Tirol Strawberry and Melon Kakigori

Every time I went to a convenience store in Japan, if felt like I saw a new kind of Tirol chocolate. I don't know if it was just luck or if they are releasing new chocolates faster now, but it was surprising.

These particular chocolates feature the characters Gachapin and Mukku, about whom I know almost nothing. However, what interested me is the fact that these were kakigori (flavored shaved ice) chocolates. The green was melon, and the red was strawberry.


Strawberry smelled like a basic strawberry white chocolate; milky and fruity, with a hint of authenticity behind the white chocolate. It was very sweet, and the white chocolate overpowered the strawberry flavor - I would have preferred the other way around. I was curious how kakigori would come into the picture, and was surprised to find sugar candy inside. It was like Pop Rocks without the pop, and the candies had a cooling sensation on the tongue. All together, it was neat, but a little too sweet and heavy on the white chocolate. B-

Melon smelled like melon soda, but the consistency was similar to the strawberry - very heavy on the white chocolate. The melon flavor was even subtler, and I really would have liked to taste more of it. The white chocolate was good, but sweet and plentiful. The same sugar candies were inside, and the cooling sensation made these really fun to eat. B-

Although I enjoyed these, I found myself wishing these were smaller (they were the premium size). It felt like a lot of white chocolate and not a lot of fruit flavor. The cool sugar really took me by surprise, though!

Tirol Website

Foodette on the Road

The Foodette is going South, people! I'm headed to Thurmond, MD, to visit my wonderful cousins, and I'm going to be trying some of the guiltiest pleasures in fast food and regional restaurants. I have Chick-Fil-A and Hungry Howie's on my list, as well as an amazing ice cream dairy and more.

To celebrate my first regional trip, I'm going to offer a giveaway on this blog. The winners, of which there will be TWO, will receive a special gift pack of treats compiled by yours truly from these funky places! All you have to do is comment and give me an idea about where I ought to go next (bonus points if you'll let me crash on the couch!) and what good eats are in your neighborhood!

Let the commenting begin! I'll check them all when I get back on the 8th, and let you know who won and what they'll get!

Also, check out the Threadcake that Patricia and I made, on Threadcakes.com! It's based on the t-shirt Shelf Life, and I know a lot of our good food bloggers are judges this year!

Foodette

Dessert Pocky: Tiramisu

When FoodFag and I first got this flavor, we didn't know what to make of it until we saw a few reviews of it. This was one confusing Pocky!

When we opened the box, we were surprised and pleased to find four individual packages of Pocky, with a thick coating on them. Japanese Snack Reviews tasted these and thought they tasted strongly of alcohol. We couldn't find that at all here. If anything, the dominant scent and flavor was of butterscotch.

The taste was great. There were two separate and definite textures when biting into this Pocky- the flavor of the butterscotch topping and then the crunch of the stick was delicious. The Pocky base might have also been a little sweeter, more like a graham flavor than a biscuit. It was very tasty.

Overall, this was one of our favorite Pockys tried so far. The extra bit of coating on it was definitely worth the while and the price.

9/10- AWESOME

Pocky

I AM NOT A WEEABOO. I SWEAR. I SWEAR.

I've just been buying obscene amounts of Pocky. It's a regular untapped market, but I'll be back to business after I try all the flavors.

FoodFag and I went to the Asian grocery again and bought some fantastic and delicious Pocky last night, and went back today, too, so now I have four flavors to review and maybe more, too.

So we bought the original Pocky, bringing back memories of winter, ex-boyfriends, and Riesling. It was different than when I first tasted it, but maybe inebriation makes everything taste funky. It's the same not-sweet, perfectly bland biscuit stick, with a dark chocolate coating.

FoodFag thought the flavor was unadulterated and simple. We liked the texture of the Pocky and how the biscuit added to, but didn't disturb the overall chocolate flavor. If anything, it improved it. For some, the flavor may not be complicated enough. It is, after all, biscuits and chocolate.

Pocky is a fun snack, with an added little non-coated part for handling on the go. It was a lot of fun to eat on the highway.
7/10- YUM

Frozen Chocolate Banana Pops

Cayenne and chocolate banana pop, peanut and chocolate banana pop, and plain chocolate banana pop.

Better get this post on frozen banana pops out before Summer is gone! Seriously, what happened to Summer? I feel like I wait all year long for Summer to arrive, so I can get around to fun outdoor activities (visit Bartram's Garden, picnic in the park, and a Blue Rocks baseball game, to name a few), and here it is August, and I haven't checked any of those activities off my list.

Enough bitching...wanna know what crazy memories are conjured up when I eat frozen banana pops? Caged monkeys in a mall!
The town I grew up in has a locally famous peanut and party goods store called Cromer's Peanuts that sells all sorts of tiny plastic toys and party favors, as well as their famous peanuts ("Guaranteed Worst in Town"), popcorn, and cotton candy. One of their locations was in a mall (the mall location has since closed), and the mall location had a large, glass-fronted cage of monkey on the upper back wall. Yeah, probably not the most humane setting for monkeys, but as a kid oblivious to the ills of the world, these monkeys ruled!

