Japan Tales - Odds 'N' Ends

Going through my photos on the computer I came across a few items I saw in Japan that were just so batshit crazy I had to snap a picture to prove they existed: 

Teeny tiny beers.  You know, for toddlers.

Frightening McDonald's sandwiches.  

Bit hard to make out, but the label reads:"Green Cola, for your natural life.  Made from selected raw materials, derived from plants such as fruits, with cola's own dynamism and briskness."  This is nice, because I have been looking for a more dynamic soda.

That, dear reader, is maple syrup and pancake flavored soda.  Served hot, out of a vending machine, on the street.  Right next to the used panty machine.

But nothing was close to being as peculiar, odd, and befuddling as this gem:

This is a trash can that seems designed to make you review your life choices and become filled with regret.  Thanks a lot trash can, you jerk.  

Tasteless

Mayhap you've heard of this new phenomenon, the supertaster.  These are people who have ultra sensitive taste, caused by a surplus of fungiform papilla, a.k.a. taste buds.  To such individuals, everything tastes, well, more.  Salt is saltier, meat is meatier, chees-its are, as difficult as this is to believe, even cheesier.  Apparently, this is a 'scientific' explanation for why people are "picky" eaters.  To which I say bullshit, eat your fucking vegetables and quit your bitching.  Yeah, it is going to be fun when Kiki starts refusing foods, no?

In other flavor news, there's a new taste as well!  Nevermind sweet, salty, bitter, or sour.  No, now there's umami.  It is sometimes described as delectableness, deliciousness, or savoriness, which is not really helpful at all, but supposedly soy sauce and meat are oozing umami out of their pores.  

In short, food marketers hadn't had a new taste to sell in several decades, so they mined the internet and found that the Japanese had another taste name, and now they're using it to try to sell food.  Think about it, seeing "Soy Sauce, it's liquid salt" doesn't make you want to rush out and buy some, but "Soy Sauce, it has umami" makes you feel sophisticated and intelligent for knowing what the fuck they're saying, so you should probably buy a gallon or two.  

But this is just the tip of an approaching taste tsunami.  Soon we will be told we must pay attention to the tastes of spicy and juicy, then ooey and gooey, and shortly we will be told to try to taste the flavor crystalization and bubbaliciousness of our dinners.  I, for one, can't wait.  Partly because I am a total sucker for marketing (New AND Improved? I should probably buy two then), but mainly because I am what is known, apparently, as a non-taster, though if Latin taught me anything, it should be subtaster, but maybe that just sounded like an unfortunate Subway job description.  

Though it is a bit depressing to learn that this handicap of mine has a name, and a grammatically incorrect one at that, it does explain a lot.  Like why I enjoy coffee the consistency of motor oil, scotch that causes your eyebrows to singe and fall out, and, periodically, chewing on dirty diapers. They're packed with ooey, gooey, and bubbaliciousness.  Not to mention flavor crystals out the ass, no pun intended.  

Carboloading for Breakfast

Hope you've heard the good news, Burger King has added the Whopper to their breakfast menu!


Yes, no longer do you have to buy a Whopper on your way home and leave it in the car in order to have one for breakfast!  Now, don't tell me I was the only one who did that!


I've heard lots of "Whoppers for breakfast, that's gross, disgusting, and borderline insane."  Mainly from my wife.  But how else am I supposed to efficiently surpass the daily recommended allowance of, well, everything except vegetables, by at least 1,400%?  


Have it my way?  Hell yes, Mr. King, er, I mean your Highness.  I would like this please:

Unfortunately, BK didn't plan on someone creating a sandwich of these proportions (how is that possible?), so it cut off some of it.  Well, most of it, really. Here's quick rundown:

Meat:

20 burger patties, 20 chicken patties, 5 veggies patties, and 5 fish filets.  

Condiments:

Tartar Sauce, Ketchup, Mayonnaise, "Stacker" Sauce, Mustard, and A1

Toppings: 

Double lettuce, tomato, onion, pickle, and crispy onions, 8 slices of cheese, and 10 slices of bacon.

For a total of:

885 grams of fat

290 grams of saturated fat

3020 mg of cholesterol

34,830 mg of sodium

and 13,880 calories

Served with a large fries and shake, it takes the total to 15,380 calories and 935 grams of fat.  Delicious!

Face it, before they started offering the Whopper for breakfast, the best you could do was this:

http://www.bk.com/en/us/menu-nutrition/index.html?mymeal=201011158a888089744849fa8e5c1725d6b0b2d6

A mere 2,160 calories, 149 grams of fat, and a measly 6,740 mg of sodium?  Pathetic.

