Thursday, December 29, 2011

.FOOrD BLOOrG. Something to chew on. (end of the year edition)

Well, here we are. The end of another year. A time when many people reflect on 365 days of happenings and look ever onward to another hopeful year of bounty and change. (Or they just get drunk and try to open mouth kiss someone at midnite) New years has always been odd to me. When you are a kid you just want to stay up late. Then you get older and you just want the champagne. Then you get older and you just want to stay home. However there are a quadrant of people who make resolutions and plan life changes and the such. I know, sounds exhausting. Now I am not one of those people but last year I made one. I decided to wear more grey and acid washed denim. It worked out nicely. Sure I didn't lose 15 lbs or save orphans or learn to skydive. (Technically everyone knows how to skydive since you are really just falling. Lets be honest, gravity is doing most of the work.) But I digress, with all this mulling over of things this seems a fitting time to return to the snack that takes time to break down, gum.

Oh, a two-fer! Well, half of this doesn't sound vomit-licious. First up today we have popcorn and cola flavored gumballs. This was a gift from Dave I think. I was happy to see that it says "2 flavors" as I think combined it would be way worse.

Yes. It looks like everything is in order here. Brown must be cola and yellow must be poopcorn. (Oops, sorry about that.) The balls have very little scent. There is a slight popcorn odor, however. I decided to warm up to the challenge by chewing the cola gum first.

Nothing. Really bland. Not even overtly sweet. I have had some amazing cola gum from Japan. This is not amazing or great or good or even ok. I thought this would be one of the high notes of this post. Boy was I wrong. Now on to -gulp- popcorn.

UGH. It tastes like popcorn. Like buttery-cinema popcorn! Why??? Who on this planet was eating popcorn and thought "I wish I had some gum for when I finish this popcorn so I can just keep this popcorn thing going." Sick!!!!!

Ok, now together.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHH! blarg! URP. Blech!!!! Who would want this??? Sweet, buttery, corn flavor..... Oh no. I feel noxious. I need to lay down or eat a pepto bismol factory.

I give this "treat" a .5- i will watch every Shirley Temple movie and try to eat less carbs-out of 5.

Ah. Sarah brought me the next three entries and they all hail from Japan. Oh Japan, you wonderful land of candy which I find far superior to my homeland. (Not you, Sweetarts. I love you.) The first of the three is peach and it hails from the Bourbon company. I won't go into the history of the company but if you want to know: http://www.bourbon.co.jp/english/company/history.html

I have tried a few of their products and they have been pretty solid. This gum is no exception. It is peach.  Upon unwrapping it you are hit with a pungent sweet peach perfume. The smell reminds me of buying peach-o's as a kid. You know, when you could walk up to the counter and open the plastic tub of them and use crappy plastic tongs to retrieve the peach flavored gummy. The flavor is solid and peach-tastic but as with most stick gum, the flavor dissipates far too quickly. I mean why keep chewing it if the flavor goes away? Why not just make it candy? Is there someone that is thinking "I like candy but I don't like swallowing the candy. I'd like the sweetness and at the same time create more waste." Why not just skip the gum and flavor the wrapper? Then you just chew on the paper and spit it out. Actually why don't we flavor every recyclable material and then the homeless can eat and help the planet at the same time? No?
Well not all my ideas can be good ones. I give this snack a 3- I am going to learn tap dance and morse code-out of 5.


Next up is Grape. Possibly my favorite flavor of candy from Japan. They just do it so very right. This one, however, is a bit more american in flavor style. In what way? First off, it smells like Hubba Bubba grape gum. Yeah. Which is pretty rad. Then there is the taste. Totally like the smell. This business is just like classic grape hubba bubba gum only in stick form. That part is a shame because the smooshy pillowy goodness of hubba bubba is part of the pleasure factor. That aside, this sh*t is delicious. In fact I am chewing three pieces right now and I am in grape heaven. Downside: flavor fades after 3 minutes. Upside: that is like 3 minutes in heaven. (Not the game where you try to get to 3rd bass in a dark closet. And not the 3rd bass that rapped about pop goes the weasel.) I give this snack a 4.5- I am going to jog a marathon and only eat raw foods.......and judge EVERYONE!-out of 5.


