fresh" taste which carries a stronger potato flavor and lacks the oily heaviness of American chips. While my husband buys Kettle chips, I rarely eat fried chips at all because I've got issues digesting them in America. I will note that I don't have this problem with Japanese chips so it could be something about the fats they use. Nonetheless, I did enjoy these slowly, one by one, and in small portions.

The chips themselves are very crispy and crunchy without being brittle. These are slightly thicker than the standard (non-ruffled) varieties that Calbee makes. The cheese flavor to some extent masks that "fresh" flavor that is so distinctive in Japanese potato chips and that's a little disappointing. The cheese powder has a  "dairy" flavor which means this is made with real cheese. If you're used to fake versions, this may actually seem less "cheesy."

The black pepper is fairly subdued and tends to hit as a finishing note. I'm a bit ambivalent about this because I love black pepper and would have preferred a more potent presentation. That being said, it does balance the flavor experience pretty well because your taste buds don't get saturated with the pepper.

These are lovely chips, but a little on the unassuming side. That's not really a demerit, but just an observation. I enjoyed them and found them suitably savory and with a more complex flavor than some without being flavor blasted.

Note: This was part of my free ZenPop "sweets" box.

Asahi Blueberry Cheese Tart Bar

Though Asahi is best known for its beer, the "Asahi Group" makes other products including snacks, personal care products, and soft drinks. I don't drink beer, but, after tasting this bar, I think maybe they should stick to what they're best known for.

My expectations fo this were quite low considering that it's a nutritional bar/meal replacement type of thing. I didn't expect it to taste great, particularly since it's only 191 calories and a fairly dense bar. The information on the front tells me that this is 9% cheese and .29% blueberry. Though the picture on the package shows a ton of full berries lying around and embeddedin the bar, the flavor and appearance of them is completely absent in the actual bar.

The aroma of this is distinctly cheesy, and not in a good way. It is more like a heavily distilled processed cheese smell. Imagine what it would smell like if you boiled some plastic-covered slices until the odor intensified and you'll get a sense of it.

The taste is pretty funky. There's the odd discordant sense of sweetness mixed with a traditionally savory cheese (Gouda). The texture is crumbly and dense. It looks chalky, but it is more like a shortbread. The bar is very fatty and has 10 grams of fat. There is little to distinugish the "crust" of the tart from the filling in terms of taste or texture.

This is more of a cheese cookie thing that a tart or even a meal bar. It's the sort of weird food that people either have a taste for or they don't. I actually liked the texture, but I did not like the taste or smell.

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

Tohato Ura-Caramel Corn Double Cheese

In England, I'm told that many people refer to any vacuum cleaner as a "Hoover" whether it is made by the Hoover company or not. And, in the U.S., very few people call a facial tissue anything but a "Kleenex" regardless of whether they're blowing their nose into that brand or not. In Japan, staplers are called "Hotchkiss" because that was a popular brand there. It's certainly not uncommon for a brand name of a product to become the name of the item.

Based on the naming of this product,  I'm wondering if "caramel corn" is something people see as representing any product which looks like a curly puff whether it is sweet and contains caramel or not. I have sampled this and there is no caramel in it, though there is corn.

This is a fairly standard cheese-flavored corn puff. The texture is a step above what we tend to see in the U.S. It's lighter, crispier, and lacks the "foam-like" texture you sometimes get in cheaper versions of corn puffs. The texture really couldn't be more appealing. The cheese flavoring is fine, but a bit on the subdued side. This is odd since the ingredients state the flavoring is 80% cheddar cheese and 18% Camembert. The Camembert hits as a finishing note and is distinct, though not potent. It will vanish entirely if you gobble too many down and your tastebuds acclimate to it.

Shockingly, one of the ingredients is "caramel powder," but I couldn't taste it at all nor was there much sweetness despite including Sucralose in the ingredients. If you do the math, the caramel powder is only 2% of the flavoring so it seems that it's there mainly as a token and to validate the naming.

