PopLab and Picnic

Monday evening, a small group of PopLab (see here) participants had a picnic and talk in Washington Square Park.  We found an accessible place to circle our wagons, then dropped a lot of food inside the circle.



Several people had made dishes using CSA bounty.  Prinny cooked up bok choy with garlic; Kelly made a salad.  I had nothing to share, but I still felt welcome.  Even our conversation was sometimes delicious, as I'd hoped.


Sandals from Payless. 


p.s. These were good.

Giant Movie Night: Cairo Station Rations

GMN Week nine
Film: Cairo Station (1958).
Snack: All bought in Cairo, Egypt, on our recent vacation: Choco Wafer (coconut cream and chocolate wafer made by National Food Company Americana CAKE of Saudi Arabia); Hazelnut Cream KitKat (made in Albania, as far as I could tell from the packaging); and Miaow Miaow 108 Chicken Crackers (Keropok Perisa Ayam), made in Malaysia and containing "vegetarian chicken powder"
Guests: Dan.
Outcome: A story of unions and union-busting, foreign chocolate candy bars being superior to U.S. chocolate candy bars, love, rage, fiery women, train travel, and lameness.  It was a passion-filled evening!

Also, Miaow Miaow Chicken Crackers are probably not meant to be cat food, but the packaging is confusing.  They look and taste a little styrofoam-y.

And -- the director's mini film on Cairo in the 90s that is included with the Cairo Station DVD is worth watching.



Several Egyptian snack purchases remain. I'll be eating more soon.

A Waddle of Wafers

Thanks to Barbara, my coworker Dave and I ate far too many of these at the office yesterday.

They taste cheap, like thin layers of frosting and crunching and air. This is a good thing.

Dave regretted the number he ultimately ate. I did not. So good.

I Break for Tea

Saturday morning, I finally got around to trying the green tea Kit Kat Nick brought back from Japan.

I would only complain that the packaging is a tad excessive. Inside each cardboard box, the four Kit Kat sticks are separated into two small plastic-wrapped packs of two sticks each.

A small plus? The slogan seemed less strident in this version than in the American campaign. For this Japanese permutation, they've replaced "Gimme a break...Break me off a piece of that Kit Kat Bar" with "Have a break, have a KitKat."

Enough about the package, though. The snack's the thing. Kit Kat has well-captured the lighter-than-pea-green color of the tea. The candy smells sweet, milky, and almost of almond. The flavor is very similar -- sweet, with subtle green tea and milk notes, but without the bitterness that green tea can sometimes have. The wafer layers add a nice crunch.

I quite liked this -- more than original chocolate Kit Kat, I'd say. In fact, I'd be happy eating some more. Who's going to Japan next?

I say kär'məl, you say potato.

(from Anastasia, who sent the UK Invasion Snack Sampler)

So do you prefer kăr'ə-məl, kăr'ə-mĕl', or kär'məl?

I prefer Tunnock's Real Milk Chocolate Caramel Wafer Biscuits, thankfully "Still Original Size." Great width. It's an old-timey carnival of thick, caramel flavor. The wafers are nicely integrated with the caramel, leading to an expensively chewy-crunchy-melty-smooshy texture. A Tunnock's Caramel Wafter Biscuit tastes down-to-earth and popular;* neither high-falutin' nor exclusive; not sweetly condescending at all; and friendly. I found it mood enhancing, and I've got another.

Eating this was better than wearing borrowed expensive jewelry (sumptuous, edible, and anxiety-free).

Have you ever made caramel? It's like magic. Tunnock's...Chocolate Caramel Wafer Biscuits are like somebody else did the magic and didn't get your pots dirty. They're like the close-up magician at a fundraiser who cheerfully sets his wallet on fire for your own private finale and walks away with a wink as you're still applauding quietly and smiling a real smile at him. You have fond memories of that magician. Magic is cool.

High marks.



Beverage: All Natural Sapat Fantasy Masala-Chai Flavoured Tea. This is my favorite Indian chai mix. I first tasted it in Pittsburgh, PA which is where I bought my supply. I drink most teas and infusions without milk or sugar, but this variety I like with both.

"The boy is based on no one."


*popular in the sense of "Suited to or within the means of ordinary people" (The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007.)

Green Tea Bark

Green Tea Bark, originally uploaded by jennybunny.

In Seattle, Eva offered me a Sequoia Chocolate, which does have cocoa butter in it but not much chocolate flavor. The dominant flavor is green tea, which comes on strong (and I like it!), and there's a background note of fruitiness. My best guess about the name, as most of the information on the package is in Japanese, is that the lines etched into the green tea chcolate (surrounding wafers and more green tea chocolate layers inside) are meant to resemble tree bark.

Hey, whose toes are those?

eXXtremeLy Messy

So, is this a Prince Polo XXL bar, or an XXL-sized Prince Polo bar? Whichever, it's clearly a hazelnut and chocolate wafer bar (didn't I say everything seems hazelnut-flavored lately?). No lie on the packaging as far as that goes.





The Prince Polo goes a bit further than a typical flavored wafer bar. One side has been covered in chocolate (the other side remains bare-wafered. Crispier than Neapolitaner wafers, the chocolate-enrobed side makes the Prince Polo also tastier and more messy in 80-degree (fahrenheit) weather than other wafer products I've tried (well, not tastier than a Little Debbie Nutty Bar, which remains my current favorite).

Made in Poland! But found in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (not the more Polish Greenpoint).

"Let the Cartoon Begin!"

Here's another intriguing item Daupo brought back from Costa Rica. Please pardon the blurry photo. I have misplaced the wrapper and so cannot try for another.



Zoo Cartoon (or is it "Cartoon Zoo?") is an artificially-flavored strawberry (morango) wafer snack. I identified the flavor as strawberry before looking up the word to double-check, so that speaks to the artificial flavor technology at least being up to snuff. Kind of like a Kit Kat, the large 7-layered vanilla and strawberry cookie inside (wafer, strawberry, wafer, strawberry, wafer, strawberry, wafer) can be broken along perforated lines into smaller sticks of Zoo Cartoon.

I liked this guy. Pretty light and inoffensive. Crunches when it's supposed to. It's not my favorite wafer snack (where's a Little Debbie Nutty Bar when you need one?), but it does not fall into the category of "crazy-candy-from-another-place that I would never eat again."

The name, however, like the raccoon, is a complete mystery to me.