I feel like I have covered this. Maybe not. So here we have classic Lotte Ginseng gum. Another in the stick variety. My amazing wife found this for me and it smells like dirt. (That isn't her fault but seriously it smells like dirt.) It smells kind like if you put ben gay on your hand and then stuck your hand in dirt and then smelled it. Yea, it smells like earth medicine. (my new hippie jam band) Which I guess makes sense since ginseng is medicinal and from the earth. The taste is like the earth. Really earthy. I cannot stress that enough. Did I saw earthy yet? EARTHY. Yeah, wow. Ok after about a minute of earthyness there is a bit of sweetness and ginsengness. Overall, not my favorite thing. Pretty far from my favorite. (earthy) See here is my problem: it isn't bad but I like my ginger and ginseng items to not be sweet. Just give me the raw power of those things. You don't need to go and make everything super sweet. I give this gum a 2-I am going to travel the world with google earth-out of 5.

Ok. Lastly we have Mastic. Sarah and I found this at an ethnic grocery. I think it was Lebanese. I think. This gum is quite interesting. You can read all about the health benefits by clicking on this link.
http://www.life-enhancement.com/article_template.asp?id=1678

Alas I am no doctor. I just want to eat it. It has no scent at all. Biting into it there is a slight sweetness as the candy shell crackles between your teeth. The from within its center comes a raging earthyness. Wait. Seriously? More earthyness? Come on!

As can be expected from something that fights stomach ulcers and kills bacteria on your teeth: it sucks to eat it. It is not good. So that you don't have to buy this and try it simply go outside and dig up something with a root. Now put that dirty root in your mouth. Mmmmmm. Now go wash out your dirty root mouth.
 I give this snack a 1-I am going to spend more time with family and quit drinking...maybe not-out of 5.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

.FOOrD BLOOrG.

Well, either to your delight or dismay the holiday season is upon us. For me, it is to much delight. I like to spend my time doing nice things for people I care about. It makes me feel good to do whatever that is. It could be something as simple as making a mix for someone or drawing something that I hope they get a smile or a chortle out of. (Yea, I look forward to chortles.) So a season pretty much about showing someone that you thought about them is pretty dope to me. Sure people say it is about different faiths, Coca-Cola, consumerism, greed or any other thing. To me it is simply an ok to do something nice without people getting weird about it. So if you believe it is a time for those other things than we shall just agree to disagree. (Fine by me because I have been drawing pictures of you with ginormous shoulders. I give them to my friends and they chortle about your freakish shoulders.) Well, enough jibber jabber lets us feast upon snacks!!!

Todays rating scale is brought to you by: not the best ways to say you care.


Ok so Sarah and I found this at Fubon. I am not familiar with mangosteen. It looks like something from a b-movie that would open and a ghoulie or paper mache alien would crawl out. It was like 1.99 or so for a bag (like 30 pieces) so I thought why not give it a try.


The candy is small and rectangular. Pretty darn cute if you ask me.  I opened it up and it looks like a taffy. I thought this was more of a hard candy deal but whatever. For a second I was thinking this was in the Durian family so I expected a fart smell. Luckily no fart smell. Instead it smelled like muscat or really perfumed grapes. The texture was quite hard at first and then it kinda became taffy like. By kinda, I mean it affixed itself to my teeth and was not going to go quietly into my gullet. This wasn't bad though since the flavor was much like the smell. Fruity and sweet. (not unlike myself) Quite fine with the exception of the possible dental damage. This could have been far worse had it gone down the fart road. (Dear lord, I do not pray often but if you could please make sure I never go down the fart road. Thanks.)