There are some savory powders added in to improve flavor depth (e.g., katsuobushi or fish flavoring) but this still felt like it could use more of a punch. It's possible that my tastebuds after seven years back in the U.S. have lost their ability to detect subtle Japanese flavoring and that I'd have picked up on more of this had I not been "ruined" by life back home, but I tend not to eat too many salty snacks made here anyway.

This was a fine corn puff snack and I wasn't disappointed, though I felt it could have been more. I'll finish the bag for sure, but I won't be craving another.

Note: I received this product as part of my free ZenPop snack box.

Bourbon Petit Cheese Cracker

If you ever wondered what a Ritz cracker would look like if it could mate with another Ritz and reproduce, these cracker sandwiches will sate your curiosity. Imagine happy families of Ritz crackers and their tiny little babies sharing loving glances. Then, Bourbon comes along and rips the infants out of their parents hands, slathers them with cheese, and presses them together. Oh, the humanity!

Each cracker is about the size of my thumbnail and tastes a little buttery. It's easy to taste the cracker separately from the filling because they tend to fall apart. While the crackers are light and crispy and quite enjoyable, the filling is processed cheese and not quite, but close, to being flavorless. There is just the slightest hint of something cheesy, but it could be my imagination or smear of citric acid masquerading as a cheese-like substance at the dairy fancy dress ball.

As crackers go, these fill the bill pretty well. However, for cheese lovers, they just are disappointing. I didn't expect much, and the fact that there is only 8% cheese in the filling isn't helping matters. The packet contains about 25 cracker sandwiches and the whole lot is 245 calories. I didn't finish it because it just wasn't enjoyable enough. I'd rather go for crackers with real cheese.

Note: This item was part of my ZenPop "cheese" sweets box.

McDonald's Squid and Tomato Italian Risotto Balls (product information)

Image from McDonald's Japan

I have never wanted to put quotes around something as much as the word "Italian" in the title of this post. I'm sure that there is nothing Italian about wrapping risotto infused with either tomato or squid around cheese and deep frying it. This abomination is part of McDonald's way of celebrating one of the world's most popular sports. There is no greater way to tip your hat to feats of athleticism than to eat fried balls of cheese and risotto. 

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.

Tirol Strawberry Cheese Pie Premium Chocolate (product information)

About two weeks before Christmas, I bought some brie at Costco. It was on sale and it was about as cheap as such things are ever going to get. What is more, Costco usually has better quality for its prices than your average discount joint. The brie I bought was quite good and I enjoyed a small piece of it most days with a little fruit.

Given that fruit and cheese make such a natural pairing, you wouldn't think that I'd be giving this strawberry cheese pie chocolate the stink eye because it shows wedges of savory cheese with images of strawberries. The whole concept of a wedge of Emmantale with strawberries doesn't bother me. The problem is adding copious amounts of sugar and chocolate into the mix. I will never get the concept of sugar and anything other than cream cheese. This is my admitted defect. That being said, if I found this at one of the local Japanese markets, I'd try it. I'm pretty sure I'd dislike it, but I'd take the plunge considering these are generally very cheap and small anyway.

If any of my readers has happened across this monstrosity and ingested it, I'd love to  hear your impressions.  

Peakal Cheese Rice Crackers

They're "all-natural"! I guess that including silicon dioxide and maltodextrin is good then.

When I was living in Japan, many of my American friends would tell me how much they loved sushi. Since I don't love sushi (I think it's okay, but I'm not mad about it), I found their zeal for it a bit curious. It turns out that they weren't eating the sushi that I was eating because much American sushi is a more elaborate affair than Japanese sushi.

When I say, "elaborate", I mean that it's a more flavorful mess. When it's not, people tend to saturate it with soy sauce, wasabi, etc. to make it tastier to their Americanized palates. In no way do I mean this as a criticism, so please don't misunderstand me. I believe we develop tastes based on the food we're raised with and Americans like strong flavors. Japanese like subtle ones. Sushi in the U.S. and how it is eaten tends to reflect this. My point is that the sushi I had experience with and was so-so about was not the same as the sushi Americans were mad about.

