i love it when people surprise

News of my penchant for foreign snacks is spreading from friends of colleagues to people with whom I make small talk. Today someone I see in the gym now and then brought me souvenir snacks from Japan. She was teeming with excitement and I was trying to appear grateful, but the bag looked an awful lot like the mixed bean cracker mixes I can buy at any Asian store here for about $2.

"You have to open it!" she said. "You need to try them right now."

I sensed this was going in a bad place. I opened the bag and looked inside.

"No, try them!" she practically yelled. "I can't wait to see your face."

Seriously, this was a lot of pressure.

I pulled out a small handful, took a look, then put them in my mouth. Peanut covered in flour, green pea, horse bean with sesame seeds. They tasted a lot like mixed bean crackers. My gym friend was practically bursting with excitement.

So I took another handful. I had almost put it in my mouth when I noticed that this handful did not quite look like the others. It had little dried fish.


Mmmm... rice covered peanut, green pea, sugar covered horse bean, dried anchovy. Dried anchovy?!?

And I had assumed that my gym friend was lame. I love it when people surprise.

is the food almost tasty too?

The name of this joint is highly suspect, no? Too bad it was closed when I passed so I couldn't find out what made the food "almost perfect."

clearly this is where we should all buy jeans

I spotted this place in Burlington, Vermont. Sadly, it appeared to be closed, ending my dream of finally achieving fashion plate status.

houseguests

aaaaah. I love them. I always welcome them. But what's with the ones that come from a foreign country to visit for the first time, speak perfect English, and can't handle getting around and seeing stuff on their own? I live in a city full of great tourist attractions, many of which I can recommend and point out on a map. I don't get weeks and weeks of endless vacation, so I always tell people that they're welcome to stay and find stuff on their own, and that I'll join when I can. They always sound so excited, but then inevitably they get here, and they sit around and do nothing unless I take them places.

The evil part of me wants to invite myself over to their homes and do the same in return but I just can't bring myself to do it. Do I need to put up a rules board like all the hotels do?

Speaking of hotel rules boards, here's one I enjoyed immensely. Check out the red type. Thankfully, I at least don't have that problem.

i hope their business cards say this

I'm not sure what verb they think they're using here (to patrionate?), but good on them for not letting the pesky problem of trying to find a real word stop them from thanking their customers.

flying to meetings is ass

Today I flew to another city for a 1 1/2 hour meeting.

I wasn't even the presenter at the meeting; I was merely one of many attendees. After my long morning of fighting traffic to get to the airport, waiting for my flight, getting on and sitting through my flight, and finding a cab and fighting traffic to get to the meeting, I could only think of how ridiculous it all was. My carbon footprint had grown, my company's purse had shrunk, and my patience had been strained - all for a meeting that could easily have been held by netmeeting or video conference. And I wouldn't have been forced to look at the presenter's icky sweat stains (which, btw, were both large and numerous).

Today's one happy event occurred when I was killing time before getting back on a plane. Thanks to some idle time-killing shopping, my house key is now garnished with this fantastic loungefly key protector (yes, that's a little bit of Florence in the background).


I've been flashing it around like it's some sort of Olympic gold medal. So far nobody's given me much of a reaction, except maybe the small child who stopped crying to squint his eyes, then managed to focus on the loungefly, and then started crying even harder. But he was like 8 months old and wearing a raunchy velour one piece outfit, so I'm not sure anyone should be listening to his pronouncements on design.

need some destructive electronics?

(Try to look past the egregious apostrophe abuse.)

This place made me stop and laugh out loud in Hawaii. I have to assume it opened before December, 2004.

i'm back and i may not feel well soon

Given that I aspire to a vegan diet (I haven't quite gotten there yet), I'm always looking for alternative sources of protein. I love going to Chinatown to scope out new tofu creations, some of which have been a bigger hit than others.

Tonight for dinner I went all crazytown and cooked this sucker.


Yes, soybean made chicken, in the shape of a chicken--I guess. I was a bit suspicious of this, not just because none of the ingredients sounded tasty, but also because the cooking instructions were "microwave 3-5 minutes."

So I microwaved it for 4 minutes. Then I decided I should add something that people normally eat with chicken. Of course, I don't really know what that is, since I haven't eaten chicken in well over a decade. But I had a sneaking suspicion that green peas might work. After all, the people I know who eat lots of chicken are pretty white and peas are a white person food. Or so my reasoning went.

