.It is your choice, chews wisely. FOOrD BLOrG.

They are going to say something. They are and they always will. Just know that if you let that stop you, that your will, will become your won't. (I don't write pretty or often make sense but to me I make perfect nonsense.) A few years ago I did a year of yes. For one year I said yes to everything. Especially things that I didn't or wouldn't normally do. See, I was building a tight comfy little world to retire to all too often. I needed to push myself back out. Not even in a big way like back onto a stage or out in front of people. Like just back outside. Like just around other humans. So I did. It wasn't easy but it really wasn't that hard either. When I allowed myself no grey decision area everything slowly became easier. I didn't have time to waffle on whether or not to do something. I just had to and learn to cope. Learn to cope with groups of people. Learn to cope with people who I didn't see eye to eye with. Learn to cope with peoples' decisions that I might not agree with. The next year I decided to carry it on. One more year of yes. I can now proudly tell you that those years have passed and I don't even notice the difference. The yes has become a part of me. It is in me. It is kind of like the first time you exercise and it sucks. The next time it still sucks but it is a little easier. Then over time your muscles tone and you feel changes in your body order and after awhile you might not even notice that. You just function differently. I learned that change is nice. I learned that change is hard. I learned that I will always be learning. I learned that it all starts with a choice. Choose wisely.

Today we will be trying some chewy snacks. Also our 1-5 scale is brought to you by choices I have made with varying results that didn't kill me.

Alright, first we have Cherry Vanilla Gumdrops from a store called QUIN here in Portland, Or. Sarah told me awhile ago that the woman behind all of the baked goods at Saint Cupcake (also here in PDX) was adding candy to her already expansive list of treats. (We have since gone to SC a number of times and fallen in love with their cookies, brownies, and even ice cream treats.) So Sarah took me around to find some candies made by the mastermind Jami Curl. I bought a few here and there. Then Sarah told me that a whole candy store of these treats was opening and I couldn't wait. I mean I had to but it wasn't too long before QUIN opened and we descended upon it for their hand made treats and curated chocolate bars etc...

I realize this picture isn't the prettiest but you get the point. Look at what is in the gumdrop. Notice what isn't. This is a choice. Now if you do anything creative there will be people who don't like what you do. There will be people who don't even do what you do but will think they know more than you and that you are wrong. You just have to know to choose not to be a party to that. I think part of that is to do what you want and not to listen to them ever. Take even the compliments with a grain of salt as to not become an asshole. Ultimately though I think you have to make a product that you stand by. Something that you believe in. Where you believe in what you put into it. That is what I see here. Ingredients sure. However the flavor and function of what is on this label (hand written exp. date *love it.) all belongs and has purpose.

Ok. Now look at this thing. The two tone cylinder dusted in sweet sweet crystals. It is beautiful. It doesn't feel hard or dense to the touch either. Upon opening the bag I get a definite aroma of cherry.  A pleasant aroma that is both fruity and familiar. Lets try it:

S-This really reminds me of being a kid. I like the consistency and how it isn't sticking to my teeth. There is something about this that recalls cherry cough syrup I had as a child. I know how that sounds. I mean it in a familiar and good way. Maybe it is just the gelatin and the cherry together and maybe it just feels like it is making something inside you better. It feels like somebody is caring for you. I also like that it says it has vanilla and cherry in the title and in the ingredients. I give it a 5 out of 5. Plus one friend point. Plus one ingredient point. (Side note: She just created those two bonus categories. Debut!)

d-I love the texture of this. It has a soft chew. You can really tell that this has been freshly made. It hasn't been sitting around in a warehouse. I like the cherry flavor. It isn't super fake or syrupy. I think the vanilla is in the finish. Like if the cherry was an elderly person and the vanilla was helping it gracefully to sit in a chair. Oh and your tongue is the chair. I give this gumdrop a 5- When getting lines shaved in you hair was cool (6th grade) I drew what I thought was a cool arrow design that stepped down to the back and wrapped around to an arrow on the other side. I didn't realize until the other middle schoolers helped me see that I had a barber shave not one but two penises on the side of my head. Middle school. Double penis hair design. I chose that. I lived.-out of 5.