As my regular readers (you know who you are, and I love you for following my drivel) know, I became a huge fan of rice crackers (sembei). Most Americans are a bit so-so on them, or simply don't care for them at all. I can understand that, with flavor-blasted chips and crackers, sembei might seem like a rather boring affair, but I have come to understand that that is not the reason. The reason is that the rice crackers that I was eating in Japan are not the rice crackers that people are eating in America.

I buy most of my sembei from Asian markets and all of it, so far, has been produced for the Japanese market. Occasionally, I do want to try something a bit more "mass market". That is, I pick up something which is sold in a generic American grocery store that anyone living anywhere in the U.S. might conceivably have access to. I do this because I want to see if I'll ever find something which has verisimilitude to what is sold in Japan or whether Americans are doomed to that animal that they call "rice cracker" which seems to be the ugly mutant cousin to Japanese sembei.

I found this package of rice crackers at "Big! Lots". I was there bargain hunting for a memory foam mattress topper and the snacks lured me in. You may scoff at my pedestrian shopping habits, but as long as I'm being paid a dime a post for my blog efforts, I'm going to economically more suited to the "Big! Lots" crowd than the Macy's one. This was about 70 cents, so I didn't have to pay much for my disappointment.

They look a little diseased.

When I tried rice crackers for the American market before, I noted that they were always quite a bit lower in calories. It's clear that the fat content on them is lower and that has a profound impact on the texture. In Japan, rice crackers really are more like chips in that they rarely spare the oil, especially when it comes to the "arare" (small, super crunchy, hard nuggets of rice cracker) ones. In the U.S., someone has clearly decided anything sold as a rice cracker has to be health food. Sure, the calories are lower, but the crackers are tough and crunchy in an unpleasant way. Without the oil, they are harder to chew and bite into and lack the crumbly, crunchy nature of "real" sembei.

These failed on the texture front, but they also failed on the flavor front as well. Though labeled as "cheese", there was barely any flavor powder on them. It's as if they sprinkled enough to add a vague orange cast in select spots and stingily hoarded the rest. Actually, there's a very good chance that there really just wasn't enough oil on the surface to hold onto any salt or flavor powder. It could be that this is a little like air-popped popcorn. Nothing sticks to it so it's like eating Styrofoam packing peanuts.

I didn't expect much of this, but I do still hope to find some good mass market rice crackers without resorting to Asian markets. There are two reasons for this. One is that I'd like to find something that can be had at regular stores. Another and much bigger issue is price. Buying Japanese sembei is not for one who is light in the wallet. If I'm lucky, I can find something on sale for around $2, but far more often than not, they cost $4.00-$6.00 a bag. I have had many experiences in which I've seen some sembei that I loved in Japan, but I simply could not justify paying such a price for a snack. This is especially so when the portions are relatively tiny. So, while this was a disappointment, the search will carry on.

Pon Mania (product information)

Image from the Mister Donut Japan site. The commercials feature a chubby man in drag. He might be a sumo wrestler, but I'm too far removed from the sport after so many years to be sure. 

There were many food-related words that I heard in Japan, but I never gave a second thought to what they meant in English. It's like "sushi". We can see what it is, and don't have to necessarily translate it. It merely is a Japaense word for a food that requires no English. Another one of those words was "pon". Until I started to write this post, I never gave a second thought to what "pon" meant. I just knew that certain foods of certain shapes either were called "pon" or contained the word "pon". Unfortunately, because I decided to write about this topic, I had to go off and look into this pressing issue.

What is more unfortunate is the fact that there are several possible translations of "pon". It can be the sound that is made when something is hit, such as a ball hitting a tennis racket. It can refer to a mahjongg term or the old video game "pong" by Atari. It can also refer to Pom juice, since "m" and "n" can sound the same in Japanese (hey, don't take me to task for this if you don't like it - I got this from the Japanese Wikipedia page - go bitch at them). It can refer to a type of punch or cereal. It also, apparently, means "small" in the language of the Ainu, the aboriginal people of Japan.

