Tropical Fruit and Chocolate

 

There are a few tropical fruit and chocolate treats out there in the world, but not as many as you'd think. I feel like most fruit and chocolate combinations are about raisins, but maybe there are a few other berry and definitely cherry and chocolate treats out there too. The thing about tropical fruits might be the fact that they're often very sweet already. When you dry them out they get even sweeter, so adding some sweet milk chocolate might just be too much. It could also be that most places that grow tropical fruit are already warm, and chocolate doesn't last very long on a warm store shelf.

Check out my latest tropical fruit covered in chocolate review.

10 Second Kitchen - Pomelo Street Vendor Downtown Yangon

 Watching a woman carefully peel the last bit of bitter peel off of a Pomelo in downtown Yangon, Myanmar.

Giant Banana

 

The number of banana varieties that are out in the world is pretty amazing. Most westerners know one or two types. Occasionally you might see some odd banana at a grocery store that might be really small or maybe even red. For the most part people in the west have a fear of different bananas, that comes mostly from people suggesting that some bananas need to be cooked before they are eaten. As far as I know, there are no bananas that will do you harm if you don’t cook them, but they just taste pretty yucky and are often pretty hard (almost like an apple).

While living in Asia for the last few years, I’ve decided to expand my banana eating experiences and gone out on a limb to taste a pretty good varieties of them. I’ll agree that there are some that I’ve tasted that fit into the description of hard and probably better cooked. There have also been some pretty amazing discoveries as well. For example, if you come across some red bananas, you can eat them but they’re kind of dense, however using them to bake banana bread is a great idea.

Unlike most of my eating habits, my exploration into bananas has remained mostly offline. I don’t share my banana discoveries with the public, that was until today. At a grocery store in Kuala Lumpur, Allison came across what we can only describe as the biggest banana we’ve ever seen. The length is about 12 inches, and that’s the edible part. I don’t know how to describe this banana except to say that it’s obscenely huge.

We were a little nervous about buying it because there’s one fundamental problem, it’s huge. If it’s horrible then we have a lot of banana to eat. Even if it’s good, that’s still way too much banana for anyone to consume. Although we agreed to share one banana between the two of us, it was going to be a full meal.

The other unfortunate part is that this banana is that it wasn’t that great. Even though it appeared to be fairly ripe, it still tasted kind of green. I’m wondering if it even ripens entirely, or if it’s one of those cooking bananas. It wasn’t as green tasting as some other bananas I’ve had and it was softer then some, but it was still pretty rough to get through. As you can imagine, it was even more difficult to get through because it was so huge.

While I did not really enjoy this banana, I’m continuing to enjoy my banana tasting challenge. If anyone knows what kind of banana this is, please let me know so I can add it to my list of bananas I don’t really care for.

A Box Of Georgian Treats

 

It's not too often that I'm given treats that completely surprise and mystify me. I've been writing about snacks and treats for a very long time, and I've been lucky enough to travel to many places to try them, so finding something new is becoming more and more difficult for me. However, we were recently gifted a box of treats from Georgia (the country not the state for all of my American friends out there), and I was pleasantly delighted with everything, with one thing in particular really blowing me away.

The main contents of the box was a selection of dried fruit. There were dried apples, apricots, plums (I think) and what appeared to be some kind of rolled dried fruit mixture. All of these fruits were tasty and I'm still going through them now. I'm actually a big fruit eater, and dried fruit makes fruit even better because it's portable.

There were also a few chocolate disks in this box, nothing that surprising here, just nuts and dried fruit embedded in chocolate discs. This is a great delivery method for nuts and chocolate because you don't have any guess work when it comes to knowing what kind of nuts you might be eating. Chocolate bars for some reason are more popular, yet most of the time they hide the contents. I like a surprise now and then, but when it's all out on display you really know what you're getting into.

There were also several candied oranges, covered in chocolate with strawberries. These made me a little nervous as I've had candied oranges in the past that are a little too bitter for my liking. These on the other hand were pretty sweet, and the chocolate/orange combination was well balanced. The strawberry was kind of useless flavour wise, but at least it looked cool.

There were several of these round balls in the box. They seemed to be some kind of mashed fruit inside. Honestly they weren't my favorite thing in this box, but I still ate them all.

The true treasure in this collection was this strange, lumpy stick. My first instinct was that it might be either dried fruit covered in chocolate, or some kind of jelly treat covered in chocolate. I took a bite and was instantly surprised and very happy.

