Food Should Taste Good: Falafel Tortilla Chips

After working three hours of approved OT to get caught up on some work (and not feeling like I made any progress), I wanted food. Last time I ate was around 1:30pm-ish, and by the time I got out of work, it was 8pm. I decided to head home with a pit stop at Whole Foods to make one of my usual salads.

I ended up perusing the store (thank gawd there was only an hour left to them being open else I would have bought more things), and being in a chippy-dippy kind of mood, I got some dip (Hope Foods Organic Hope Dips - Curry Lentil Dip) and then headed to the chip aisle. I was trying to find something that would go with the dip I was also trying out.

Since I couldn't narrow it down to one bag, I bought two - one of which were falafel chips. That's right. You heard me. FALAFEL.

Now I love me some falafel. My habit at the Falafel's Drive-In is to get falafel, hummus, and pita. I either spread the hummus inside the pita and add some falafel OR I mash the falafel into the hummus and then spread into the pita. Either way, it's delicious.

And I've tried other chips that are made out of things other than your traditional potato or corn. Love veggie chips. So when I saw this, I thought, "Okay, you've piqued my interest."

Immediately when you take a chip out of the bag, it SMELLS like falafel (so good). I kept sniffing the same chip over and over again thinking "What sorcery has created such a treat?" The front of the bag says that they're made with chick peas, onion, coriander, cumin, parsley and garlic. Popping a chip in my mouth, I found that the chip is thinner than a regular potato or tortilla chip, but it's pretty damn tasty.

I used to be a person that needed my chip to have flavor meaning I never did plain. I wasn't a big regular potato chip or tortilla chip person. If it wasn't BBQ or some other flavor, I needed dip or I wouldn't eat it. Nowadays, they make chips that are essentially "plain" but taste AMAZING! This is a chip I could eat the whole bag of. (Yes, I know. I'm a pig.)

Their suggestions on the back of the bag say they go best alone or with Olive Tapenade, Tzatziki Dip, and/or Feta Cheese. It went great with the dip I had. I'll write about that in a different post.

Would I Ever Try This Again?: Of course. I've had a few flavors from this brand before and have found them all tasty. Falafel is a definite yum yum plus!

Distributed by:

Food Should Taste Good, Inc.
PO Box 18932
Denver, CO 80218 USA
1-877-588-3784
http://www.foodshouldtastegood.com/
http://www.foodshouldtastegood.com/products/tortilla/falafel

Delish Dark & Twisted Lemon & Black Pepper Dark Chocolate

Picture courtesy of me, my iPhone and filter apps. :)

One night I headed to Walgreen's to pick up some things allergy meds and a bag of candy for my candy bucket at work (it was running low, and I was wanting some back stock to top off the bucket). When I got to the candy aisle, I saw the usual chocolate bars - which I am a fan of don't get me wrong, but they were advertising the same old thing, and I can get that anywhere really. Then I saw this little guy and thought I haven't seen you before. 

Most of the time I see chocolate bars advertising that they're just chocolate with this much cacao and so on, and that's fine, but after a while they all start looking the same to me. So when I saw Lemon & Black Pepper, I thought Okay, I'll give you a go.

So you open the box-type packaging and find the giant foil wrapped chocolate which brings me back to my Hershey Bar and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Wonka Bar days. When you open the foil, the chocolate is similar to a Hershey bar meaning it's divided into sections, but instead of the little Hershey stamped rectangles, you have giant blank squares (equivalent - at best guess - to four little Hershey rectangles) giving you eight squares in total.

I broke off a couple and ate one, and at first, it just smelled like chocolate and tasted like chocolate. There was a bit of a crunch to it, and I assumed that had to be the pepper, but the lemon came in at the latter half for a nice finish.

Overall you get mainly chocolate with hints of black pepper - I think you can see some in the grain when you break a piece in half - but there is no physical trace of lemon like zest, at least that I can see.

Well done chocolate. I like you.

Would I Ever Try This Again?: Yes. The fusion of the flavors isn't overwhelming that you forget what you're eating or make a "What the hell is that?" face. Overall, it's a nice, tasty treat, and I can't help but wonder what it would taste like in a s'mores.

Distributed by
Walgreens Co.
200 Wilmot Rd.
Deerfield, IL 60015

Walgreens.com
http://www.walgreens.com/search/results.jsp?Ntt=lemon+and+black+pepper

Macaroons (from Whole Foods)

So there I was... minding my own business... stopping by one of my favorite places (Whole Foods) to get a little salad to nosh on the way home, and I was being a good little girl and then I saw the cookie trolley - this cart that has all these bulk candy-type bins each filled with a yummy baked sweet treat.