From top left (clockwise): "Nama" (fresh) ring, golden chocolate, nama chocolate, chocolate crunch

So, after all of this research, what did I learn about the meaning of "pon"? Well, I didn't learn anything conclusive, but logic tells me it refers to small round shaped food or food made up of small round shapes. For 10 years, Mister Donut has been making a "pon de ring", which is a rather chewy ring made up of little round blobs (due to being made with rice flour or mochiko). As part of their anniversary celebration, they're releasing a "nama" (fresh) line and a line of mini "pon". The minis look like regular donuts, but are made with the same chewy batter.

Image from Pizza Hut Japan's web site.

 

I did experience "pon" in other food avenues as well. MOS Burger at one point offered a "cheese pon", which was a super chewy ball of dough with, unsurprisingly, cheese inside. In that vein, Pizza Hut Japan is offering two types of "pon" with rather different flavor profiles. You can see by the little dough blobs flying around the happy fellow's head that they are either stuffed with orange and white stuff or brown stuff. That's cheese filled or chocolate filled. And the common denominator continues to be the chewy texture of these dough blobs. 

So, though the Japanese Wikipedia never told me so, experience and current offerings would seem to indicate that "pon" is chewy baked blobs made with rice flour. That means that the "winning" definition on Wikipedia is the one that refers to the Portuguese "pont de queijo", or cheese bread. This is a riff on another European bread product, much as many Japanese baked goods are.

If you're interested in celebrating the anniversary of the pon donuts at Mister Donut with a background screen, there are some pretty funky ones currently on offer. I can't directly link, but if you go here, and then click on the button that I've circled in red above, you'll be given two choices of picture designs. I recommend you click the golden lion designs on the right, but if you get off on transvestite sumo wrestlers, feel free to click the image on the left. Once you click the general style, some other options will pop up that you can choose from, but you should be able to work it out based on graphics and screen resolution size choices. 

Random Picture #150

Cheese sweets in the U.S. are synonymous with pretty much only one type of cheese, cream cheese.  Most of us would not think of adding sugar to any type of pungent (savory) cheese. Oh, I guess in a pinch one might go nuts and sweeten up some tangy goat cheese, but you know how things are with goats. They'll do or eat just about anything.

In Japan, one of the things which was a challenge for me was accepting that they liked to offer cheese sweets with Gouda, Camembert and cheddar. Every single cheese pastry I ever bought was made with one of those cheeses. I tried hard through the years to expand my palate, but I never quite got into the idea of cheesecake made with traditionally savory cheeses. I'm sure that meant that I missed out on a lot of opportunities for unique snacking experiences, but I can't say I'm full of regret at those missed chances.

The sign above was in Tokyo station and the food on offer is cheesecake made with Camembert. I love Camembert cheese, either on its own or a cracker. I even love it as part of an open-faced sandwich. However, I was not prepared to eat it in a cake like this. This particular "treat" was on offer as a souvenir (to give to friends, family, or, most often, office mates) rather than as something a person might just buy for their own consumption, but I'm pretty sure that if I picked up one of these for the folks back home, they'd regard it as the equivalent of a cockroach lollipop or some other such weirdness.

I haven't been to Europe, but I do wonder if this notion of using cheese that we regard as only having savory applications in the U.S. originated there and the Japanese picked up on it, or if this is a merging of the occidental and the "oriental".

Shirakiku Koban Sembei (Cheese)

I'd seen these rice crackers (sembei) hanging around the racks at Daiso Japan for awhile and ignored them because they had a fluorescent pink $1.00 sticker on them. I figured that, in a shop that usually sells things for $1.50, there had to be something wrong with them for the price to be marked down.

However, my desire for cheesy goodness coupled with what I saw as a funny name overrode any apprehension I had. And, yes, I realize how ridiculous it is to have any hesitation about spending a buck on a bag of snack crackers, but I've had far too many unfinished packages in my life from a lack of judiciousness in these situations. As someone who is borderline obsessed with not wasting things (I save broccoli stems and asparagus stalks to make soup because I can't stand to toss them out), I feel bad about just tossing things out. That's probably why there are so few of the "unhappy" and "very unhappy" ratings on this blog as they mean that I decided simply to throw something away. I always try to finish.