I give this treat a 4-you bought me a book about how to give good foot massages-out of 5.


Um. Ok so what is this? Lets check the back.

What the???

Huh. I honestly haven't had any Turkish candy to my knowledge. I looked up the word "peber" and it means pepper. So that sounds pretty good. I see the back of the bag has a heating scale so this could really be fun. Like a spicy cough drop. Do those exist? They should. Lets toss one in the ole hatch. (hmm)

Oh dear god no. Ick. ARGH......the humanity. It......is........black......licorice. BAHHHHHHH!!!! ugh.

(5 minutes and a cup of coffee later)

That went well.

So upon further inspection this product is black licorice flavored and has pepper in the center along with ammonium chloride. The latter ingredient is what makes black licorice taste salty and astringent. Ok, so here is the breakdown of my experience.

I put it into my mouth and it tasted buttery kind of. Then it began waves of black licorice flavor. I don't like black licorice. I REALLY don't like black licorice. So this product might be great for you but for me it couldn't be much worse unless it was served in a vinegar soaked used sock. As for the center, I didn't get there. Remember when that owl on the tootsie pop commercial was all like "how many licks..1,2,3" and then he bit it? My experience here was like that only it involved gagging and spitting into the trash instead of a tootsie center. (I was dressed like an owl that had somehow gotten a questionable college education somewhere. I mean, seriously it is  hard for people to get into programs and become professors and somehow this owl did? And yet he is stumped by a candy?..He is like "I can't wrap my educated owl brain around what is happening on this stick. Good thing I will have a chance to inspect it again when I vomit it back up since I have no anus..um,.what were we talking about?)

The thing about this snack and others like it (chili rokkas) is that while it isn't for me, I know that there are people who love it. Half the time I share my snacks after these posts my friends or coworkers love whatever it is I didn't like. But here, In the Mouth of Snackness, I rate these eaties. I give this snack a .5- Oh, a book of daily inspirational quotes. Thank you, I know right where I want to shove this...I mean "put" it.-out of 5.

Ok, WTF. (This is about the shoulders comment isn't it?) Creamy corn candy? Ugh. OK. I can't blame anyone else. I saw this when we got the mangosteen candy and the sheer grossness required me to buy it. Let me just say that I had a bad feeling buying it and a worse feeling putting it up to my mouth.

Oh man. It smelled like I remember that corn that people buy to go fishing. Have you smelled that? It is rank. Like hobo halitosis rank. Like if corn ate corn while drinking milk and then vomited corn into your hair dryer and then you dryed your hair with the corn puke dryer while you snorted a packet of splenda. (you know, like that.) I put this into my mouth and oh no. Bad. The first thing you taste is a sweetness quickly and I cannot stress that enough, followed by the creamy corn flavor. I could not get this out of my mouth fast enough. This is so disgusting it seems like a practical joke. Played on my mouth by someone who is about to be drawn with gargantuan shoulders. The thing is, I do this to myself. Poor weird me. At least I was smart enough to not bite the taffy for if it had adhered to my teeth I would have up chucked for sure. (You know, blow chunks, bark at ants, bring it up for a vote, urp, spill stomach soup, vorbal the chibbits....Ok I don't think that last one was real.)

I give this snack a 0-Oh you bought me a bike pump. Why does it say Penis on it?-out of 5.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this post and the holiday season. If you are one of those people who likes to humbug and go against the grain just to be miserable. I am sorry. I hope someday you choose to just be open to the kindness of people. Sometimes people need a designated time to think of others and it is ok to be thought about. At least look at it this way, being mad often and being a curmudgeon is hard on your heart and stressful. Let's face it, we all don't live forever. Try to enjoy your time here because when you are dead you are dead and all that is left is a coffin. A weird shaped coffin in order to fit your HUGE expansive ungodly shoulders.


And good will to everyone.