Culinary Research

Upon news of hearing that Mr X was once again headed to Japan, I decided a trip to our local Japanese market was warranted. (Yes, we have one in SD!) Mr X was less than thrilled at the prospect of dining on Japanese cuisine again, but I wanted to go check out a few of his options for myself and I dragged him with. So off we went to the market. Here are a few of the items I sample in Mr X’s honor. He declined to participate in the sampling purely on principle – he won’t eat the stuff until he absolutely has to.

The beverage wasn’t too bad at first but it gets worse and worse with each gulp. I guess that’s to be expected when your soda is made from powdered milk and sugar.

The next was some sort of pastry with cream in the middle (cream made out of more delicious powdered milk). It’s okay unless the ratio of cream-to-bread gets too out of control because the cream can be a little too much.

This is one of the bean filled pastries Mr X was so disappointed to discover last time he was in Japan. One bite was about all I could handle.

This one is a blueberry roll thing. It was decent, actually.

They were selling all of these mixes and prepackaged things so I just grabbed one to make for myself while Mr X is gone so I can pretend that I'm there with him. Turns out I grabbed one that was actually Chinese rather than Japanese. China is close enough though, right? (And yes, I know that lemon chicken isn't that adventurous but in my defense most everything else had directions written in Japanese symbols so deciphering the instructions would have been a little too challenging. Poor Mr X will be forced to improvise when he attempts to cook over there.)

One sure thing is that if he encounters anything too awful, Mr X can always count on Pocky to come his palate’s rescue.