At any rate, the name of these reminds me of Japanese police boxes which are called koban. I imagined that these were the snack of choice for men who spent their days giving people directions and stopping people to ask if they'd stolen their bikes. In essence, I liked to imagine that these were to Japanese cops as donuts are to American ones.

However, my banal little fantasy is stopped in its tracks by the fact that the words are the same, but the kanji (Chinese characters) are different. This isn't this koban - 交番 it's that koban - 小判. If you can't read that and it shows up as gibberish for you, it doesn't matter because I'm just going to say that the latter refers to an oval coin used during the feudal Edo period in Japan. Bummer. It was funnier to imagine portly cops with salt-covered fingers talking about the latest results of the Yomiuri Giants while ordering a young compatriot to go chase down a foreigner and make him prove he's not a criminal.

My lazy cop fantasies dashed, I sat down and tried my super cheap sembei and was pleasantly surprised. These crackers are a flavor burst of pleasantly pungent cheesy goodness with a nice dose of what I can only call a meaty (umami) kick. The second bite starts in with some smoked cheese flavor. They are not too much of anything and that allows the flavor depth to come through.

The meaty flavor probably comes courtesy of MSG, but cheese is nowhere to be found in the ingredients list. It does include a handful of chemicals including "artificial flavor" and aspartame. Though they don't taste especially sweet, they do include sugar and glucose syrup in addition to the aforementioned artificial sweetener. All in all, these could put the "junk" in junk food.

Despite their nutritional shortcomings, I've already bought these twice and would buy them again. I love the cheesy flavor with savory undertones as well as the good portion control of the individual packages with two crackers each (25 calories). They're also very economical as a sembei option and the Daiso Japan is one of the easier haunts for me to reach if I'm in the mood for some rice cracker lovin'. While Amazon carries a lot of Shirakaku's Japanese food products, they, unfortunately, do not carry the cheese sembei.

Furuta Tiramisu Chocolate

I had a few friends over for lunch yesterday and they mentioned that they had tiramisu for dessert over the weekend. I don't know how popular it is in the U.S., but I can only say that tiramisu will always be linked to Japan for me as the first place I encountered it was in Tokyo... in a convenience store. When I first arrived there in 1989, it was sold pretty much everywhere as a chocolate sponge cake, a layer of whipped stuff that was supposed to mascarpone, and some chocolate shavings or powder. The coffee flavor of these "konbini" offerings was always too subdued or overbearing (usually the former) and the "cheese" flavoring usually had a very chemical in taste.

Despite the fact that I like all of the components of tirsmisu, I was mainly drawn to it for the texture of the cheese. I like anything that is rich and fluffy. It didn't matter that the taste of the low rent tiramisu I usually (but not often) bought in Japan was less than impressive as long as I got that textural feedback. Most of the mass market tiramisu in Japan was simply "ok" and I never tried it at a restaurant.

Anything tiramisu has a real sense of nostalgia for me in terms of remembering Japan, as does "Furuta", a company that makes a wide variety of low profile snacks and sweets. The one with the greatest longevity and popularity is the "Sequoia" wafer bar. It's like a poor man's KitKat, especially if that poor man likes cheap, very sweet chocolate.

I bought this at Daiso Japan for $1.50 (117 yen) as part of a buying frenzy. There are 10 tiny candies, about the size of a Hershey's Kiss, individually wrapped in green foil. Each candy is 36 calories. That makes them more fattening for their size than the average chocolate.

It was only after tasting a candy that I remembered that I'd already sampled the company's tiramisu Sequoia bar and found it lacking. That bar tasted to much like the coffee component and not enough like the chocolate and mascarpone. This candy suffered from the opposite problem. It tasted not at all like coffee and mainly like cheap, but fatty, chocolate and fake mascarpone cheese. I guess that the "cheese powder" can't really do for me what the fake mascarpone did in my little plastic-wrapped konbini tiramisu.

