Morinaga Ume Hi-chew

This candy called to me; the packaging was so cute that I had to buy it. It's a Japanese explosion with the cherry blossoms, daruma, ume (Japanese plum) flavor, and the fact that it's marketed have the effect of helping students pass their exams.

The package also advertises "sour powder" inside the chew, which makes sense, as ume (especially umeboshi, or pickled plums) are incredibly sour. Umeboshi tend to bring out strong feelings in people, in that they either hate them or love them. The high citric acid content not only results in a sour taste, but some possible health benefits.


As for the candy, it smelled really sour and a little salty, like umeboshi. The outside was a bit sweet and a little plummy, but as I chewed, it got very sour, salty, and juicy. It was so sour that I really was reminded of the real thing, down to the hint of bitterness. It made my eyes water just a little bit.

The innards seemed slightly softer than a regular Hi-chew, and you can see in the picture that the inside is a bit spongy. The sour punch was really surprising, and I think this would be great for plum fans. It wasn't as intense as umeboshi can be, but it's candy, so that's just fine with me.

A-

Morinaga Website (Japanese)

The Fancy Lady Gourmet Cupcakes and Cookies

I got another package in the mail, from The Fancy Lady Gourmet, and as soon as I opened it, I couldn't believe how adorable it was.

The packaging itself is exquisite. The packing was baby blue tissue paper, and each confection was packed in a colorful Chinese food carton. I felt like I was opening an individual gift with each one. There was a label on each telling me what I was opening.

The first thing I tried was a coconut brownie cupcake with graham cracker crust. Now, I'm not really a fan of coconut, but this blew me away. The brownie was like a delicious, dense hybrid of cupcake and brownie, it was definitely an amazing homemade treat. The frosting was a bit hard, which I can expect, being in the mail, so I popped my piece into the microwave and let it nuke for a few. Probably one of the best decisions I've ever made. I then realized that the frosting wasn't frosting at all, but white chocolate with toasted coconut on top. Delicious. It basically turned into a ganache.

This brownie cupcake was fantastic. I think I'm a convert.

9/10- FANTASTIC

The next treat was a s'mores brownie. Opening this was just like a real s'more! Very gooey good! The marshmallows were nice and toasty brown, but the cake was very dry and had a really strange mouthfeel to it. It left a film in my mouth and a strange aftertaste that I can't put my finger on. I'm not sure if it was the graham cracker crust or the brownie itself, but something was a little off. I did like how the marshmallows were roasted on top, though, instead of being put in the mix.

5/10- OKAY

This last one was really the star of the show. It's an adorable little red velvet cupcake with a lovely fondant flower on top. The cake is a deep, dark, rich burgundy color, almost, and you can smell the cocoa scent of a good red velvet from three feet away.

I almost don't want to cut into this cupcake, it's so cute. It's got a perfect daub of white chocolate on top. I'm torn between eating it or putting it by my bedside table and making it my firstborn child. But alas, I must share with Patricia, as my family ate her last share of baked goods, so...I must cut.

The cake is a little bit dry, but maintains a deep, rich, buttery red velvet flavor that goes perfectly with milk. The frosting is delicious, again, a really buttery white chocolate dollop on top, and the fondant was a pleasant surprise for me. The cupcake was smaller than the brownie, but this was perfect. Any more would have been too much. The density is just perfect with this one.

8/10- TASTY

I strongly recommend these desserts for anyone to try. The Fancy Lady Gourmet is out of Moonachie, NJ, and can be found on her website on Etsy.com

The Fancy Lady Gourmet
Moonachie, NJ

Asian EXTRAVAGANZA! Part 1: Drinks

Okay, so a little background. My friend Swagger and I went out yesterday on a delightful quest for an Ocean State Job Lot, which turned into a huge adventure finding and retrieving items from an Asian Grocery.

We got some beverages first, for review. I'll be doing it all in part by cuisine. We found dollar store beverages and Asian things to show you today.