So here it is on a plate with some peas. (BTW, you're seeing it without sauce, since I wanted to taste it first to decide what sauce would go best--and taking a bite would ruin the integrity of the "chicken" for the shot. I ended up adding soy sauce.) How's this for a white bread meal?


You know what? I don't know if it tasted remotely like chicken, but it was delicious. Really.

But here's where the story goes wrong: I finished the whole plate and then decided to go back and read the package again. I read the amount of everything per serving and it didn't sound so bad: 7g of fat, 334 mg of sodium, 6g of protein, 1.4g of sugar. But then I went back and read this: 20 servings per container. So I just ate a plate that had 140g of fat, 6,680mg of sodium, 120g of protein and 28g of sugar.

Is this even possible?! It seems to me that if I really just ate 120g of protein I'd feel a bit more full than I feel right now. And I don't even want to think about what that somewhat excessive amount of fat and sodium might be doing to my organs right now.

This has the potential to be much worse than the misguided Dairy Queen visit. Help.

don't do the funky dance

Walking to dinner last night, I passed a man sitting in his parked car, chugging pink grapefruit juice out of a 2L jug. I turned away to laugh, and spotted this fantastic sign. Thanks, man chugging vast quantities of pink juice!


I stopped doing the funky dance immediately.

RainyBow

mmmmm... stale tarts

I think news about my obsession with foreign snacks may be spreading a bit too widely. A colleague's friend (who I have never met) went to the Philippines and brought me back these snacks. Don't get me wrong; I was pretty happy that the tarts ended up in my hands. But I have a sneaking suspicion that people are beginning to describe me the way I talk about I-like-getting-gas colleague sometimes.

At any rate, check out the tarts.

The best before date on the package is the end of July. Now, I don't eat a lot of packaged baked goods, so I may be missing something, but that seems like a long way away. The ingredients are even more interesting though:

I had to do some research before sampling these. Langka is just another word for jack fruit (which, incidentally, is a diuretic when eaten in large amounts). Coconut sports I'm still a bit fuzzy on (probably mostly because of the image in my head when I say or write it), but the mention of "jella powder" is what truly perplexes (is it just Jello powder with an Asian twist?). Somewhat reassuring is the fact that the manufacturer is a member of the Sweet & Delicacies Association of Pampanga.

I had a few of these guys this morning and I have to admit that, while somewhat stale in texture, they were extremely tasty. They definitely beat the pants off of Pico Buzzy.

Rainy

thank goodness they won't force me to accept some water

Sometimes the things I see amuse me so greatly that I wonder if some little elf-like creature walks around the world in front of me, setting it all up for my benefit.

(And I think you can see the reflection of my complaint free world bracelet in the window. I didn't even try to set that one up!)

RainyBow

snacks requiring an iron stomach

OK, so I've been known to eat pretty much anything on a dare, and also for my love of foreign snacks. But somehow I just can't bring myself to take a bite of these ones, brought back for me from Trinidad.


Pepper mango and pepper plums. As you can see, they're a weird shade of red-brown. As you can't see, they smell rank. I haven't even opened the packages and the smell makes me retch. I'm sure this situation is amusing Sunny immensely because I sort of feel like I have to eat them. Suggestions as to how to train myself for this are welcome.

In other news, I've been busy taking a crazy long course this weekend and I'm off on vacation tomorrow. This is a darn good thing because the snow is making me squirly. The vacation has potential to be fascinating so I'll be posting here and there on the road. I think I'll be reading comments but I'm not sure I'll be able to comment back. Make sure to be super controversial and offensive where possible so that you leave me steaming. I love that.

RainyBow

the worst foods in america

Remember when Rainy posted this? She might have been on to something, because Aussie Cheese Fries with Ranch Dressing has been declared the worst food in America. Just looking at it is hardening my arteries. Check out the rest of the list too. Frightening.





Sunny

i always wanted to be a hand model

Check out what we got in the mail yesterday!


RainyBow

____________________________

SunnyShine note: I have had a headache ever since you gave me my bracelet. I wonder if these things are related? It has been a week now - enough already.

Also, I have figured out how to work this system. Technically, if you complain twice in a row, you don't have to move the bracelet because it would end up on the same wrist it started on in the first place. You could easily get to 21 days of not moving the bracelet if you just complained in multiples of two.

need some brida things?

I spotted this while stumbling home this evening. I'm still laughing, but then again, I'm drunk (as you can probably tell from the quality photography). Perhaps the person who wrote this was also drunk. I don't know how else to explain the missing "l."