This isn't a horrible candy at all. The chocolate is slightly bittersweet and has better depth of flavor because it's not too sweet. The chocolate on the outside is a bit on the softish side which isn't helping the contrast between the white filling and the outer shell. The inner white stuff seems firmer than the outside, which is simply wrong as the white stuff in tiramisu is supposed to be fluffy and light compared to the denser brown stuff. It's the law, after all. As a chocolate, this is "blah". As a tiramisu chocolate, this fails because there is so little of a coffee component.

Random Picture #113

As is the case in all countries, there are various categories of snacks. I tried to sample from a variety of types including otsumami (snacks to be consumed with beverages, especially alcoholic ones), kid's snacks, grandma's snacks, cheap snacks, traditional snacks (bean cakes, sembei), and modern snacks that riff on Western things. Because of that wide range of things, it was impossible for me to try everything, even within a discrete category. One of the things that I wanted to try, but never got around to was these tiny little snack sticks. On the left are salami sticks and the right are cheese sticks. Each is about an inch long and about the width of a pencil. At only 9 yen (11 cents), I knew they weren't going to be high grade snack food, but that was part of what made me want to sample them. I like to try potentially bad stuff as much as potentially good stuff. Unfortunately, I didn't buy them when I took the picture, and forgot which convenience store was carrying them. Time ran out on my opportunity to try these low-grade snacks, sadly... well, perhaps not so sad. ;-)

If you've tried these, please leave me a comment and let me know what you thought of them. 

Glico Tomato Cheeza

Just after graduating from college, I was desperate to get a job as my guaranteed student loans were going to require their first payment come August. With a B.A. in Psychology in hand, I was ready to take on the universe, but the universe wasn't exactly clamoring for my "expertise". As a stop-gap job, I took work at a Lutheran summer camp as a "crafts counselor". The irony of being called a "counselor" at a job which was essentially a sort of babysitting and teaching kids how to put together pre-packaged kits as a holder of a newly minted psychology degree was not lost on me.

The truth is that I was rotten at that job for several reasons. I have never been good with kids and I was impatient and sometimes angry with them. Another was that I was inexperienced and immature. I barely remember what I did, but I do know that I was oblivious enough about my poor performance that I asked the camp heads for a reference when I applied for my next job. I got that job, but they didn't exactly praise me. They said that I scared the kids. I guess I was lucky that the next job, which was directly related to my degree and far more fulfilling and appropriate for my personality, decided to take me despite the poor referral. Fortunately, I've gotten a bit better with kids (and all people in general) through time.

The reason that I am starting a review with this slice of my personal history is that there was something that happened during my time at that camp which reminded me of these crackers. One of the other counselors had to have her wisdom teeth pulled and was unable to eat solid food. On "hoagie day" (that's submarine sandwiches), she really wanted to have one, but was incapable of chewing one up. She asked the lunch ladies to puree one for her so she could drink her hoagie. After she sipped some of it, we asked her how it was. She said it tasted as you'd expect, but it was all wrong because of the loss of the textures and layers.

To me, that is a pretty good summary of this Cheeza release. This combines the tangy flavor of tomato with Camembert cheese. If I were to eat a cracker, a wedge of cheese, and a tomato, I'd think that was some good eating. In this configuration, the distillation of the cheese and fruit into powders that are pressed into the cracker seems awkward. It isn't helped by the fact that the Camembert, which is usually a mild cheese, seems incredibly intense and pungent. Camembert cheese powder is the first ingredient, and you can really taste the truth in that order.

I found this at Okashi no Machioka discount snack shop for 100 yen ($1.21). That's rather cheaper than supermarket and convenience store prices which tend to run closer to 147 yen ($1.78).  That gets you 42 grams and 214 calories of little crispy, fresh-tasting crackers. Cheeza crackers always taste cool on the tongue as the result of some alchemy I cannot fathom.

Usually, I like intense cheese flavors, but there's something about this which just doesn't work very well for me. Cheeza boasts its high cheese percentage and that is generally a good thing. I rarely find that I dislike their flavors, and I did eat the entire bag of this. However, I wouldn't buy it again.