Each one of these lumps was in fact a hazelnut. A fresh and very crunchy hazelnut covered in tasty chocolate.

The really cool feature was that there was evidence left behind explaining how these were made. Each hazelnut had a hole drilled in it, and through that hole was a piece of string. The string obviously held it together while it was being dipped in chocolate. Sure I almost choked on the string after my first bite, but after I figured it out it was no problem pulling it out. I love that they left behind a clue about how these were made, and they tasted great.

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Go Bananas!

 This is a fun little video that might teach you about some of the many varieties of bananas available in the world.

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Travel With Fruit

I have a theory that's probably very unpopular. I believe that fruit is more often than not, bad for road trips and hiking. Don't get me wrong, I really like fruit, but it often gets a reputation for being the perfect road trip or travel snack, and frankly I disagree. I've decided to make a collection of common fruits, and give it a score based on how well I think it travels. I'll also give a short write up and justification about why I think it doesn't travel well.

Each fruit will get a score out of 10 1 being horrible for travel 10 being slightly inconvenient for travel. Keep in mind that this is an argument that all fruit is hard to travel either hiking or road trip, and no fruit is going to "win". The thing that I'm most excited about writing this is the fact that I get to eat all this fruit... for science.

Watermelon - 2 out of 10 - This is probably one of the worst fruits for traveling. If you want to keep watermelon in good shape, the best thing one can do is not cut it. I've kept watermelons in my fridge for over a month uncut and it still tastes great. However, after I cut into a watermelon it feels like you have at most a week before it starts to go. It's even more so if it's out of the fridge. 

Let's also not forget about the trash left behind with a watermelon. This includes the rind and all the seeds. The seeds also create a problem as picking them out can make a mess. Even if you're some kind of watermelon seed ninja, in general watermelon is a fruit that requires a shower after eating it. This is not only a horrible road trip fruit, it's like the worst road trip fruit with one exception (see below).

Orange 5 out of 10 - The peel is the first and most obvious problem with bringing an orange on a road trip. If you happen to be driving the car, you'll have to pull over and peel the orange before you can even think about eating it. Even if we assume that you've pulled over and thrown away the peel, even if you're willing to lose that much time to get a little extra vitamin C. Then you have the stickiness. 

Orange stickiness is no joke. There's two dose of sticky to contend with too. There's the obvious juice that you'll have to deal with when eating the orange, sure sometimes it's contained in the wedges, but that's pretty rare. Even if you have a lucky orange, you'll probably already be sticky because the peel releases a stealthy sticking liquid that I contend is worse than the juice on the inside. This ninja spray that comes off the peel is even a pain to wash off your hands, so you're probably looking at more wasted time scrubbing your hands at the next truck stop.

Banana - 6 out of 10 - Bananas are deceptive, because they may at first appear to be a great road trip or hiking snack. They're self contained in single serving packages and they taste great. But let's start off by looking at this self contained package. Banana peels have the ability to go brown and rot faster than any other fruit by-product. I feel like the banana peel starts to rot before you even finish the banana. If you're on a road trip your trash bag is going to smell like rotting banana very quickly. This is even worse if you're hiking and have no place to dispose of the peel. And don't go throwing that peel on the ground either, I've seen enough black and white comedy movies to know that's a lawsuit waiting to happen.

The other thing about bananas is the fact that they go bad really quickly too. Even if you leave the peel on, I feel like bananas have the ability to go from just ripe to a sock full of mush in minutes. And god forbid you happen to bump it in any kind of way. A bruised banana will be a sack full of liquid in no time.

Apple - 6 out of 10 - I think we can agree that the core of the apple is the worst thing about eating any fruit. Even in the perfect environment when you have a cutting board and knife, the core is going to be the biggest challenge you'll have with an apple. You have to make one of two choices when eating an apple, either go in deep and try to clean the core off running the risk of eating a seed or those sharp seed pods, or agree to waste some apple and leave a little extra room. No matter which you choose, you'll still have a core to deal with, and similar to the banana peel, the core of an apple rots at breakneck speeds.

There's also the juice problem. Some apples are very juicy and you'll find beads of juice running down your fingers for sure. Other types of apples may not bleed juice, but all apples will likely give you a light misting of sticky juice. Maybe a baby wipe or a stop at a roadside rest stop might help you, but I feel like that spray of stickiness will likely find a way to stick around.