First up was the Wang Dream aloe juice. After giggling profusely at the funny name, we took a sip. The texture is very strange. It's a very thick juice, and the texture is only comparable to drinking melted Jell-O. At first taste, it tasted like apple-scented shampoo would taste like. On the second round, it developed a muscat-like taste, and the little beads of aloe tasted much better. It was, in all, a really refreshing drink and not horrible for costing $1.70. The texture is a little off-putting, though. I kept expecting it to develop a skin on top, like its Jell-o imitation.

5/10- OKAY

We also found a treat I'd been dying to try, but hadn't really wanted to order online: soda for weeaboos, AKA ramune. The ramune was immensely fun to open, like a grenade launcher, and I felt a real sense of accomplishment when I got the marble down and the soda tried to explode all over my hands.

Unfortunately, the taste was really disappointing. We had the choice of original, melon, Hawaiian blue, and strawberry, and chose strawberry. Swagger said the Japanese don't like things too sweet, and it was evident in the taste. If anything, the ramune tasted like watery and minimally flavored seltzer. If that was strawberry flavored, plain must be really gross. A huge disappointment, even if the packaging was awesome. We loved the Engrish on the label, too. "Enjoy pop soda!"

4/10- DISAPPOINTING

That was it for the Asian beverages, as we'd already stocked up on discounted sodas at an Aldi and Ocean State Job Lot before. Onto the discounted stuff. We bought two sodas from a company called "Snow," advertising crisp, minty beverages, and one ominously nomikered Java Pop.

The "Icy Green Tea- Light" Snow pop thing was nothing special in the way of bottle mechanics, like the ramune, and it was encouraged to serve "ice cold". Okay. So we put our ice batons and waited. We took a sip.

The smell was intense, like we'd just sauntered into a Colgate factory on a hot day. It looked like beer, and tasted like sparkling Listerine. There was no green tea flavor at all. We now understand why these were three for a buck. They were loaded with sugar, 35 grams a bottle, but had no sugary or sweet taste to speak of, and were horrible. We spat them out and dumped the remainder of the soda in the yard.

0/10- INEDIBLE

Okay, so after that astronomical failure, we popped open the Whiteout Peach flavor. Not looking good so far, Swagger said. So we opened it, poured it into our glasses with ice batons, and waited. Took a sip. Again, we hated it. Just spitting out the drink made me feel much better.

I don't know what was wrong with these two beverages, aside from the glaringly obvious fact that we bought them from a dollar store. But the Whiteout peach was exactly the same. There was no peach taste to find, it smelled like toothpaste, and was sugary on the label, but had no sugar to be found. These just sucked, completely.

0/10- INEDIBLE

I'm not proud to do it, but I have to give the Snow Pops my first zeroes. We spit them out. They were horrific.

Last up was the ever-intriguing Java Pop, in vanilla flavor. It boasted being all organic, all seeing, all knowing, with pure sugar cane.

We opened it and poured it into the bottle. It had a sickly sweet flavor of sugar and vanilla, like snorting powdered sugar. Upon trying it, we smacked our lips a little, probably trying to see if they stuck together. It did taste like vanilla coffee, that was accurate. In fact, if you condensed it, it would probably taste even better sans bubbles. But this combination was just gross. Soda and coffee is really disgusting. And the sugar this one had almost negated the fact that it was organic. Just disappointing.

1/10- GROSS

Tine Temptation's Treats

I got a lovely sampler package from Tine Temptations, an independently owned store out of Chicago.

The package was very tastefully designed, with little spotted bows and pink and black logo stickers. It was adorable. Melissa, the owner and baker, assured me that this was not her normal packaging, but that she minimized to save space and w2eight on shipping, a move I appreciated, as she paid for shipping, too.

She sent in the package, two chocolate and peanut butter pretzel bites and her famous cinnamon bun cookies.