Tohato Tyrant Habanero Spicy Cheese Crackers

Have you ever kept a pepper in the refrigerator for far too long? They get all soft and shriveled up. In the end, you've got a flaccid item which is a shadow of its former self. If the red pepper graphic on this bag were truly representative of the flavor of the snack inside, it'd look like one of the aforementioned aged peppers. 

Of course, I was unaware of this when I decided to pick up this discounted bag of salted snacks at "My Basket". I figured it was part of the Tyrant Habanero line which generally does a good job of burning my mouth until I get an endorphin rush. For the discounted price of about 66 yen (85 cents), it was hard to not buy them, especially with the promise of "spicy cheese" with some heat. I should have guessed that there was a reason that they were discounted. On the bright side, there are only 215 calories for the whole bag.

These crackers have a modest cheese flavor which is heavy on the sour powdered milk flavor and weak on the delicious cheese pungency. That is chased rather meekly by a bit of a hot pepper bite. It's actually not so much a bite as a half-hearted nip at the air rather than draws any blood. The crackers are hollow, but not as crispy as their American cousin, the Goldfish cracker. There are also a smattering of peanuts mixed in, but not enough to give you some with every small mouthful. They also are so much heavier than the crackers that they fall to the bottom so you can't really eat them as a mix unless you empty the 45-gram (1.6 oz.) bag into a dish or burrow to the bottom of the narrow bag. 

These are not bad at all, but with the evil jack-o-lantern pepper on the front and the promise of "habanero", I expected something in the way of flavorful teeth. If you are the type of person who wants to fool yourself into thinking you can handle hot peppers, this is the ticket for you. If you want something that'll leave your mouth burning for a little while, give them a pass. Personally, I wouldn't have them again. 

Yamazaki-pan Hitokuchi mochi bread

Sorry that there is no cutaway shot. I took one, but lost it in the huge number of photos I've taken lately. If I find it, I'll add it in later.

When we first moved into our neighborhood, there was a Mos Burger fast food joint not 3 minutes from our apartment. Mos Burger, for those who don't know, is the best Japanese rip-off of Western chains like McDonald's. Not only did they pilfer the big "M" logo, but they initially started out with a yellow letter on a red background. As time has gone by, Mos Burger has differentiated itself favorably (for the most part) from Mickey D's. They tailor their menu to suit the Japanese market and offer fresher food. This has the up-side of tasting better, but the down-side of taking a lot longer to serve your order.

When that Mos Burger was still in place, my husband and I used to occasionally go there for food when we were too tired to cook. My favorite was their spicy chili dog. Though I'm not much of a hot dog eater, it was the closest thing to a chili dog I could find in Japan and I grew up with access to very good knock-offs of the famous Skyline chili. As long as a dog had that sort of chili sauce on it, I was in love. I can't say Mos Burger's chili dogs come close at all, but there aren't many other options in Japan.

Before that branch of Mos Burger faded away due to a lack of business, they once offered something called a "cheese pon". This was one of those temporary deals that is on hand for several months then goes the way of the dodo bird. I mention this because those cheese pon were almost the same as this bread which I purchased at Lawson 100 (for 100 yen/$1.24). Eating these brought back memories of spicy chili dogs and greasy bits of chewy bread.

There are 8 little doughy balls in the package and each is a stretchy little dough ball. They are greasy feeling on the tongue, but not so oily on the fingers. The inside looks a lot like mochi (pounded rice cake) and is chewy like mochi, but less refined. The cheese flavor is so subdued as to be nearly absent. In fact, I wonder if the "cheese" aspect is mainly to get them to look orange. The ingredients list does include "cheese cream" and "natural cheese", but they are a bit far down on the list after the basic bread-making ingredients.

I ate these over a three-day period and I really liked them as a sort of wicked little bread snack. I don't know how bad they really are for you because Yamazaki-pan rarely gives nutrition information on its packaged bread products. In fact, on more than one occasion, I've had an interest in something they offer but passed on it because I had no idea what I was eating. This time, I just took the plunge anyway.

I wish these were cheesier, but they really hooked me with their texture and overall taste which I wish I could describe more effectively. The flavor is very subtle and probably would have been more pronounced with a bit more salt in the mix. At any rate, these pair well with soup or simply as a snack with some weight. If you come across them, they're well worth a sampling and are a unique experience.