Moving right along we have Energy Gummy Bears. I got this for Christmas. I asked for these and I think they came from Thinkgeek. The whole appeal is that each package has the chemical equivalent of an energy drink but now you can chew it in bear form. You know for all those times that you have taken a drink of an energy drink and thought "Wow. This tastes SO good. I wish this would linger on my palette for longer!" My favorite thing about this is the health benefits listed at the top of the bag. Clearly if you are eating energy gummy bears you are eating properly and watching your vitamin intake. "Hey Skip, did you drink kale smoothie today?" "No need brother bear. I ate this metallic satchel of all chemical candies. Now lets hula hoop in park in protest of the establishment!" (I also like that someone drew that psychotic bear and someone along the line thought it didn't really communicate the mission statement. Put a frickin thunderbolt on it's face. BOOM. Poetry.)

Well we showed what QUIN put into their candy so lets look at.....um. Are those even things? This is an intentionally awful photo. I wanted you to see what reading after eating these, feels like. What the eff is all that? Is this the recipe for meth? Are these Breaking Bad Bears? (Expect those at your local market soon.)

It smells like a bad decision.

S-Ah. Oh. No No NO. Ugh. It tastes bitter. This is the perfect example of bad cough syrup. This is the polar opposite of the first candy. It sticks to your teeth and lingers in your mouth when you REALLY don't want it to. Horrible.  It is called "Citrus Blast" and there isn't even any citrus in it. How can it be called that? On a scale of 1-5 I give it a negative million.  Plus it is brown. Nobody wants to eat a brown gummy. Gross.

d- Oh it is bitter and is getting more bitter. This tastes like chemicals. Like if my methy neighbor decided to make candy. Maybe these are meth vitamins. They need to be chewy on the account of your brittle soft meth teeth and gum sores. You get your vitamins (somehow) and can pretend that you are eating citrus blast gasoline. Seriously, I once got face wash in my mouth that was far more pleasant and seemed closer to something you should ingest. 0-I decided in college to get back on the stage (a great way to push yourself out of your comfort zone.) into 2 one act plays. The first time my future wife would see me on stage. In one play I was a transgender psychotic nurse and in the other I was in full drag with heels...I don't remember why. She brought her little brother. Not only did she not bat an eye during all this but she coached me on how to walk in heels each night. I never really got good at it. I appreciate what people go thru for fashionable footwear though and supportive friends and family. No matter how strange the choice may seem.-out of 5.

Candy Sunshine! This snack sounds even more like acid than the last one which really seemed like it was at least created on acid or for people on acid. acid.  This snack also came from a snack website. I forget which one. You can clearly see that it is inspired by the original. What is the original? Well just google it. Trust me. It is quite a website. Not going to? Ok I will tell you. The original was candy raisins. Yeah. What? I am not going to tell you the story because their beautiful website does all that. I just want to get this sweet awesome packaging open and let the sunshine loose!

Oh. What the eff? This is just an ordinary sack of pencil erasers. Not the cool kind that are scented either. You know, the ones that you tried when nobody was looking. I mean, we all did it. They smelled delicious like strawberries and grapes. This does not.  Look at it. We had to eat that. Look at it again. It looks like ear wax or ear plugs or ears plugged with wax. Actually, I swear I have seen a suppository that looks like this. That makes sense. It is probably more enjoyable to put this where the sun don't shine. (See what I did there? The Original Where The Sun Don't Shine)

S-Um. I just had to swallow it. This has never happened before but I just had to get it out of my mouth. This candy tastes like someone else's sour breath. If that doesn't make sense to you, think about it. Someone else's sour breath. Do you have it? That is this. Was this the original color? Fix it. Make it taste good. Do something. I don't like this at all. 1-for the weird shape-out of 5.

d- Nope. What? Who missed this? Who was like "Oh man, have you ever had wax, dust, whatever is in erasers, and sadness? It is delicious. I can't find the original but I am feeling inspired!" There is almost a sour bile kind of faintness to it. Like stomach bile fruit leather. I give this snack a 1-One time my friend Aaron and i were playing in this desolate field where there was a slide. We were kids. It had rained. I chose to climb up the wet slide in muddy shoes with no traction. I slipped and as I slid down toward the huge puddle waiting for me at the bottom I shouted "I CAN'T STOP! I CAN'T STOP!" until I crash landed butt first into the puddle. We still laugh about this 20 plus years later. Even bad choices can make the best stories-out of 5.

