Two quick notes: (1) some dishes from past meals now up on the Food page, and (2) chips verdict coming soon -- should be posted by Monday morning! I now return you to your irregularly scheduled blog post.
I was passing a group of schoolkids chomping on after-school treats the other day when I realized the true enormity of the task before me, what with trying to find good snacks here. Not that there aren't good snacks, there are also just a lot of bad snacks that you have to eliminate in order to determine the good.
I mean, first there are the sheer numbers: sure, there may not be any deep-fried-Twinkies-on-a-stick, but snacking is truly an art form here. While you usually have to go to a city/county/state fair to find seriously concentrated, heart-attack/diabetes-inducing levels of snacks in the US, here they're everywhere. EVERYWHERE.
The ground floor of one of the buildings I walk by (sometimes through) on my way to school every day appears to consist entirely of different snack vendors. This building takes up half a city block -- imagine a large shopping mall food court with no 'real' food or drink, just snacks -- cookies, cakes, chocolates, jellies, stuff in little packages with drawings of fruit or confections. And no tables, natch. I estimate you can see about 1/3 of the hall, not including the perimeter shops that are between the walls of the main floor and the street, in the photo above. My guess on number of individual vendors would be, conservatively, about two dozen. And that place is just the tip of the iceberg.
Second, I'm lacking a team. Think about it -- all of those middle school years are prime tasting ground. Aside from the 13-yr-old's natural ability (and desire) to suck down as much sugar as possible, how did you manage to familiarize yourself with all of the candy in the local RiteAid/CVS/Safeway? Friends, that's how, and their parents (well, that and Halloween). I mean, who ever bought a Chunky or a Baby Ruth? Someone who was allowed to taste someone else's first, that's who. My ability to divide and conquer the candy aisles/shops is severely hampered by my lack of amoebal self-replication skills (and 13-year-old friends, but I'll pass on trying to obtain any of those).
Third, I have to do a lot of guessing. Imagine coming to the US not knowing a Latin-alphabet-based language and plunking down in a supermarket junk-food aisle. Where to start? You know neither what you might like most nor what you should eliminate first. And you have to learn to question what you think you know (or to put it in military terms, a presumed known is actually an unknown unknown which becomes a known unknown, or a known known that makes you aware of known unknowns). I will explain.
Not only can I not read ingredients on most of these packages, I usually can't even read the label (you know, where it says things like "peanut and caramel in a crisp candy shell"). I therefore operate off pictures a lot, but pictures can be misleading. I now know the characters for "sour yogurt flavor" after an unfortunate hypothesis that white creamy filling (not featuring a coconut) meant vanilla. Ew. And that's just the packaged stuff. All of the snacks (more meal-like than candy) on the street? No pictures. If I can't tell what it is from the outside, my options are to just randomly take a chance, or wait for someone else to order one and see if I can tell what they're eating. I ended up with a red bean paste bun the other day, which, all things considered, could have turned out a lot worse, but it still wasn't what I'd been hoping for. But I've come to terms with the fact that if you're going to try a lot of new stuff, you're bound to end up with some duds; that's just how it goes.
I do systematically eliminate anything having to do with coffee, durian, nuts (of course) and a few other flavors, but there's a long road ahead. I just hope my teeth are up for it, and if anyone has a 13-year-old niece/nephew to loan me for a while, I could use the help.
RSS Feed
