.FooRd BloRg. Just be nice. (to chocolate)

Everyone is exposed to different things. That is kind of the idea with this blog. Just putting stuff out there that maybe people are aware of or maybe not. Lets face it, we all miss things. We don't see a movie or checkout an album. I spend a large portion of my time in my head which is a wondrous and strange place. There for I miss things and sometimes when i encounter them it blows my mind.

One such example is that I was calling QFC a grocery store here in PDX and in order to find the number I googled it. Then clicked on the first listing I saw which was Yelp. Now maybe I have been naive but I thought Yelp was just restaurant reviews. You know, reviews that maybe are needed but boy was I wrong. There were reviews for a grocery store. Maybe this doesn't blow your mind but it shattered mine. 

First of all, who writes a review for a chain grocery store? It is a grocery store. They have prepared products and produce and a person that takes your money. It is a pretty straight forward situation. Nobody should be like "I can se my reflection in the floor of the frozen pizza isle. People need to know about this." Or "Six brands of toilet paper. I don't have time to weight the various pros and cons of this selection. Let alone debate how many ply I wish to use. Scale down your selection Safeway. I ain't no asstrologist!" (That isn't a spelling error. That person was making a pun.) It just shouldn't happen. Secondly who stops to read a review before going to a grocery store to buy basic life necessities? You usually go to whatever is closest to you. I have never heard of someone saying "Hey dear, could you pick up some lemons?" and the reply is "Yeah, I will just rundown to Fred Meyer but first let me see what a stranger said about their produce selection and parking situation." It shouldn't exist. Those are the types of things in a grocery store review because that is all you can really say about a grocery store. One person while talking about that the grocery store has parking (wtf?) remarked on how that made it easy to "zip in after work". Yeah, that is how a store works. Nobody should think "I was going to go grocery shopping but I didn't know if they had a parking lot.  Now if you are thinking that sometimes grocery store lots fill up, don't shop at that time. See how easy that is? If you want a really magical shopping experience-go at night. There is nobody there. You can spend hours squeezing grapes if you want. (Why do you want that?) The last thing I will say about this topic is that the top reviewer: Melissa had checked in there 19 times at the QFC. 19 times. I hope all of her friends appreciate that she lets them know that she is at a grocery store, a place pretty much all humans go to buy things all humans need. Whew. Mystery solved. Melissa isn't getting bananas from dragons and big foot. Nope she buys them at a grocery store like everyone else. Thanks Melissa.

Then again for all I know, Melissa may be the daughter of a spy and when she goes missing they will check her phone and say "The last place she checked in was at QFC. Lets go investigate but lets also walk. I am not sure if they have a parking lot."

Segue: Chocolate.

Well played. Today we are looking at 4 different chocolate treats and joining me in this post is Sarah and our pal Beverly.

So up first we have these cashews! Nuts covered in coconut, white chocolate, and curry. One of those I like-curry. The other things, including cashews, I am not such a fan of. I had to buy it though because it sounds so unique or different or possibly terrible. Sarah and I found these at Sheridan Fruit Company where our friend Susie works. Now thats store is more of a specialty market and deserves reviews. In fact it has at least 50 on Yelp. If I was reviewing it I'd give it a 5 out of 5. You should check it out if you haven't. Alas we are talking about these nuts and here is the breakdown.

It smells kind of like sunscreen.

B- Gross. It tastes like easter candy and suntan lotion. Like really cheap easter candy. I hate it.( -10 out of 5)

S- Oh yeah, it tastes like salty suntan lotion. Like somebody sweated in my mouth on vacation. Can I have more? (4 out of 5)

d- Ugh. Coconut. I hate it. Dreadful. It has such a fatty mouth feel between the fatty nut and the fatty white chocolate feel. It coats your mouth in fat. This is truly disgusting.  Also after you swallow it the flavor and sludge stays in your mouth. Torture.

I give this snack a 0-Go to Yelp and read reviews of Jiffy Lube-ouch-out of 5.

I am pretty sure this snack came to us by way of Birchbox. If you don't know what that is than you should look it up. It is pretty fun. This chocolate has chili, cayenne, and cinnamon. Doesn't sound too crazy right?

Kinda cute ain't it? I mean, for a choco pod. it just smells like dark chocolate.

B-It just seems like crappy milk chocolate that turns into crappy dark chocolate . I don't get any chili. I get the cinnamon and it ends with a slightly spicy mouthfeel. (2.5-out of 5)

S-I get a little cayenne but mostly cinnamon. There is too much cocoa. Like it tastes like cocoa powder. (3 out of 5)

d-Bitter. (That is literally all I wrote down. I know. Terrible review. I remember agreeing with both Bev and Sarah but I only wrote one word for myself.) 2.5-Check out Biomat plasma donation on Yelp-out of 5.

Green tea Kit Kat! Yup. I have had several types of imported kit kats over the years. I pretty much try everyone that I can find. So here we are with green tea. Again this was ordered from Tokyo as it is not available in the states.