Grapes - 7 out of 10 - I'm going to be honest, I think grapes might be the best fruit to bring on a road trip or hiking. They're not perfect, but I think they're as good as it gets. The thing is, there are very particular stipulations to make these an acceptable road trip fruit. First of all you have to get rid of the stems. This means that you have to break them into a bunch of very round and easy to lose pieces. If you have a container than you might be okay (but then you're carrying around an empty container all day). 

If your grapes have seeds than consider the advise above null and void. I understand that seeds are the key to life when it comes to plants, but if there could be some way of outlawing seeds in grapes that are sold to the public as food I would not disagree. Seeds in grapes have been something that has made me sad many times.

Honorable Mentions - I just want to mention a few other of my favourite fruits that are also not great for travel. Dragon fruit is a terrifying looking fruit that actually might be one of the better road trip fruits. I've peeled a dragon fruit by hand and feel like you might be able to enjoy it while on a road trip. It'll likely be kind of messy, but not nearly as messy as the last fruit I want to mention, the mango.

Fresh mango is probably one of the most amazing fruits one can buy. If you live in a colder climate you might not understand what I'm talking about, but a quick visit to Pakistan or India will teach you how great this fruit can be. The problem is getting into it, particularly on the road or hiking trail. We once decided to pick up a mango while on a road trip in India. It was an amazing looking mango, super soft and ready to eat. The problem is we did not have a knife or cutting board to deal with it. We did some research and only came across warnings about how intensely messy it is to peel and eat a mango by hand. We ended up in the shower, in our underwear, covered in juice enjoying one of the tastiest fruits we'd ever eaten. In a car this would have been disastrous. Having said that, there are two fruits I can think of that are just no goes at all...

Pineapple and durian.

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Cereal Innovation or Waste of Packaging

 I recently came across a new cereal. It's likely not new to the world, but it's very new to me. It grabbed my attention because it offered some new fruity flavours that I'd never had in a cereal before, papaya and pineapple. The package implies that the fruit is also real, which makes sense given how common these fruits are where this cereal is made, which is Myanmar. The panda is also very cute, so  since I needed something for breakfast, this seemed like the perfect fit.

Upon opening the box I was even more confused/surprised by what was inside. It's not often that the format of how cereal is delivered is surprising to me. Rather than give you one giant bag of cereal, they've portioned the cereal into 5 separate bags. Better still they've separated the fruit and portioned that into another 5 separate bags. I wasn't sure if this was a brilliant idea at first, or an extreme waste of packaging. My first guess was that they split the cereal into separate packages to help it stay fresh and keep bugs out. South East Asia (where this cereal sells) is known for being very humid and also having a lot of bugs. Both of these are due to the constant warm weather in the area, so it makes sense as a way to keep your cereal fresh.

I took my single portion of cereal and I was truly excited by the cute little packages.

The writing on the bags of cereal was a little weird.

The cereal portion was a little strange. I was expecting something like corn flakes, but instead got what looking like tiny little squashed circles. They also had some kind of sweet coating on the outside. Frankly I would have been satisfied with just these, but there was more.

I opened up my little bag of dried pineapple and papaya and they were nicely chopped into tiny little cubes. I definitely felt like the ratio of cereal to fruit was pretty good. Too much of either would have ruined this cereal experience. Adding the milk however proved to me another reason why one might break this cereal into individual portions in particularly with the fruit.

The second I added my milk, all of the fruit sunk to the bottom. It made me think that the same would have happened in the box, had it not been portioned out in little separate bags. I had to dig down to the bottom of the bowl for each bite, however my bowl had a perfect proportion of cereal and fruit. I'll be honest, I wasn't totally blown away with the flavour of this cereal, it was fine. The little disks did stay very crunchy in the milk however, almost too crunchy as they didn't seem to let any of the milk penetrate at all. There are a few other cereals made by this company, and I think I'll probably attempt to try them all. 

At a certain age you don't really expect to be surprised at the way cereal is packaged, but as it turns out, you never know.

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Gummy Art

This week's review features gummy creations that are some of the most beautiful and creative designs I've ever seen. It makes me wonder if anyone is making artisanal gummies. I've been to thousands of candy shops in my life, but I've never seen anyone making super high end gummies. You would figure that there would be a market for beautiful gummies that are so detailed and so fancy that they belong in a museum. The folks at Amos have come pretty close to making this high end gummy, but I feel like there's an artist out there that could change the world.

Check out my review of these very beautiful gummies.

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If you want some nice art to look at that isn't gummy related, make sure to pick up my book called Treats and Beasts.