The cinnamon bun cookies were really, really soft, but had a delicious grainy texture to them that I can't quite find the source of. They definitely tasted just like a cinnamon bun. The swirls of cinnamon sugar pop in your mouth and are aesthetically beautiful to see on the cookie itself. I put a few bits of this in the microwave and got a real treat.

Oddly enough, there was a coconut flavor to these that worked really well. They tasted like a Samoa with this. I just can't tell where it's from. Coconut oil? Coconut in the flavoring? Whatever it was, it's a winner.

8/10- DELICIOUS

The chocolate peanut butter pretzel bites were cute little treats with a peanut butter and chocolate coating on top of them. They were drizzled with alternating flavors, a feature that I loved.

The pretzels were a little too hard for me, I think that might have been in their aspect. The coating was also slightly thin, but was rich and coated entirely.

Taste-wise, they were a yummy treat, but just a little too dry for me. The chocolate definitely added well to the moisturizing aspect and the peanut butter was tasty, too. I think these would be wonderful with those peanut butter filled pretzels, like from Trader Joe's, but I'm not the baker...

5/10- OKAY

Tine Temptations can be found at Etsy.com, at her store. She's a great seller and very accommodating in what she makes for customers. Her treats are original and very tasty.

Tine Temptations
Chicago, Illinois

McDonald's Chicken Selects Premium Breast Strips

So yeah. The Foodette has officially branched off into a good food, bad food roulette-style blog. Patricia will be showing you the right way to eat, and I will be boldly stepping off into the intrepid "not" section.

My dad brought me McDonald's today, a rare treat. People will laugh. I will get fatty jokes, probably from malicious exes, but I do not care. I lost fifteen pounds and sprinted today, trying to catch a runaway Bichon, ergo, I deserved it.

So he brought me the five-piece Chicken Selects, which, ironically, I had just read about as one of the top five worst items to order at Mickey D's. Mmmmm. Coronaries. So tasty. So the McAwesome boasts a whopping 660 calories, 40 grams of fat, and 1680 grams of sodium. It's a lot to handle, especially coupled with the archetypal- ha ha, arch? Like the golden arches? Fuck it. Coupled with the NORMAL combo of fries and a Coke, or whatever your liquid poison may be, it's a lot of calories.

I ate the entire box. I was starving. It was also the first thing I'd eaten today, but hey, I don't need to defend myself. The chicken itself comes with a variety of dipping sauces. A good choice on the part of McDonald's, because the chicken can tend to be a bit dry.

I don't know if it's my KFC or the chain in general, but their chicken is odious. It's basically batter around gristle. Not this chicken, though. While it's not Lenny and Joe's, a review which I must do with gumption, as it is the best chicken ever. Maybe a trip with Patricia? While it's not theirs, it falls in a pretty solid middle category. The breading is lightly flavored with black pepper, and needs no salt. The sauces- buffalo, ranch, honey mustard, and barbecue- are all solid, good sauces that do well with the chicken.

Texture-wise, this is no McNugget. McDonald's isn't fucking with you here, because there's no guessing as to where the meat comes from. It's a meatier texture than the Nugget, which had that greasy, softer texture we all knew and enjoyed, but in return, is less greasy. In fact, it's not very greasy at all. More of a dry breading than anything else.

The pieces are quite large. A good four, five bites apiece. I like them. Three pieces is very filling, five makes a meal. I wouldn't eat it too often, but it's too tasty to pass up when you just can't have homemade fried chicken. For a mass produced place, this chicken is good.

It runs a little steep- six bucks for a meal, but it's a good value.
7/10- TASTY

Pimento Cheese For Grilling

This is not a post on grilled pimento cheese sandwiches (just like regular grilled cheese sandwiches, but better), but this is a post on pimento cheese made specifically to throw on top of burgers on the grill.

What's different about grilling pimento cheese than regular ol' pimento cheese? The absence of mayonnaise. You see, when mayonnaise gets heated to high temperatures it separates and gets all ookey, and that's not what you want on your grilled 'mento cheese burger.

