Strange, and yet so delicious

 

So being in Japan for me is like being a small kid in the candy store for the first time. You look around and all around you are strange and alluring objects. Every candy in the store surrounds and swirls around you in a maelstrom of flavor and color. The combinations are nearly endless, nary a flavor left untouched and all of it wrapped into alluring packages whose call rivals that of the Sirens in the tales of old sailors books. As such, I have found myself trying nearly everything I can get my hand on:

Bananas covered in chocolate. Rice crackers. Octopus packed into a small round breaded thing. Sushi of every kind of fish. Flavored sodas and drinks of nearly any type you can think of.

All of this and more! However, it is the latest item that recently tried to attempt to make on my own that I will talk about now:

Coffee Jello!

Meredith had found a Japanese website that was doing a recipe day or something of the like, and it featured the new jello. Instantly I was enthralled with the idea and set out to make it as quickly as possible. It didn’t take much, just some instant coffee, some non flavored jello packs and boiling water. Nothing special, just….coffee jello.

Let me tell you my friends…… it is Delicious.

Now to find the next thing in the candy store :-)

You have gained a level in, Cooking!

 

So I managed to accomplish something I’ve wanted to do for a long long time; Creating my own pretzels!

Everytime I go to the mall, the lure of Auntie Anne’s pretzels is too much and I wind up with like $20 worth of pretzels to eat / save for later. Yesterday I happened to be browsing a food recipe application on my Ipod touch, looking for something yummy to make for dinner when a shiny beacon of tastiness that is Pretzels graced my screen… I was helpless to resist.

Soon after Meredith got home we went to the store and I immediately bought up everything I needed to create the goods. All went well but then I made and error, a very serious and stupid error. In the recipe it called for 1 cup of sugar, 1 1/2 Teaspoons of salt. What I wrote down was: 1 cup of sugar,    1 1/2 salt

As you can probably guess, I put 1 1/2 CUPS of salt in. Yes I thought it was kinda weird for that much salt, but I was drunk of the promise of delicious pretzels and forged ahead thinking I was safe because I wrote the directions down. lol.

Anyway, the cooking process wasn’t so far from normal, although the dough didn’t rise as much as it should have, and it was kinda dry-ish.

Finally I got it all baked and as soon as it was out of the oven, I took a huge bite and, lo and behold, it didn’t taste that bad…… for the first second or two. Then the taste of salt flooded into my mouth and stayed there like an entrenched army. Nearly anything I tried to do could not get rid of this soft, lingering ghost of a salt taste in my mouth.

ugh.

Fast forward to today:

I tried to attempt creating my pretzels, the taste of salt finally had released it’s grip on me and I deemed it time to try again. This time I used the normal amount of salt and I have to report this: They are Delicious!

Not quite as good as Auntie Anne’s pretzels, but still pretty dang good.