Japan Tales - Sushi

Finally, on my fourth trip to Japan, I convinced my wife to take me to a true sushi restaurant.  See, my darling wife doesn't eat raw fish.  So she is understandably less-than-thrilled to take me to a hardcore sushi restaurant in Japan, where, except for the eel (because it's blood is poisonous... neat!), the idea of cooking the fish is rather sacrilegious.  It may also be that she doesn't want to have to sit next to me while I eat all the fish in the restaurant.  For the sake of brevity, here's basically what I ate:

But of all the sushi I had, there was one piece that really stood out from the rest.  Or should I say swam.  Yes, "dancing sushi", a piece of shrimp so fresh it was still moving on the plate... and when you bit into it the tail fins curled around your lip.  Here is the aftermath:

As for the before, I didn't want to offend the chef by taking a photo while my food was slowly dying so I did not get a shot of it, but it basically looked like this:

Well, minus the doorman outfit.  You've got to go to a really fancy restaurant to have them dress up the fish before serving them.  

Now I know, some of you think this is disturbing, or cruel, or gross... maybe all three.  And I don't know that I can defend myself, but all I can say is that it was delicious, and it could have been worse.  I could have been eating this:

Yep, spam sushi.  Spushi?  

Only The Lonely

Well, my wife and daughter are off in Japan, and in preparation for my upcoming trip to meet them I stopped by the local Japanese grocery and bought some foodstuffs to keep from starving while on my own.   

When I unpacked my groceries at home I was surprised to find actual directions in English on the noodles.  I had assumed it would all be in Japanese, and I had planned on just boiling them for about ten minutes and then, you know, eating them.  Oh, what a fool I was.  No, nothing that simple will suffice for these.

Alright.  Let's take it one step at a time.  Here we go.  

Step 1. Put noodles scatteringly in boiling water little by little, turn the fire low when spout out, boil continuously for about 12 - 13 minutes without changing temperature of water, put out the fire, wash in water and put noodles in a basket to drain off water.

First off, in what world is that one step?  Let's break it down a bit more, shall we?

Put noodles scatteringly in boiling water little by little.  Clunky phasing, maybe, but understandable.  

Turn the fire low when spout out.  Um... what?  I'm assuming "spout out" means returns to a boil?  Sure, let's assume that and move on.  

Boil continuously.  Is this really a problem?  Are a lot of people boiling things intermittently?

For about 12-13 minutes.  Could you be more unsure?  Didn't want to add "maybe" to the end of that?  Have they actually tried cooking these noodles before writing the instructions or are they just guessing?

Without changing the temperature of the water.  Well, I hate to pick nits (alright, I live for it), but how CAN you change the temperature of boiling water?  That's the whole point of boiling.  

Put out the fire.  Wait, I had to build a fire to cook these?  Crap, this is seriously authentic.  

Wash in water and put noodles in a basket to drain off water.  Okay, at first blush this seems understandable.  But wait, do I drain the boiling water off first?  I need a basket too?  I already had to build a fire and now I'm weaving baskets?  These noodles better be amazing.  

So, we've got some cooked noodles (and a new basket too!), let's move on to some serving suggestions.

Step 2. In addition to serving it as ordinary Udon, it can be served as Miso Nikomi and/or Yutsuke Udon by floating noodles in hot water and dipping them in the stock in another receptacle with spices such as green onion, laver, etc.

Okay, fine, I won't serve these as "ordinary Udon" (way to sell it there, by the way), in fact, I will go all out and serve them at Miso Nikomi AND Yutsuke Udon.  So... I put them in hot water and then... uh... I make some stock?  I need several dishes?  Green onion is a spice?  What the fuck is laver?  Oh, it's a traditional Welsh dish of seaweed.  Obviously.  And how exactly would I make Miso Nikomi versus Yutsuke Udon?

Hmm, this all seems quite complicated, can't I just put a sauce over these noodles and treat them like good ol' spaghetti?  Oh, look, here's step 3!

Step 3. It can also be served as spaghetti style by boiling noodles hard, frying and seasoning them with ketchup, etc.

How do I boil them hard?  Does that mean boil them until they're hard (no time at all, since they're dried pasta and start hard) or boil them hard, as in vigorously, as in for a long time?  Now I need a fryer too?  Fuck!  Oh, but I can them season them with ketchup AND etc.   Mmmmm, that sounds delicious!

More Food Crimes Against Nature

As a follow up on my recent post about spray foods (and thanks to Bridget) I bring you....

The Candwich

Yes, let the preemptive vomiting begin.

It comes in peanut butter with grape or strawberry jelly, barbeque chicken, and a pepperoni pizza pocket sandwich amalgam from hell.  It's perfect for soccer moms, cyclists, and an isolated post-apocalyptic survivalist.  So, basically, whichever of my career choices I follow, the candwich fits right in.