I was fine, willpower in check, when I walked around it with that "No thank you, kind Sir, I shall not have any of you today" attitude and then I saw the most delicious thing ever... and in four different versions. I remember swearing as my feet brought to the trolley, and I picked up one of each (which were each one and a half to two times the size of a golf ball).

Damn you Whole Foods! Deliciously damn you devils!

*sings* I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts...

The first delicious treat we have is the good old fashioned coconut macaroon.

Oh you heavenly yummy creature you. You have given me so much joy over the years from various bakeries all over. I've even had you in cookie form. I have baked you for many cookie exchanges over the holidays. You are by bar one of my favorite tasty treats.

*sings* Do you like pina coladas...???!!!

Next up we have the pina colada macaroon. I can vaguely taste the pineapple in it. There are very few small chunks of (crushed) pineapple so it leaves me to think that there might be some pineapple extract added perhaps? And the icing is just sweetness overload. Dear gawd man. I'm a big girl already. LOL!

The lyric "She's my cherry pie" doesn't fit here, so I got nothing.

Third up on the tasting block is the cherry chocolate chip coconut macaroon. Duuuuude!!! Right away you get the taste of the cherry. The insides of the macaroon is a little darker than a plain coconut macaroon so I'm thinking either brown sugar was used or the chocolate chips and cherry slightly dyed this little guy, but it doesn't matter. Why? Cuz it's AMAZING!!!

HarryBurns: ... but I would be proud to partake of your pecan pie!

Lastly we have the one I was saving for last - the caramel pecan macaroon. Now since I'm obsessing over macaroons, y'all can pretty much guess I LOVE coconut, but another dessert that I love is pecan pie, and I never thought to put pecan and coconut together. (WHAT?! I know, right?!) Don't mind me, I just had a moment. OMFG!!! The pecans aren't crunchy - probably because they were soaked in the mixture and then baked in - but there is a distinctive pecan flavor, and the caramel is really tasty, too.

*******

Would I Ever Try This Again?: ABSO-FRAKKIN-LUTELY!!! I don't know why it never occurred to me to mix flavors. I mean, when I baked my own, sometimes I'd switch out vanilla extract for coconut extract or I even added chocolate chips at one point, but jimineychristmasman!!! This stuff is yum-yum-doodle-yumscious!!!  -- Overall, they were all pretty tasty, but they are all admittedly really sweet since they're basically sugar, coconut, egg white and vanilla extract, so if you can't take "too sweet" things or don't like coconut, these bad boys aren't for you. (But they're definitely for me!)

Macaroons purchased at:

Whole Foods Market
20955 Stevens Creek Blvd
Cupertino, CA 95014

Bean Jelly

My schedule for work has me closing every Saturday night. On the way to work, I had gotten into the habit of buying a boba pearl drink from a place down the street. The flavors I got varied from time to time, but I'd always get extra pearls, popping boba and some jellies (usually coconut) added into the milk tea (of which I always got a large cup). The dispatcher on duty that night would always come to my department and check in on me, see how things were going, how I was doing... and then he'd see the drink and start questioning. What the hell is that? What is in it? What is all that? I'd offer to let him try some, but he'd always say no since he had a bad experience when a friend told him to "drink this" and without looking, took the drink, sucked on the straw, and choked on a tapioca pearl.

Since then he's kinda anti those drinks.

Fast forward to recently.

There's a store that I like - Daiso Japan. When describing it to people, I call in the Asian Dollar Store... except everything is $1.50 unless otherwise marked.

Yeah, I kinda love that store. You find some cool stuff in there. Granted, the stationary doesn't make much sense to me, but it's pretty, and sometimes I get some. (But right now, I'm not talking about pens and notebooks.)

I went there a few days ago to get this little change purse for my mother. I have one that I keep in my car that holds random bits of spare change. My mom thought it was cute and wanted one so... I got her one. While there, though, I always have to browse. They have a small snack section - same aisle as stationary stuff... sneaky devils - and while looking over a notebook, there was a lady near me looking at these bars that reminded me of the meal bars from Snowpiercer. 

Still... color me curious.

Making my way to that part of the aisle, I saw that what she had been looking at were these large bars of bean jelly. (Yes, you heard me. bean jelly.) I've had various bean pastes and bean jellies before - like in boba tea and all that - so I thought Why not give it a go? I opted for the smaller pack of four instead of buying multiple large bars of different flavors.