This fabulous idea of taking out the mayonnaise and subbing cream cheese as the binder (some make regular pimento cheese with mayo and cream cheese, but I never have) came to me via Matt and Ted Lee, the cutest, receding-haired James Beard-winning cookbook authors and Southern foods purveyors from Charleston, SC.

This grilling pimento cheese has no mayonnaise, and is formed into a rectangle and chilled so it can be sliced and thrown on top of burgers on the grill, but I sneaked some slices for my lunch sandwiches and it's just as tasty cold as it is melted on the grill.

Pimento cheese is my favorite cheese (it's really more of a cheese spread), and I only know of a few people that don't like or won't try this Southern delicacy, and those people are usually mayonnaise adverse. Now, haters really don't have any excuse to not try pimento cheese.See this jar of Cento sliced pimentos? While there are many brands of jarred sweet peppers out there, I grew up aware of only this brand, and also not knowing that roasted red peppers had any purpose other than pimento cheese. I'm a little more worldly now, but this small Cento jar will always say pimento cheese to me. Feel free to use any brand of jarred roasted red pepper you like, or even roast your own.

Pimento Cheese For Grilling
makes enough for about 4-6 large sandwiches
Adapted from The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook by Matt and Ted Lee

8 ounces, extra sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
2 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
4 ounces roasted red peppers, diced
1 teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon onion, grated
salt and pepper, to taste
Combine all ingredients in a bowl. (These pictures reflect a double batch.)
Mix ingredients until incorporated. (I like to use my hands, but a spoon will work, too.)
Turn mixture out onto a clean surface, and shape into a rectangular block. Wrap pimento cheese block in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 1 hour, or until ready to use.Cut pimento cheese block into slices, and top burgers on the grill with slices.

Hood Small Curd Cottage Cheese With Pineapple

I've always had a thing for salad bar cottage cheese. I remember there was a time when I was on a sixth grade field trip, and there was a salad bar at lunch, but sans salad dressing. Therefore, as a (rather un-thought out) solution, I just piled on a tower of cottage cheese as compensation. And it worked.

I've been on the lookout for healthy and filling snacks, and cottage cheese is infamous for being healthy and filling, so I decided to give it a try...went down to Big-Y yesterday and picked up four kinds of Hood cottage cheese available...regular, country style, chive, and pineapple.

This particular cottage cheese boasts 130 calories, 3.5 grams of fat, 20 mg of cholesterol, 320 mg of sodium, 15 grams of sugar, and 10 grams of protein per serving (113 g). It's somewhat unimpressive considering the high and mighty health food pedestal that cottage cheese is often placed upon, but it's probably better for you than a sack of potato chips or something. Really not impressed with the amount of sodium, but regardless...

Now, I had read from several online forums that many people preferred their cottage cheese with fruit, especially pineapple. I've never been able to understand that--for me, cottage cheese has always been associated with romaine lettuce and fluorescent salad bar lighting. But considering the high volume of pro-pineapple propagators, I decided to give it a try.

I don't know if it was just me or if it was just Hood, but I was unimpressed. The cottage cheese part tasted...well, like cottage cheese. It was a little more watery and crumbly than I would've liked, even for small curd cottage cheese. But nonetheless, the cottage cheese itself was tolerable.

The pineapple, however, was not. Now granted, this is Hood, and if they ever mass produce pineapples, that's probably what they used in this cottage cheese. There were little bits of pineapple fibers scattered around the cup (rather evenly, which was interesting), but the cottage cheese just had a weird pineapply feel to it. I didn't really like it, personally....I got the vibe that Hood decided to throw in some leftover bits of pineapple and squirt in some pineapple juice concentrate into every cup before packaging. Not that the pineapple tasted fake or anything....but just slightly suspicious.

Or, rather, I'm thinking it could just be me and my distaste for the pineapple-cottage cheese combo. Either way, however, I'm the one writing the review, so...

3/10- UNIMPRESSIVE

I am looking forward to trying the chive flavored cottage cheese tomorrow...stay tuned!