Lastly we have a gummy from the mighty meiji company. I ordered this from Japan as I love almost every gummy I have ever had from there. This one is Guava flavored.

So here we can see all of the ingredients. I have no idea what any of this says but I do know that this gummy uses 100% fruit juice and each pouch has 2,600 mg of collagen. This isn't the first collagen gummy i have had. This can creep some people out. Supposedly by eating the collagen your skin will look younger. I don't know if that is true. It makes me think I am eating ear lobes. Like in a positive and proactive way. That is normal right?

Ok. The smell is of fruit. I am not super well versed in guava but I am pretty sure this is it. Nearly every gummy I have had from Japan has had this awesome aroma when the bag is opened. You just want to eat it. So we did:

S- Alright. This IS good. This is a good gummy. This is like a beauty treatment and a sweet snack all in one. I get it. This is good. I am going to eat another one. 5 out of 5!!!!

d- Great! Not fake sweet. This is a naturally fruity kinda deal. (well put) This is like a more elastic fruit snack. These are really fragrant. I am going to probably finish these now. I give this a 5-In college I wanted to be involved with the WRC (women's resource center) which did all sorts of incredible work and was run by some really amazing women. The problem was 'What could I offer?" Well, I volunteered to run STITCH AND BITCH. That is right, every week I hosted Stitch and Bitch. Me and around 5 ladies would gather and chat while knitting. Only I had a dirty little secret. You see, I didn't know how to knit. I had learned just how to cast on. So all I did was cast on over and over and over. People enjoyed my bitching so much that they didn't care about my stitching.-out of 5.

So there we go. Another instalment draws to a close.  I encourage you to choose new things to try. Choose things you are pretty sure you won't like. Choose to be kind to strangers. Choose to be helpful. Choose things for other people's benefit. Whatever you do don't choose things that will insulate you in outcomes you already know. At least choose to look at the options and of course, thanks for choosing to read this.

.What is happening with you? You seem "different." FOOrD BLOrG.

Chocolate. 

I know I have said 1000 times that I am not a big chocolate fan. However, even if you are a chocolate fan, you aren't going to like every single thing that chocolate has going on. This is pretty much true with anything. You could be the biggest corduroy vest fan but that doesn't mean you want corduroy ass less chaps. (or maybe it does. They would look good with the vest.) You might love German techno but that doesn't mean you'll love a German techno remix of Fallout Boy. (Unless it is instrumental.) You might love cats but that certainly doesn't mean you'll enjoy Cats The Musical. I am not sure if I am communicating this clearly so lets bring Punky Brewster into the situation. (Always a good idea.) 

So Punky Brewster was a sitcom that was on in the mid 1980s. It was about a quirky little girl who is being raised by an old fuddy duddy foster parent with a heart of gold. The story lines follow Punky as she struggles with things like mild sadness, stress, and friendships. It did OK for a year and so someone decided "We need more Punky!" So suddenly there was a cartoon called "It's Punky Brewster." Basically, the same right? I mean, give the people what they want! Punky Brewster? Check. Magic Gopher-who grants wishes? Check. Wait. What? This isn't the same. If Punky had a magic gopher that grants wishes, she probably wouldn't be a foster kid living with a weird old man with a bleeding ulcer. (I am not admitting that I have thought about this before or argued this point at a party after a few too many slippery nipples.) A version of something can only be just that. Different. Trust me, as someone who has had that word applied to them their whole life, different is an acquired taste.

Today we will be trying some different chocolate friends.