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Put Some Fruit On Those Pebbles

If you think about the name "Fruity Pebbles" it's a really odd concept for a cereal. I also think it might be the only regularly updated version of Fred Flintsone in cartoons. It's weird that it appears that a cereal themed to a cartoon character might live longer than the cartoon itself. It's particularly strange because it's not like the Flintsones wasn't a popular cartoon show. At its time it was the most popular cartoon for adults, ever. In some ways it was the precursor to the Simpsons. But now we're here, where there are kids buying a candy bar themed to a cereal, for a popular cartoon series they may have never seen.

Find out what I thought of this fruity bar.

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It's Time To Eat Random Candies And Ask Why Would I Eat That?!! - Mixed Flavor Candy

There are several angles to this candy, all have a certain amount of risk. There's the fact that the package has little to no information about these candies. There's the fact that there's no way of knowing for sure what flavour is which. Worst of all, there's a very good chance that one of these candies is durian flavoured.

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Candy In The Media - Starburst Of My Memories

This is the commercial that made me want to eat Starbursts when I was a kid, I so wanted the feeling of going down a water slide made of fruit.

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Amazing Candy/Junk Food Things That You Should Buy - Avocado Pool Float

I don't often use the word genius, but the person who thought of making the pit of this avocado pool float a removable beach ball is truly a genius. I'm not sure how one nominated someone for a Nobel Prize, but if I knew this person would get my nomination. It's probably a good thing that I don't know how to do such things.

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We're Feeling The Burn - Skittles "Sweet Heat"

I don't think I'm a big fan of the overly spicy food trend that's going on right now. I'm not saying that spicy food doesn't have its place in food, I'm just wondering why some things have to be spicy, like these Skittles. I also don't like intense spicy for the sake of being intensely spicy, but that's like because I'm a spice wimp.

Click here to read about these Skittles that are spicy for no reason.

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Amazing Candy/Junk Food Things That You Should Buy - Froot Loops Candle

Have you ever thought to yourself, I could go for a bowl of Fruit Loops, but I'd rather set it on fire and just smell it, as opposed to eating it? Me neither, but here we are.

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It's Time For Some Thoughts, And A New Review - Tic Tac "Mint"

This week's review is a classic, although for me it's a classic that I don't really like that much. There have been many occasions where I've forgotten to write a review of a classic treat, only because I thought I had reviewed it already. These Tic Tac "Mints" are not the case, in fact I've thought about skipping this review entirely on several occasions. It took someone giving me some for free to actually think about this review.

Click here to find out why I don't think much of this classic candy.


On this week's episode of Chris's Monday Morning Breakfast Thoughts we're going to talk a bit about our recent trip to Thailand, and also eat some fruit with sweetened, spicy, salt.

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It's Time For Another Monday Morning Breakfast Thought, And A New Candy Review - Puccho Juicy "Assorted Fruit Flavors"

Today's new candy review should be celebrating fruit, but there's a problem. It celebrates fruit in general, and not any particular fruit. This is a bit of a peeve I've recently discovered, fruit flavours that don't really have any kind of specificity to them. It's not that I don't like fruit flavours that don't taste like the  fruit it's supposed to represent either, I love fake raspberry and cherry, the problem I have is when they don't commit at all.

Click here to find out how this week's new candy review rubbed me the wrong way.



This week on Chris's Monday Morning Breakfast Thoughts, I feel like we have to change it to Chris's Monday Morning Dealing With A Bad Meal From The Weekend Thoughts. Unfortunately I didn't get to have the breakfast I was hoping this morning, so instead I had to find something to sooth my sore tummy.

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We've Got A New Episode of Chris, Why Would You Eat That?!! - The Durian

In this episode Chris (and his two friends) taste what many consider to be the worst tasting fruit in the world, the durian. The surprise comes with the fact that not everybody hated it at all.

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It's A New Episode of Chris, Why Would You Eat That?!! And Once Again I Suffer With Durian

I'm constantly reminded that there are people in the world that like the taste of durian. I've even met a few people who apparently love the stuff. I just can't wrap my head around this, but I'm trying.

Click here to check out old episodes of Chris, Why Would You Eat That?!!

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I'm Having A Hard Time With This New Candy Review - Chewy Lemonhead "Fruit Mix"

This treat is everything I hate about candy variations, but it didn't taste too bad. I was conflicted about how I should rate it, but I think I managed a fair assessment.

Click here to find out how this conflicting candy did.

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Candy In The Media

Who knew there was so much backstory to the banana?

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