Combine a wall of monkeys doing all sorts of uncensored monkey acts with cheap plastic toys, candy and peanuts, a fun house mirror, and a scale you step on that tells your fortune and weight, and you've got a store a kid cannot resist!

Oh, and Cromer's had hand-dipped, chocolate-covered frozen bananas, too. The guy behind the counter would dip them right before your very eyes before handing the banana pops over the counter. My Mom would always buy us a chocolate-covered frozen banana before we left, 'cause she was awesome like that.Clumpy, ugly chocolate.

The original recipe I looked up had vegetable shortening melted in the chocolate, and I knew some would turn up their noses at that, so I tried melting straight up chocolate, and then chocolate with butter (saw recipes for both), but coating the frozen bananas with either of the two was difficult without having the chocolate get clumpy and ugly. So...I went back and tried melting chocolate with vegetable shortening, and the chocolate coated the frozen bananas beautifully!

To add vegetable shortening or not, is your choice. If aesthetics are a concern, I'd add the vegetable shortening. If you're going to roll chocolate-coated bananas in a topping such as crushed peanuts, ugly chocolate is not that much of a concern.

Frozen Chocolate Banana Pops
makes 12 pops

6 bananas (not overly ripe), peeled
10 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips
2 tablespoons vegetable shortening
12 popscicle sticks (I used wooden coffee stirrers)
crushed peanuts, sprinkles, or other garnishes (optional)

• Cut bananas in half, and push popscicle sticks in cut end, halfway through bananas. Place on a parchment paper-lined tray in the freezer while preparing the melted chocolate.
• Melt chocolate chips and vegetable shortening in a double boiler on the stove top over low heat, stirring until completly melted.
• Dip individual bananas into the melted chocolate, holding for a minute or so, until chocolate has hardened before placing back on tray.
  
• If decorating the pops with crushed nuts or other garnishes, sprinkle garnish on pops or roll pops in garnish immediately after dipping the bananas in the chocolate, and before the chocolate hardens.
• Place pops in an airtight container and store in the freezer.
  

Taco Bell Grilled Chicken Gordita

Well, you readers asked for it, and it's my job to deliver- fast food is the choice. In honor of the passing of Gidget, the Taco Bell Chihuahua, I went to my local Bell and got three gorditas- one for me, one for my Chihuahua, and one for the big Taco Bell in the sky.

I ordered a grilled chicken gordita with no lettuce and tomato and Lava Sauce, and got a grilled chicken gordita with lettuce and tomato and sour cream. Strike one.

The gordita was so loosely wrapped that it spilled its fresco toppings all over my car, and the cheese wasn't at all melted on the inside. I never could understand why they put unmelted cheese on. Surely they don't fancy their products to be so hot to melt cheese!

I got home and microwaved it to make it edible. Unfortunately, that didn't do it. I opened it up and examined the contents. In the entire gordita, I found maybe five pieces of chicken, and all the sour cream was jammed up at one end of the sandwich. The breading was like eating a very bland Hot Pocket crust, and nothing went well together. The cheese was slimy and still cold, the lettuce and tomato bits kept getting in the way, the sour cream was all at one end, and the chicken was MIA.

I ate half and gave the rest to my dog. Gidget, I hope this doesn't disrespect your memory.

0/10- INEDIBLE

Miss Munchie's Pretzels

I got another package today, from Miss Munchie. She's out of New York and makes delicious soft pretzels and pretzel bread, as well as cookies! She sent me a sampler of nibblers and some of her cookies.

I also broke up with Food, so from hereon out, we will not be seeing hide nor hair of him, as he is a jerk and has bad taste in food. Shun him with awful baked goods! Shun!

Anyhow, back to reviews. The first nibbler I tried was a sesame. I couldn't taste the sesames at all, and the pretzel tasted heavily of yeast and not much else. It was very tiny, perfect to pop in your mouth and eat, but the flavor baffled me. The texture is something a little harder than a soft pretzel, but more akin to the consistency of a ciabatta bread.

3/10- OKAY

Nibbler #2 was a poppy seed, and there was very little cell wall definition in this one, either. There were very little air bubbles and the yeasty taste was quite overpowering. I did taste a few more poppy seeds in this one, and it was a good mix of salty and savory.

4/10- GOOD

Moving onto the sweet set, I tried the cinnamon and sugar nibbler. It was a little wet, and the texture was the same, more crumbly than bready like your average soft pretzel. The topping was heavy on the sugar and cinnamon, but for some reason, just tasted very salty with subtle undertones of cinnamon.

3/10- HMMM
The last one I tried was the plain, which was better than the other three. It had a nic, buttery taste and had a significantly higher amount of cell wall definition. I'm using this term, it basically means the density of the air bubbles in a bread product, how the yeast works. Anyhow, it was better with taste than the others and texture, much softer and less crumbly.

6/10- GREAT

The last thing I was sent was the famous chocolate chipper of Miss Munchie's, a delicious chocolate chip cookie. The cookie was smooth and tasty, with many chocolate chips and a nice, buttery flavor. The edges were crispy and the middle was nice and soft, with none of the cookie crumbling or brittle. My only complaint was that the underside of each cookie was a little too burnt for my liking, but aside from that, we have a winner.

5/10- TASTY

Miss Munchie
www.missmunchie.etsy.com