First up today is Choco Baby. S found this for me at a market. I think what catches the eye first here is the exploitation style-possibly racist name. Now a lot of candy that I find or that is found for me at Asian groceries or ordered from over seas, will have cartoon characters on them. I am so very glad that this one does not. I searched for commercials with fear in my heart of what I would find. Luckily there were none. So what is a Choco Baby? Well, you know how chocolate can be so DIFFICULT to lug around? Oh man, it is just so HEAVY and cumbersome!!! Am I right? Well luckily meiji has you in mind and created a snack that is a tiny piece of chocolate something. Yeah and packaged it in a tube that is roughly the same size as the average chocolate bar. (huh..) Hey, look on the bright side though, it has a flip top lid so once you try this candy, you can re gift it to someone who you don't really care about. The plastic wrapper even comes off when you open it so they won't know that the candy is racist or an allusion to feces. (I mean everyone has a gross uncle who while leaving a restroom has claimed that they just birthed a chocobaby, right? No. Just me. Thanks Uncle Glen. Thanks a bunch.)

Lets try it!!!

Side note: Upon opening, it smells like a Dollar Store candle that is supposed to smell like a chocolate scented Dollar Store candle. Yeah. Not even a chocolate scented candle. Try once removed from that.

S- Ugh. Oh no. This is like bad Easter candy. If this is chocolate it has to be the cheapest of any chocolate ever. I am bummed that this is the blog post that you are returning with. I give it a 1 out of 5. No style points. I bet the whole wrapper comes off when you open it, to give you a chance to call it non-racist things.

d- Ack. I have literally tasted wax that was better than this. The mouth feel is both regret and crumbling wax. It is something like a fake Tootsie roll in every worse sense of this sentence. Perhaps this is the flavor equivalent to being racist. Eat this snack to feel what a racist mouth feels like after being racist. This is the "scared straight" equivalent of snacks. You eat this and then your mouth will want to repent and eat better chocolate. I give this snack a 1- Hyper color shorts. Yeah, sure the shirt will show off your teenage armpit heat and or breasts but as a teenager I had the shorts too. No teenage boy needs heat sensitive shorts. Stick with the shirts Hyper color!-out of 5.

OK so moving on. Here we have another entry from a fancy chocolate bar. There are millions of these things on the market and I have had maybe two that were worth buying a second time. For all I know maybe that is the $8 chocolate bar business model. Get everyone once. That is all you need. Anyway, I digress, S found this for me. I believe at a local market. (Isn't that helpful?) Look. It is Edamame and sea salt. A chocolate bar with those two things. This is like a low calorie snack meets an actually enjoyable snack. (Just kidding. Love me some edamame. Isn't this helpful as well?) All I know is that I don't see salted milk chocolate often. Bitter or dark chocolate sure. Those are complex and assertive chocolates. Salty milk? Yeah, I will pass on that. That sounds gross.

So as is the case ever so often with this style of upscale grocery chocolate (is that a term or classification?) the back of the packaging pleads their case. It is a bad picture here because I don't really care. Look, be proud of what you make. Sure. Just get off you chocolate high horse. Locally source? OK. Good ingredients? Yeah, well nobody admits otherwise. Fast food doesn't say "some of the meat in here was maybe almost not just chemicals once.?" They say "Only the best..." If I buy a snack, I want a snack not a one sheet advertising your mission statement. Your mission statement is the same as every other snack. Get my money and get in my mouth. (That is also probably a rap lyric.) So then I opened the packaging....

What? Now it is crazy sexy time party? There is a manage a trios of chocolate ladies (That sounded worse than intended.) in here. Also there are not one but two more paragraphs. Here is the interesting part. So inside it says that every time you buy their chocolate that they give food to someone who wouldn't have food. (Yeah, like that shoe company.) It sounds to me like they could just not put edamame in their chocolate and those hungry people would have a meal and I could eat the chocolate. Win win. Whatever, lets keep unwrapping this completely not wasteful amount of wrapping on this chocolate.

Whoa there. Easy on the edamame! Don't you know there are starving people waiting for me to buy a chocolate bar so that you can then feed them hopefully anything but this? (OK. This sounds harsh and I want to apologize to blah blah blah for all the stuff. We good?)

