Pringles are my favorite chip. In this Bon Appétit video, chef Claire Saffitz attempts to make them herself. Even if she nailed the form and the flavor, I don't think her technique would scale in my household. Admittedly, once I pop, I can't stop. Read the rest
Last week, students at Atlantic Community High School in Delray Beach, Florida were delighted by a new snack offering in the vending machine. Unfortunately, it wasn't immediately clear how to select this limited time item for purchase.
I’m no stranger to eating bones. As a child I was like a cat hearing the lid being peeled off a can and flying into the kitchen to see what’s for dinner. Every time my mother opened some canned salmon, there I’d be, standing by her side waiting for her to drop some of those soft, greasy, salty fish bones into my hands. But I haven’t done that in years.
Fast forward to the other day, when I came across a bag of similar-looking bones in my local supermarket here in Japan. A quick look and I noticed they weren’t salmon bones, nor were they soft or greasy. They were eel bones.
Dry roasted eel bones, in fact. The package tells me they are chock full of calcium, vitamins A, B2, D, and E. Who needs potato chips when for 200 yen you can get 26 grams of eel bones to nosh on? Not only that, but Kyomaru makes several different flavors, too: spicy, salt, soy sauce, wasabi, and sweet sesame seed flavored.
Photos by: Thersa Matsuura Read the rest
There’s a gelatinous, slightly chewy, delicious-when-served-chilled dessert in Japan called warabi mochi. It is made from starch, water, and sugar. Simple. The usual way it's served is generously covered in soybean flour and then squirted with some brown sugar syrup.
It's interesting to note that the original starch used for making warabi mochi was derived from the bracken plant (a fern-looking thing). However, that method proves a bit time consuming in these days of immediate gratification as it takes 10 kilos (22 lbs) of bracken root to extract a mere 70 grams (2.4 ounces) of starch. These days, other similarly textured starches are being used instead. Think sweet potato starch and tapioca.
Now, warabi mochi is often considered a summer treat because it's light and served cold, perfect for hot days when you don't have much of an appetite. You know something else that has become a summer treat in Japan? Chocolate mint everything. It's like you can't find anything chocolate mint flavored until August first and then the chocomint floodgates are opened. I guess it was inevitable that East should meet West and some genius at 7-11 would dream up a chocolate mint warabi mochi dessert. This sounds like a bad idea, but I bought one anyway. I found tucked inside the jelly-like warabi mochi exterior mint whipped cream and loads of chocolate chips. It turns out chocolate mint warabi mochi is amazingly good and it might be only reason I'm sad to see this typhoon-riddled, flood-plagued, heatwave-infested summer end. Read the rest
Nicolas Cage's mug is being used on the packaging of a Japanese snack food. Because, of course it is.
RocketNews24 writes that Cage's endorsement of Umaibo's "Nicolastick," a 10-cent corn chowder-flavored cheese puff stick, is part of a promotion for the Japanese film Ore no Emono wa bin Laden (Bin Laden is My Prey):
[The film] observes several Japanese cinematic traditions by being quaintly renamed from the original title (Army of One), having an official Japanese-market title (Finding bin Laden) that doesn’t match the meaning of its Japanese one, and coming out long, long after its original release (Army of One premiered in November of 2016 in America, but Bin Laden is My Prey won’t hit Japanese theaters until this December).
Sadly, the Nicolastick won’t be sold in stores. The only way to get your hands on them is to purchase advance tickets for Bin Laden is My Prey when they go on sale on October 13 at Tokyo’s Cinema Shinjuku, Osaka’s Cinemart Shinsaibashi, or Nagoya’s Century Cinema, or through online ticketing service Major at a yet-to-be-determined date. 1,500 yen (US$14) gets you a ticket to the movie and an undisclosed number of Nicolasticks.
Well, dang. I really wanted one.
image via ITMedia Read the rest
I've written about Lindt 90% cocoa chocolate before. I try to take some with me on every trip (along with macadamia nuts and beef jerky). Like I wrote earlier, his dark chocolate is surprisingly smooth for a high-cocoa chocolate, and a 40g serving has just 3g of sugar (by comparison, a 40g serving of a Special Dark Hershey bar has 20g of sugar).
It's usually $30 for a 12-pack, but Amazon has a lightning deal right now for $22.19, and the deal is already 53% claimed. I just bought some! Read the rest
Jane Espenson is not only a talented TV writer who has worked on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Battlestar Galactica, and Once Upon A Time, she is also quite adept at constructing impressive Pringles structures.
"I did it!" she tweeted. "I did it! I built a Pringles ringle! No glue, just physics."
Most impressive to me is how Espenson managed to complete the ring before eating them all, as I most certainly would have done. Read the rest
Swedish brewery S:t Eriks created a box of fancy potato chips that costs 499 kr (~$56). There are five chips in each box. Obviously a marketing/fundraising gimmick, but they certainly sound like quite the artisanal chip. Ingredients include: matsutake, truffle seaweed, crown dill, Leksand onion, India Pale Ale wort, and potatoes gathered from a "hillside in Ammarnäs, a steep, stony slope in a south-facing location where almond potatoes are cultivated in very limited numbers."
They made just 100 boxes and sadly they have all sold out (with proceeds going to charity). Oh well, there are always Pringles.
S:t Eriks Chips (via Weird Universe)
This looks fun and delicious! (I'd definitely listen to Scott Joplin while eating it too.) Read the rest
When we visited Taipei, my wife and I made it our singular goal to eat at Modern Toilet, even though we knew the bathroom-themed restaurant had caught on and was a bit of a tourist trap. That same spirit has been reignited in me, and my next trip to Seoul cannot come soon enough. I will not leave that city until I grab me some fresh, hot Poop Bread. Read the rest
Just look at 'em with their evil chocolate chip eyes. Part of Let's Go Chipper's series on healthy Halloween snacks in the run-up to Saint Beetus Day. Also: Read the rest
Popcorn really took off in North America in the mid-1880s, but it would take 50 years for it to become a favorite food at movie theaters. According to Andrew Smith, author of Popped Culture: A Social History of Popcorn, "movie theaters wanted nothing to do with popcorn because they were trying to duplicate what was done in real theaters. They had beautiful carpets and rugs and didn’t want popcorn being ground into it.” Then the Great Depression happened and movies took off as popular cheap entertainment. Popcorn vendors set up outside to provide an equally cheap snack. By the early 1930s, a Kansas City entrepreneur named Julia Braden convinced theaters to allow her to bring her popcorn kiosk into the theater. Of course, eventually the theaters established their own concession stands. This week, both Smithsonian and the New York Times looked at the history of movie popcorn.
"Why Do We Eat Popcorn at the Movies?" (Smithsonian)
Surprisingly, the "best perceived" US snack brand is Ritz. Lay's is number two, followed by Doritos. For potato chips, I prefer Pringles because of their perfect uniformity and can, but they barely made the top 10, landing just above Triscuit, which I also love, preferably with Munster. "Snacks Rankings" (YouGov Brand Index via Dave Pell's NextDraft) Read the rest