I think the ingredients on the back signify which block is which flavor. If that's the case, the following flavors are...

SALT - sugar, bean jam, glucose syrup, agar and salt.
RED BEAN - sugar, bean jam, red bean, glucose syrup, and agar.
BEAN - sugar, bean jam, glucose syrup, and agar.
PLUM - sugar, bean jam, glucose syrup, agar, vegetable juice (red radish), and plum flavor.

Still not really sure which one is which since the little guys are individually labeled, so let's play a game shall we?

My best guess: Bean

First up is little pink guy... the "one of these things is not like the other" guy since it's the only light-colored one in the group. On the back like a pack of gum, there's a starter strip with an arrow that you're supposed to pull that takes off one end of the wrapping.

There is no real distinctive smell.

For anyone that's ever had red bean mochi, that's the closes I can compare it to that people might understand. Biting into it... the consistency is like biting into a soft bean, but there's a sweetness like with red bean (also probably due to the sugar), that doesn't make it so bad. Not sure what flavor it is. Maybe trying another block will help with that.

My best guess: Salty

Next block up for tasting is little dark guy with blue character writing on it.

Ohhh, this one has a scent. It smells slightly sweet... though when I bite into it... yeah, I found the salty one.

I usually like salty treats, too, but this one is salty bean, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. All the bean type Asian treats I've had have always been a little sweet. This one is still sweet but salty... but not like salted caramel frozen yogurt or chocolate covered salted pretzels. It's not disgusting, but definitely not my favorite.

My best guess: Red Bean

This dark one with pink writing on the label was a little difficult to open. The arrow tab on the back was made of total epic fail. When I finally got it to rip a little, I nearly ripped the whole wrapper off.

There's a scent to this one, too, just like the previous one, but where I thought the previous one might be just red bean and had a plain red bean smell (well, to me anyway), this one smelled slightly sweeter.

I definitely liked this one better than the salty one... but probably about even to the first pink one. The flavor was stronger than the first one, but both are pleasant.

And that leaves one more...

My best guess: Plum

This one had "wrapper fail" as well... right when I thought I had it, it just kept unraveling and unraveling to the point where I had to cut it off with scissors. There was also a slight scent thought not as strong as the others. The taste was similar, but when I bit into it, it tasted just a little off... like red bean with a little something else. (Perhaps that's the plum flavor and the red radish juice doing something to my taste buds.)

So to recap (in order of tasted):

1. okay, not much flavor
2. WAY too salty
3. just right (like Baby Bear's porridge)
4. similar to #3 but a little... off?

I still have NO WAY of knowing which one is actually which since I can't read those characters, but meh. Curiosity sated.

Would I ever try this again?: Probably not. Maybe it was a lesser quality or something, but it just left nothing for my tastebuds to holler at. None of them - save maybe the salty one - offended me, but I think I'll stick to eating my bean jelly in boba drinks or mochi treats. (I can just imagine if I bought the bigger ones. Ick.)

Product of Japan

Exported by:
Daiso Industries Co., LTD.
1-4-14 Yoshiyuki higashi, Saijyo
Higashihiroshima-City, Hiroshima
739-8501       JAPAN

Shrimp Chips - Hot Garlic

I don't remember when I first had them, but I do remember having them young... like when I was in kindergarten or first grade. I remember a time when my mom had forgotten to make my lunch and instead of bringing my lunchbox to school before lunch time, she brought me some food items, one of which were the regular Shrimp Chips...which are baked puffed snacks that taste like shrimp. In describing them to people, I would always say they are shrimp-flavored crackers in the shape of fries (which I thought was pretty accurate). Then people would ask to try some. After having described the treat to them, I thought they would be prepared, but then they'd take one, crunch it up in their mouths and say, "Ew! This tastes like shrimp!" I'd look at the bag... then at them... and I'd think "I told ya it was shrimp. It says so on the damn bag for crying out loud!"

But there's no talking to these people. These are the same people that ask as a question, and you say something like, "She went to the store, and that's all I know." And then proceed to ask more and more questions... as if they didn't hear you say that's all you knew or they think they can jog your mind by poking and prodding you with more questions.

I have friends that do this. I just roll my eyes, sigh and pat them on the head as I smile.

But back to the chips.