S- I really don't get the edamame. I get the texture. It is chewy. I really don't care for this. 1 out of 5. They get one style point for the inside packaging.

d- I knew it. Salty milk chocolate. This is disgusting. Let the record show (of this fake food blog) that we both love salt but this is a misuse altogether. The edamame is like something fell into the chocolate machine. Like an old worm or something dried up and unpleasant. (Not a pleasant worm, like the one in the movie Labyrinth.) I give this a 1-pizza bun burger -out of 5. (What is a pizza bun burger? it is a burger with pieces of pizza as the bun. Duh. It is also a bad idea. Some of you know what I am talking about.)

Next is another treat from the fine people at sugarfina. Here we have some dark chocolate covered goji berries. You can look up what a goji berry is on your own time. I am not a research assistant. I eat stuff and babble. (I am a novice mess at both of those things.) Now here is the problem. Just because you may enjoy a company doesn't mean that everything they make will be your favorite. Sure, it might be but there is always the danger that it won't be for you. That is OK. Everyone can like different things. Hey, I like so many things that you probably don't. Things you might even hate. That is cool. Eat a goji berry and chill. (In your research, did you see they are good for chilling? I know they have alleged health benefits. It isn't for erectile dysfunction is it? You know what? Don't tell me. It isn't important.)

Side note: No real aroma when opening the container. This snack sort of feels like a chocolate covered raisin.

S- Nope. There is something weird about it. This reminds me of a chocolate covered raisin that has been badly burned first. Ugh. I give this negative points. Less than nothing.

d- The "dark chocolate" shell first gracefully shatters revealing an emaciated fragment of a mere cat's toenail. (possibly) Do you remember wax lips? this is like eating the part of those that had a sore on it. (Too much?) Well, it isn't great. Nobody should eat these. I just want to move on. I give this a 0-New Kids On the Block reunion-out of 5. (Come on. You had your run. Donnie, you are going to throw your hip out dry humping that amplifier.)

Alright. This is the end. We end it with this. The Idaho Spud. This is an old candy. Like 1918 old. The candy bar reads "The candy bar that makes Idaho famous." Which just goes to show you that once, a long time ago, "famous" meant something entirely different. Also a long time ago, i guess you could put sugar on anything and call it "candy." Case in point: see below.

What the eff??? It is like they aren't even trying. Oh so this is what a potato looks like? They must have been so confused at all of the potatoes that their cat had laid in the litter box. Now, I had hopes that S would really like this one as it involves some sort of coconut but upon seeing it she demanded to see the ingredients. Trust me, they are atrocious. Weird oils and all. What you can't see here is that beneath the attractive exterior is a very creative interpretation of a marshmallow. This isn't right. Somebody check the Idaho water supply. Something has gone horribly awry and not only is nobody fixing it. They are claiming it. If I made this, I'd blame everyone else. However, the rule is that we have to try it.....

S- No way. This is some REAL weird stuff. Here, let me see what is in it. Ugh. I hate this. I hate this the most. This is inedible. Worse than negative points. No style points for things that look like poop.

d- You know how a really horrid version of magic shell tastes when it is covered in dead skin? NO? Well, I do and it is what makes Idaho famous! The gritty exterior is a marvelous precursor to the grainy texture of the chemical marshmallow that lie in wait beneath it. (Chemical Marshmallow is my favorite early 90s rock band BTW.) I give this a 0-Lip Smackers. Alright, cool it. People like mint and berry lip gloss. Nobody who is 8 needs to know what a pina colada tastes like much less lips that taste like a pina colada. No teenager needs root beer lip gloss. "Hey Glen, what was your first kiss like?" Eh, root beer. "You ain't never kissed anyone Glen. That is why you make gross jokes when you leave restrooms. Weirdo."-out of 5.


It is good to be back. I will try to post every week on mouth watering Wednesday. (That is what everyone calls it right?) I have a wonderful assortment of snacks so far that have been gifted to me or that I have sought out. Thanks for taking the time to read this drivel. As always, don't take my word for it. Go try these snacks and all of the others "reviewed" and form your own opinions from experiences. Blah blah blah and stuff,

dirk.

Alright, I am done. Normally there is at least a positive snack in the bunch but these are all terrible. albeit terrible in their own special different ways. Like us all.