Oh, look at the back there. You can write a little note. Remember when you couldn't write on snack size candy bars? What dark times those were. I like that there are even lines so your handwriting won't go everywhere. That is so helpful.

B-Live it. It just tastes like a vanilla Kit Kat. This reminds me of a special treat that my grandma used to make. (4-out of 5)

S-Eh. It is a vanilla Kit Kat. Not memorable at all. (3-out of 5)

d- I agree. It isn't bad at all but I wouldn't eat it again. (3-check out Taco Bell on Yelp-out of 5)

Ok so here we have another expensive chocolate bar boasting its exotic spice blends on the front. I have grown weary of these since there are so many of them and they always seem like they are going to be amazing. Yet more often than not they turn out to be underwhelming.

Uh huh. Yep. A whole lot of wordage on there. Buzz words and the use of "titillate". Everything seems in order here.

B- Ugh. It tastes like cheap chocolate and a ton of mint. (2.5-out of 5)

S-Awe sick. It tastes like bile. F-that!!! (0-out of 5)

d-I get tea at the end. Not too into the mint and the chocolate tastes really cheap. I give this chocolate a 2-check out McDonalds on Yelp-out of 5.

My wife told me that people review everything on Yelp. She was right. I guess I just never looked. The things people waste their time on is amazing. (This blog included.)

In closing, I'd like to leave you with an excerpt from a review of a Walmart on 82nd avenue. This message is by Emily L. in Portland Or. "t should also be known that my favorite moment from this particular Wal-Mart is when the women's bathroom had a human turd on the floor. Not in one of the stalls, but just out by the sinks (masterful)....and, said turd, was there long enough for someone, not to clean it up, but to put an orange cone next to it to warn people from stepping on it." 

Now that is a helpful review.

.FooRd BloRg. Crunchle Krunch Crunx

Is it just me or does time seem faster as you get older? When you are young time seems so slow. I recall the minutes of a clock lasting a lifetime. Now it seems that the days are short and years are a blur. Did you know mallards are monogamous?

Ok. See, what happened there is I am pretty bad at segues. What is a segue? It is a smooth transition from one subject or topic to another. Did you know that the king of hearts is the only king without a mustache? Think about it dudes. Shave that thing off your face. The king of hearts. He is the king of hearts. He wouldn't lie. 

A segue requires a logical bridge between the two subjects. My brain doesn't build logical bridges. My bridges are a bit more like the end scene in Labyrinth where there is all those steps and the girl can't figure out how to get to Bowie but she can see him.  I am also bad at segues because I will learn something and I will need to share it with everyone I know and I don't finesse it into the conversation either. Example: 

Person: Nice weather we are having.

Me: Yes. I read that a crow lives in a family group ranging from 2-15. And every family is called  a murder. Want to go 50/50 on this fruit roll up? It is grape.

Sarah recently went to a candy store on NW 23rd and she saw a wall of black licorice containers. Different shapes etc... I have seen red licorice ropes and laces and wheels. So who is this person that is sitting around like "Rope? Oh somebody did that? How about a smaller rope? Like a shoe lace. Somebody did that? What if the shoe lace is all wound up and you can then unroll the lace. Somebody did that? AH. Boot? Damn. Sheep? Arg! Pirate? Double Arg! Booty? Yeah, like tiny licorice tooshes. Whew. We did it." That is what I imagine. Just a weird licorice loving snack engineer sitting in a basement somewhere brainstorming licorice shapes. Did you know pearls melt in vinegar? True.

I love bad segues. I love snacks. Lets combine those two.

First up we have a snack that Sarah found at an asian grocery. They are a type of snack named ball cookies. Keep it together. These are called honey ball cookies. This brand is called Hot Kid but we will get to that later. That makes this snack 'Hot Kid's Honey Ball Cookies." I am pretty sure that typing that sentence puts me on some kind of government list. What can you do? Snacking has risks.

Why isn't this snack called "chicken egg cookies?" It is far less questionable. Plus they went thru all the trouble of having chickens all over the packaging. I thought that these cookies were shaped like eggs not balls but then I also thought that they were crackers not cookies.

But wait it gets weirder. Look at the warning in the clear part of the bag. Think about that. They made a nearly invisible warning on food item. What? Was the white background too expensive? Look at the top of the picture at what they did print on white background. "Jim want ball cookie" WTF? What kind of super weirdness is this? Who is Jim?

Finally we have this. That must be Jim. Now I am really hoping that the "hot" that they are referring to is a temperature situation and not how I would feel I'd look in that ensemble. How is the actual ball cookie? Well.  The ball cookie sack, when opened, smelled of flour, paper, and honey. I was disappointed because I thought that this would be like goldfish crackers but instead it was silly little cookie puff balls. We had this on a family outing to the beach. Nobody cared for them. Really the most interesting thing about this snack is the bag. The cookies are barely a cookie. You bite into it and it quickly dissolves in your mouth. Forgettable with a hint of honey. I bet that if you had these as a child than maybe you'd like them as an adult. For me it doesn't do much. I give this snack a 2-A ducks quack doesn't echo and nobody knows why AND Walt Disney was afraid of mice-out of 5.