So over the years as I've grown older, I've seen different varieties on the classic from my childhood. I usually stuck with the regular since most of the time I only saw Wasabi and Hot Garlic... both of which I took to be HOT as in SPICY and therefore... DEATH!!! (Can you tell I'm a hot wuss?)

Recently I decided to bite the bullet and grab a bag of the Hot Garlic. It was the garlic part that held my interest. I LOVE me some garlic. I had forgotten that I had them, actually, until I went to visit my family recently for the weekend, and tossed them into a bag of road snacks. I actually didn't get around to them until the drive home, and let me tell you... they helped me stay awake a bit.

That's not to say the flavor was strong... it wasn't like licking the sun covered in Cholula or something, but - for me - it was definitely warm... but TASTY! On the drive home, I would grab one, nosh, repeat... repeat... repeat... but it was a small build and getting lost in their tastiness would leave my mouth letting me know it needed a break. I made myself put them away - I think I ate about a third of the bag before willing myself to stop - and then snacked on them this evening after work on when I got home.

And now they're all gone.

The icon is just a big bulb of garlic with no mention of the heat other than the "hot" before it. The back tells you they added Hot Garlic seasoning to make a "spicy, crispy snack". It's also an "ideal snack for any occasion". (Have you ever seen a bowl of these at a party?) And just so you know, it's "made with real shrimp". Not sure what percentage that is, but I'm pretty sure the snack itself would not be on the healthiest foods top ten.

Would I ever try this again?: Of course I would. Sad thing is, this is the kind of snack you have more luck finding in Asian markets as opposed to your local store... but I have come across them in the Oriental/Asian section of my local grocer so all is good. It's a lovely salty snack, great for a PMS treat, and I'm pretty sure there are some cookery type things you can do with them... maybe use them instead of onions on top of a green bean casserole. I dunno. They're just tasty. What else do I need to say?

Manufactured by
Calbee North America, LLC
Fairfield, CA 94534
http://www.calbeeamerica.com

Calypso - Coconut Colada Limeade

Today is my first of two days off, and I'm trying to multi-task a bit... so I thought I'd blog about some stuff I've recently tried.

This morning was spent at the movies with friends (How To Train Your Dragon 2 -- good movie, made me cry, dammit! And I want a Toothless). After that, I didn't want to just go home so I headed to Zanotto's Family Market for some lunchy snacks, and then parked it in the shade of the Rose Garden down the street and noshed while I read my book.

Of the few beverages I nabbed, I opted for this lovely coconut/lime drink since I like coconut and lime. Usually when a food type item is comprised of components that separately I enjoy, my brain tends to think that together they'd be fine (which isn't always the case when I tried the cheese/corn ice cream... I'm sure it's an acquired taste, but blech). So here we have two popular flavors much like kiwi and strawberry or peanut butter and jelly together in one bottle for your beverage enjoyment.

At the time I first sipped this, I had just snacked on two sausages that were rather peppery so perhaps that tainted my first impression - which wasn't all that great - but then after the pepper taste went away, and I took a few gulps of water to cleanse my pallet, I tried again... and STILL didn't like it.

Now it's not terrible... it just (to me) tastes like it's lacking something.

The bottle starts off with residue at the bottom of the bottle, but then on the bottle it says to "shake well" and so I did. Right next to those instructions, it says "Real Lime Bits" so I'm assuming that is what had settled at the bottom that I was mixing into the rest of the bottle. I popped the top after I shook it all about, and it smelled of coconut (not so much lime), but the smell wasn't all that great to me either. It was sort of like an imposter fragrance of sorts... like it smelled like it but not quite.

Being thirsty, I took really big swigs which the 20 fl oz bottle was happily to give, and the second time around, I just didn't taste the pepper aftertaste the sausages left the first time. It wasn't bad, but I kept thinking it would taste better if it had some vodka in it or something.

I made the commitment buying it from the store, and like the good consumer that I am, I drank the whole thing down (all 2.5 servings), and in the end was still left with a 'meh' feeling. The ingredients seem to be natural (nothing I can't pronounce or had to look up to figure out what it was - although it was only 10% juice), but it just didn't leave an impression on me.

Would I ever try this again?: Most likely not. I think I had one of the drinks from this line before since the labeling looks familiar - at best guess it was a pink lemonade - but I can't remember much of that time so I guess it didn't leave much of an impression on me then. And unless the one I had today was made into a cocktail of some kind, I won't be trying it again.

http://www.calypsobeverages.com/
http://www.calypsobeverages.com/limeades.html

King Juice Company, Inc.
Milwaukee, WI 53221