I may think this post is really lame when I'm hungover tomorrow morning. Oh well.

RainyBow

more snacks

As you may have gathered from at least one previous post, I love snack food from other countries. Actually, I'm a source of much amusement, because when I get a new snack I don't just love it, I obsess over it. I keep it on my desk and admire it, then I photograph it, then, finally, I eat it. Throughout this long process, I talk about it. Endlessly.

Over the Christmas break, a friend went on some crazy central American cruise and was kind enough to indulge my little habit. Here are the two gems she brought back for me.

The white cigar-looking item is a rollito de coco, a delicious combination of coconut and sugar. Mmmmmm. The only alarming feature about this item: one of its ingredients was "vanilla raising." I'm hoping that's a bad translation of "extract."

The Pico Buzzy with the crazy face was a bit more of an experience. It looked like Jell-O crystals (which were a staple in my diet when I was like six). And it boasted a "tamarind flavor." Now, I like tamarind as much as the next person, but I've never really wanted to sample tamarind Jell-O crystals. I'm guessing that Kraft Foods' focus groups have overwhelmingly agreed.

I went all the way with the Pico Buzzy and poured a whack down my throat. It was like scarfing down a mixture of sugar and salt. And some artificial red stuff. I wonder if it's a big seller in some central American country.

RainyBow

another crummy sign

Just 'cause I love crummy signs. This one's from a trip to Niagara Falls.

sugorama

I love sampling snacks from other cultures. Not only is the yummy factor high, but snacks are usually indicative of their place of origin, which is attractive to a geek like me. For example, contrast British high tea with Chinese dim sum. So similar and yet just not.

Some of the oddest snacks I've ever had were in Mongolia. Fermented mare's milk and fermented bean curd snacks were everywhere. The fermented part comes from the lack of refrigeration in huge parts of the country, but when your snacks taste like rot I'm not sure that says good things about your nation.

Much as I try, I can't get everywhere, so I always beg friends to bring me back snacks from their travels. Despite the stairs incident, the man vomiting on the edge of death on the plane, and the earthquake, Sunny still managed to bring me back some good stuff from her disastrous trip to the Caribbean. Witness the two examples below.

Sugar cakes and guava cheese. I admired them for well over a week, letting the excitement about tasting them build. As you can probably see for yourself, the sugar cake looked like a muffin, and the guava cheese was the farthest thing from cheese, looking and feeling more like a gargantuan gummy bear squashed flat by a steamroller.

Even more perplexing though was the taste. Sugar led the ingredient list on each one, so I had prepared myself for sweet, but dang! After eating half of the sugar cake, I was talking at ridiculous speeds, causing people at work to stare at me kinda funny.

So what's the deal with this emphasis on sugar anyway? Part of me thinks this is a technique for staying active in high temperatures. Perhaps I should test this theory by eating some of this stuff, then partaking in some more hot yoga. Do you think the sugar in my sweat would pass the crazy people's scent-free sniff test?

i want to pay as much as possible for a hotel room, please

Another travel photo.


I stayed at the Hotel Tibet Home, and I tried to explain to the owner why the phrase "rooms are available above 3 US dollar" isn't the best way to sell your hotel. There is only a very slim chance he understood. But perhaps that's for the best, since I think this sign should be enjoyed by as many people as possible.

suburban funnies

I had a Christmas brunch with some friends today. Since they're all suburban now, I had to drive a long way in Christmas traffic to get there, which sucked. But I did manage to see two funny things:

First, I saw a bumper sticker on a massive vehicle that read "My kid was student of the month at XY public school." Fantastic. You know that in our silly 'everyone's a winner' culture, every kid at the school who doesn't have a severe personality disorder has to win that thing at least once. Clearly this person's kid had only won it once, and he or she was so very proud. I couldn't help but snicker as I sped past the monstrous vehicle.

Second, I saw this sign:



Now, I'm normally happy when someone's kind enough to warn me of upcoming danger. However, in this case, it's sort of a mystery what that danger is, since nobody filled in the white part. Doesn't it kind of defeat the purpose of the sign when you have to guess what's lurking ahead? I wondered if I should look for falling rocks, or rabid dogs, or maybe even UFOs. I actually stopped the car, planning to add something witty. Sadly, I was penless. It reminded me of the sign near the school by my house that says "wait for gap." At one point, some wry little student covered up the "ap" in "gap" and wrote over it to make "wait for godot." I think I laughed about that for months. And yes, I'm cringing as I admit that.

RainyBow