Ah, science, what hath thou wrought now?  Now, just because you can do something (no pun intended), doesn't mean you should.  I could can bread, probably, but I don't, because that would be gross.  Wait, what?

Well fuck.  Where is this bunch of assholes with a cannery and too much free time?  Get another hobby, dammit, and stop canning random things.  Please.  Before you get really out of hand.  Oh shit, too late.

Well, at least they're Manhattan Style.  Now New England style canned fish assholes?  That would be gross.

Give me more stuff in a tube!

I was perusing the aisles of the local mega-mart and came across this glorious concoction:

Yes, Batter Blaster!  Oops, make that ORGANIC Batter Blaster.  Because god forbid your pancake/waffle batter in a spray can is somehow unnatural.  It's produced by the Batter Blaster Company of sunny Scottsdale, Arizona.  And frankly, I feel like they're seriously limiting their opportunities to sell foods in a can.  Personally, I would have named it the Food In a Can Company.  We would go by FICCo internally.  Yes, this is yet another reason I am not in charge of my own company.

Anyway, to review our pressurized food offerings to date, whipped cream and spray cheese led the pressurized food charge.  I'm glad to see pancake batter finally getting in on the game, but frankly I'm disappointed that this is all we've seen.  Where's our spray peanut butter and jelly?  How about chocolate chip cookie dough?  Or maybe italian sausage meat?  Yeah, this future is disappointing me as well.

It's hard to make out in the photo, but the serving suggestions on the bottom of the label suggest that you "Simply blast batter into a skillet or waffle iron.  No cleanup!"

Really?

When else have the words "blast" and "no cleanup" ever gone together?  Nope, you're going to have batter blasted everywhere.  On the ceiling.  In your hair.  Somehow behind the refrigerator.  Pretty much everywhere except your skillet or waffle iron.

Does this temper my love for this product?  Hell no, I'll take massively inferior product if it comes in a can.  Face it, spray cheese is horrific, whipped cream in a can tastes about 1/10th as delicious as true whipped cream, and these sprayed pancakes have a soupy texture coming out of the can and an odd chemical aftertaste, but I bought the damn stuff anyway, because I'm doing all I can to usher in a future filled with chemically processed pressurized foodstuffs.

An Open Letter to Taco Bell

Dear Mr. Bell, a.k.a. Señor Taco, 


First off, I want to state that I am a fan of your establishment.  Many an evening your food has solved my dilemma of being hungry at 2 a.m. but only having $0.69 in my pocket.  And I've been a supporter of many of your menu expansions.  I'm a fan of the chalupa, I can even get behind the grilled stuffed burrito.  But I must question some of your most recent decisions concerning your taco offerings.


The first hint I had that something was going awry or askew was the black taco.  I first became aware of it from a radio ad, and I must admit, I was stumped. 


"A black taco?" I asked myself.


"Well, yes, according to the information." I responded.


"Black how?  Maybe they meant black-ened?"


"The ad didn't say anything about 'ened', just black.  Apparently the taco shell is dyed black"


"But why black?  I mean, even accepting that dying the taco shell is a good idea, which is a tenuous assertion, why, for god's name black?  There is no good black food.  Black food makes me think it is either burnt or moldy."


"Well, maybe The Bell is thinking that burning or molding would improve their food taste and nutritional content."


"Touché"


Anyway, the black taco came and went, and I breathed a sigh of relief, thinking erroneously that you had realized your error and moved on.  But, alas, no.  Worse was to come.  Soon thereafter you rolled out the shrimp taco.  Because people don't have enough concern about food poisoning from Taco Bell, let's add seafood to the equation.  And the worst thing was that your advertisements tried to imply that somehow these weren't the worst shrimp in the world, but that they were some sort of gourmet shrimp, a shrimp that other shrimp aspire to be like.  In other words, an übershrimp.  


Finally, in my expansive research for this letter, I was on your website and came across this abomination.  The crispy potato soft taco.  I feel slightly queasy just typing it.  I can just imagine the pitch in one of your brainstorming meetings:


"You know what people like at other fast food restaurants?  Fries"


"Okay, so let's sell french fries."


"But we're a mexican restaurant."


"Damn!"


"But what if we put french fries in a taco?!?!?!"


"Genius!"


And thus this disaster wrought of tater tots and cheese sauce was born.  


But, Mr. Bell, back to my reason for this letter.  I am not writing to disparage your fine establishment, though you have had some missteps of late.  I simply want to ask why, oh why, won't you just offer pork?  It's a staple of mexican cuisine, (unlike black tortillas), it is cheap (unlike the übershrimp), and it is delicious (think bacon wrapped barbeque, fried in pork fat.  Mmmmm).  But if you need to jazz it up, I will accept it if you dye the pork taco shells blue or purple.  Thank you kindly.