QBB 6P Hokkaido Cheese

I'm a sucker for any box that has cow illustrations on it. I'm not sure why that is, but it remains the truth and I'm not afraid to admit it!

One experience I often have with my students is that I will ask them a question about Japan or Japanese culture and they will answer with, "I never thought about it". When you grow up in a culture, you rarely pause to question why you or other people do the things you do. You simply do it.

For instance, I might ask, "why do you think Japanese culture evolved such that people take off their shoes before entering the house?" The common answer is that they are just such darn clean people. The reality, I'd wager, is linked to the evolution in furnishings in Japan. They didn't happen to build beds off the floor, or chairs with legs, so sitting on the floor all of the time ramped up the need to keep it clean. It's not that Japanese are genetically inclined to be cleaner than any other human DNA line. It's, perhaps, just that their culture followed a different path on the furniture front and shoe removal was a more logical step for them than inventing the vacuum cleaner or raising their beds off the dirty floor. (Note: I think that climate played a role in this as well as you don't have shoe removal in very cold climates, but that's not really an issue for this blog.)

My point is that you don't think about things very deeply after you've seen them for awhile (or forever), and only today did I ponder this sort of packaging and sales of cheese in Japan. The Japanese, in my experience, are not a nation of cheese eaters. That is not to say they don't eat cheese as a component of a dish. They certainly do. However, I've never spoken to anyone who said they routinely grab a wedge or slice of cheese and chow down on it for a snack. I, on the other hand, often enjoy a slice of cheese and a handful of mini pretzels as a fortifying tea time repast.

Recently, there has been an increase in the number of varieties of cheese sold in these round boxes with individually wrapped foil wedges. The varieties cover sweet and savory with "rum raisin" and "vanilla" dessert cheese options and faux mozzarella and black pepper varieties as well. Since the retail price of a box of these types of things is around 300 yen ($3.74) for six 18-gram (.63 oz.) wedges, I tend not to buy them because I've got real cheese (rather than processed, as most Japanese cheese is) on hand that costs less. However, with the closest Costco having been shut down due to some earthquake-related fatalities, I ran out of cheese and found this box of Hokkaido cheese for a mere 198 yen ($2.47) at Lawson 100 and decided that I was going to have to get my cheese on more expensively.

The main selling point of this is that at least 60% of the milk used for it is from Hokkaido. I've mentioned before that the Japanese are bonkers about regional food, and the fact that origins are mentioned early and often supports this assertion. Yes, in America, people will buy "real Wisconsin cheddar", but I think that that type of selling point isn't nearly as common or as valued. I've never had a discussion with an American who said, "it's from (region), so it's better." I hear such statements at least twice a month living here. Frankly, I don't know if the dairy being from Hokkaido makes this better cheese, but I do find it an interesting cultural point.

For processed cheese, this is pretty nice. It cleaves in a manner which I find satisfying. You can see grains along the break and it has the heft of a real cheese, though it still is softer than the real deal. It is mild, but still has a pungency to it so that it tastes like cheese rather than cheese product. One thing I have to give Japanese processed cheese makers credit for is that, most of the time, they aren't selling blocks of quivery, rubbery Velveeta-style stuff. It is more like a hybrid between real cheese and cream cheese.

Each wedge of this is 59 calories and it makes for a nice portion-controlled snack, though it is still more expensive than better quality Costco imported real cheese. If you don't have that option though, this is a pretty nice choice, and I bet it'd go really well if you sliced it in half and melted it on a cracker (a Triscuit would be divine, but then we're talking about another imported item) with some olive and tomato. It'd also be good with a dab of yuzu-koshoo or wasabi sauce.

I can say that I'd definitely buy this again because I had bought it twice before writing this review. No, I'm not over the moon about it, but it was good. And, as for the market I think it is aimed at, I think this falls into the category of otsumami (snacks to be consumed with alcohol) or bento fodder with a heavier emphasis on the former. However, unless I get to have a chat with the marketing folks at QBB, I'll never know for sure.