Steve's Thai Sweets

These are Steve's Thai snacks (at his place). Both kinds were like slightly sweet little butter cookies (obviously the darker ones had an egg wash) with a slight...kind of nutty taste. Well, the cocoon-looking ones tasted more like a nut, and the darker ones tasted like some kind of jelly fruit (but not overwhelmingly so). It's hard to describe. I did like them, but I'm not crazy about them, and I'll probably forget about their taste in a few days. haha Thanks though, Steve!

Pocky

It's pronounced "Pokey" (the Japanese don't know how to use English letters correctly sometimes--lol), and I absolutely love these things. They're fun to eat, light, and chocolate-y without being overwhelming (they're so thin!), and they don't make you feel like you should run around a track for awhile after you eat them. Pretty much any Japanese kid probably loves these things, along with these balls. They have lots of other versions ... like strawberry, coconut, caramel, and these yummy Chocolate Crush sticks. I really love the green tea ones and the pumpkin ones. Check out this blog post about Pocky. Here are some crazy Japanese Pocky commercials. Here is a commercial featuring the regular ones and the ones for men.

You can find them at Asian stores/grocery stores, UC Berkeley's campus food places (haha...shows you how many Asians there are to please), and even American supermarkets like Vons. Places like Mitsuwa definitely have them. You can also make them. Lots of food bloggers like Frelia have made them.




Here are the Men's Pocky sticks, which I first saw in Japan during the summer of 2005:



Hahaha... "Stick to fun!"


A dark chocolate one on the left and a regular one on the right (you can kinda tell the difference):

Salt & Pepper Potato Straws

They look a lot like fries (people at my brother's grad party thought they were fries), but they taste and feel (crunchy) more like chips. What I like about them is their texture. They're like square-ish tubes. It's amazing how much texture can affect your experience of a food.
You can get 'em at Costco, by the way.

Long Bar Code

Looong bar code on a Trader Joe's cereal box. Weird. Thought I'd share. Anyone know why they'd make it like this?

Sonic's Strawberry Cream Slush

I love, love, love Sonic's cream slushes. You can also tell them to keep the slush and cream parts separate, which is also reeeeeally good. It's like eating a snowcone with ice cream, one of my favorite things to eat. Anyway, they also have grape, orange, lime, and a few other flavors besides strawberry. Here's their banana cream pie shake.

I have a recipe for how to make a healthy version of the orange cream slush (you can either keep the ice cream separate or just blend it all together): Click HERE for my semi-healthy-ish 50/50 cream slush.

Eddie's Red Velvet Cupcake & Bierock

Michelle and I split these two delicious things the other day. I had had the red velvet cupcake before, which is how we ended up going here (She and I are huge red velvet cake fans). Seriously...go to Eddie's Bakery if you're in Fresno. Or Chiffono's. Both have amazing red velvet cupcakes with ammmazing cream cheese frosting.

Eddie's Bakery (website here):
7089 North Cedar Avenue
Fresno, CA 93720-3324

Chiffono's (website here):
1512 East Champlain Drive
Fresno, CA 93720


As far as I've heard, read, and seen, bierocks are supposed to have ground--not shredded--beef, but who cares if it tastes good, right?:

I Eat Cactus

A few weeks ago, on the way to my late grandparents' property, my parents and I stopped at a Mexican restaurant. The name? I dunno. Sometimes you don't really have the time or brains to figure out where you are. That sounds so strange. Anyway, their name wasn't plastered all over the place, so I'll just blame them.

ANYway, if I ever find out the name, I'll let you know. For now, look at their food!

I ordered the $7.25 Nopales burrito. Hmm...I did have the time and brains to note the name, price, and ingredients. Oh well. Here are the ingredients: Cactus, onion, jalapeños, tomatoes, egg, chili verde sauce, jack cheese, and sour cream. YUMMM!!!! I'd definitely get this again. I've had cactus before at my other grandparents' house awhile ago, and I remember it just looking, feeling, and tasting like green beans. I had a similar experience this time, but because I had a LOT of cactus this time, I was able to notice that it was kind of sour and more tender than green beans (unless the green beans I've had are extra tough or these cactus shreds were extra tender).

The inside (better pictures of the cactus down below):


Just look at that beautiful, spicy mess:

Dessert Before Lunch at Mitsuwa

My family and pretty much every Japanese person (or person familiar with Japanese culture) I know loves Mitsuwa and goes there when they make trips near one of the stores. We went to a smaller Mitsuwa in Costa Mesa, CA. Here are their other locations. I've talked about Mitsuwa here and here.