Oh good. A soy sauce flavored watermelon seed. Yeah. Not a sunflower seed. Which is a seed that people normally eat. This is a soy sauce flavored watermelon seed. A seed that people have always spit out. Now we know why. It has nothing to do with them being inedible and everything to do with that they don't taste like soy sauce. Sarah also found this snack at the same market and we ate these on the same beach trip mentioned earlier.

I didn't go in the ocean.

There is a good look at the ingredients. Very interesting. Not really. In fact I have no idea why I even took that picture. Did you know that peanuts are an ingredient in dynamite? I wonder if dynamite has a warning on the side "Manufactured in a facility that processes peanuts." Like wise peanuts would seem pretty bad ass if they had a warning "Processed in a dynamite factory."

Were these good? Well they smelled like a leather wallet aged in a well and dried with salt on it. It was bitter and very soy saucy. It was also difficult to chew and seemed burnt. In short, this is a terrible thing to put in your mouth.

Here is a list of better things to put in your mouth: soil, lower grade soil, hobo slept on soil, soil on a hobo, hobo, owl pellets, lawn furniture that has received a urine shower, a photo of Rosie O Donnell, a soil covered photo of Rosie O' Donnell, a grave robber's pants, or you could lick the lower portion of a glass door in a day care.

This will surely turn you off of both soy sauce and watermelon seeds. I wish I could go into graphic detail about how gross it was. But again it just isn't that memorable. I give this snack a 0-Your stomach has two produce a new layer of mucus every 2 days or it will digest itself.  Justin Timberlake is 31-out of 5.

Ok these nuts are available at many asian markets and groceries. They might look like that nut snack at Trader Joes but these are far better. First of all, Trader Joes really really sucks. Think about it. Nothing good comes from there. It is a grocery store of one brand. It belongs in a mall. They have frozen trash that isn't very good trash and poor produce and lame cheeses and cheap wine that is gross. ZING! Take that! One person doens't like trader joes. I am sure they care. My point is that the trader joes nut snack has funky lime leaves in it. This mix just has peanuts, pepper flakes and pepper corns. Sarah loves these nuts. What is there not to love.

Look at this dreamy field. Rolling hills covered in nothing but nut bushes. I didn't know that you'd find nuts under bush. I assumed nuts grew in trees. I guess that peanut is a ground nut meaning that it grows in the ground. The first Portland Rose festival was today June 20th 1907.

So I have no idea what this product is called I just know what it is. Clearly the illustration shows: 1. Shake bag. 2. Break tooth. 3. Eat a steaming hot dish of leaf and ovals. Is this a good snack? Do you like heat? I sure as heck do. These nuts are great. Sometimes the pepper corns are a bit much but the chili and peanuts are delicious. I give this treat a 5-The nobel peace prize depicts three naked men with their hands on each others shoulders and on average a 100 people choke to death on ball point pens-out of 5.

Lastly we have another cheeto flavor from Tokyo. I ordered this snack from japan. I am not sure why. It is flavored to taste like Tteokbokki. I know. It looks like I had a seizure while typing. It is a dish prepared with rice cakes cut into rectangles and stir fried with ginkgo nuts and sometimes seafood and then covered with cheese. I guess not all are covered in cheese but this one is. Sound good?

Now lets just put the weird dish name and flavor aside and look at what is going on in that picture. It looks to me like that dog has rolled that boy up in a blanket. I saw this once done to a man who took a lot of extacy or lsd or both and he was dressed like fred flintstone. Well, he was flipping out and pooped in a bush and white bird, who were like the crazy wranglers, came and rolled him up in a blanket and took him away. So in my mind, that boy made this dish and that dog was like "he HAS to be on drugs!' and has rolled him up. I bet that is it.

It looks pretty good to me but looks can be deceiving. It smells like a cheeto. Like puffed corn and some type of dried spice. It tastes like if the three words "I don't know" had a flavor. I haven't had this dish and my brain has no idea what to do with this flavor. It isn't really cheesy. It isn't really sweet or savory. It is somewhere in the middle. Now you might be thinking that doesn't sound that bad but think about this. I am in my thirties. I have tasted a wide array of flavors. When you taste something and you can't quite place it your brain does odd things. It panics like "This isn't food! What are we doing?" It feels creepy for something to be texturally normal but flavor wise it is something unknown. I think that our brain also tells us if something is rotten much in  the same way. You bite into an apple and the texture might be the same but then your brain says "This doesn't taste like apple. Eject!" 

Well the texture was corn puff but the flavor was a mystery which ultimately I found unnecessary to eat. For really no reason I give this snack a 3-The cigarette lighter was invented before the match and the king of hearts represents Charlemagne- out of 5.

You should all be more like Charlemagne. (*Actually just shave. I don't know what kind of life he lived.)