A few of my relatives and I were laughing at my uncle because he was ordering food at the one and only non-Japanese place there (see picture below). It turned out he was buying us delicious desserts to eat before our lunch food. BEST IDEA EVER I say. I prefer sweets before savory foods, actually.
Green tea cream puff? I'm guessing? That's what it is if it's not officially called that. It tasted a lot like this one from Beard Papa. It was really, really good! I'd definitely buy it!

This fruit thing below was good too. The bottom (sorry...no pic) was a soft, smooth custard that tasted very creamy.

And, finally, my actual meal: shoyu ramen. The cup was my mom's share (She had already eaten a big meal, so she just took a little of my noodles).

Uncle Harry's Bagels - Blueberry w/ Cream Cheese

6.12.10

The fam and I stopped at Uncle Harry's before we left for our SoCal trip (for my cousin Eric's graduation lunch). I love blueberry cream cheese even more, but I went with regular, which was fine because they ended up being out of blueberry cream cheese anyway (the girl in front of me ordered it).

Pan de Ube

Ube = taro

Filipinos like taro. I usually only like it as frozen yogurt, halo halo, or dim sum, but this bread is pretty darn good. In this particular bread, it reminds me of Japanese an (smashed up red bean paste), which I don't particularly like all of the time, but this ube pan is good! And I like the purple swirl.

I wonder if "pan" means in bread in languages other than Tagolog, Japanese, and Spanish. haha

**Great Harvest's Peach Pie Scone**

This is my new favorite Great Harvest product. Got three (two for my co-workers and one for my mom). It's not too sweet, it has big chunks of peaches, and it tastes delicious. I'm always hesitant to buy sweets that are sprinkled with sugar/cinnamon/whatever mixtures because they can be too sweet, but this is perfect. Go eat one--now! Hopefully there's a Great Harvest near you, and hopefully the one near you sells this (not all of the branches have the same menus). And hopefully you like peaches. I believe it was $2.65 or something. Todd would be able to correct me. haha

I'd add one or two more chunks of peach if I could change one thing about it. And yes...I am aware of that knife showing. :)


Without flash in my car:

Great Harvest's Blackberry Cream Cheese Scone

If you don't mind random clumps of cream cheese in your scones, you'll like these. Yes. Clumps. It was very unexpected. I still like it, but it wouldn't be the first thing I'd look for at Great Harvest. It'd be neat if they could figure out a way to incorporate big chunks of cream cheese in bagels. I can see that being challenging though with the boiling and baking required for bagels. This scone reminded me of this Starbucks pumpkin cream cheese muffin (except the cream cheese in the middle of that had sugar and other stuff in it). Anyway, I do love Great Harvest's scones though! I'm going to post about their peach pie scones next. SO GOOD. Anyway, here are pictures of the blackberry cream cheese scone I got for my mommy yesterday:

DIY Cake Pops for Baby Shower Guests!

6/5/10

Aren't these the cutest little decorations?? This is the first baby shower I've attended as an invited guest (me going with my mom as a little girl to my aunt's doesn't count).

Cucumber sandwiches, egg salad sandwiches (on good brioche, btw), chocolate muffins, cupcakes of some kind, another kind of muffin (I didn't eat it), a fruit salad, and then cake pops later.


Learned about cake pops from Bakerella, of course. I was going to make them myself, but my co-workers/friends suggested that we have the guests make 'em themselves. Good idea, but honestly I'd make them myself next time because these cake pops are hard to deal with when they get warmer out of the refrigerator and start falling apart. It was neat to have the guests add their own decorations of preference though! Basically, here's what you do:

(1) Bake a cake mix cake & let it cool
(2) Mix cooled cake with a little tub of frosting
(3) Form little one-inch balls
(4) Dip sticks in melted candy melts or whatever you want to use so the sticks have something to stick to when they're inserted into the cake balls.
(5) Stick sticks into cake balls.
(6) Once balls are attached to the sticks, refrigerate them so that they're stiff
(7) Dip the balls into your melted candy melts (or chocolate or whatever you want) and decorate with sprinkles or whatever you want.

I'm sure these would taste better when made with homemade cake & frosting, although I still loooove Funfetti cake and frosting. You can also make brownie pops, which can taste AWESOME when done right.

Where do you get the cake pop supplies? Joann Fabric & Craft Stores, Michael's, etc. Pretty much any artsy craftsy stores. You can get sprinkles at grocery stores, Target, etc. I got my candy melts and lollipop sticks at Joann and my cake mix and frosting at Vons. Next time I'll try these either with brownies or with homemade cake and homemade frosting.