Sakura Jelly Beans! by Jelly Belly

   Now this is quite the pleasant surprise. I've been a Jelly Belly fan since ... well, A VERY LONG TIME. "What makes a Jelly Belly bean gourmet?" you ask. Well, simply put, they not only have 50 official flavors to choose from, but their flavors are as close and exact as Jelly beans go. And it's also one of the things on my bucket list to complete trying every single flavor. Hey, you are looking at the company who did Harry Potter's Bertie Bott's every flavor beans after all, so there's no competition to it if you're facing the Jelly Belly company (Though I wouldn't recommend that as a football team name).

    Alright, back to topic. Sakura flavoured Jelly Beans. Honestly, I really didn't know what to expect. I mean, do Sakura flowers even have flavours? And since I did a little introduction on Jelly Belly Beans, it's only right to do another one for Sakura, or Cherry blossoms as some people call them. 

Taken from Google Images.

      If you're big on anime, You should already know a lot about these trees. No it's not only an extremely cliched anime girl name, it's a tree. A really beautiful tree that's also joining the bucket list as something I definitely have to see. I'm not exactly an expert on this, so go all wikipedia on it if you have to.

    

     SO anyway, here's the introduction on the back of the package:

    It's Sakura Season, and this means the beautiful and delicate cherry blosoms begin to bloom. In honor of this event, Jelly Belly has created a Sakura-flavoured jelly bean! With a mild cherry flavor and pretty pink white coloring, this jelly bean is sure to bring out the spirit of the season.

    And here's an introduction I did myself without all the marketing gimmicks and ploys:

    Cherry flavored jelly bean with neat coloring.

    Because that's exactly what it is. I'm not trying to be mean or negative or anything, but I'm just stating my honest opinion. I was disappointed. Truly disappointed. I mean, we're talking about the company that makes pencil shavings and rotten egg flavored beans! I mean, compared to pencil shavings, how hard is it to really have sakura flower extract at least in your ingredients list? Okay, I'm being a complete whiny baby here, but at least it didn't taste all that bad. 

     They really took cherry blossoms literally this time. And cherry blossoms taste absolutely nothing like cherries. But if you like cherry flavored sweets, then I guess you wouldn't really mind having them. But my mum told me it tasted like cough syrup. And as I'm eating a bean now, I can't help but think that it does taste like cough syrup, though I know some people who actually like the flavour. I think i got used to it already, so I'm poppin' them in like popcorn as I type.

But If you truly want the real deal, the mind blowingly awesome Jelly Belly experience, I suggest sticking to the original 50. They come in a box, pretty expensive, but worth it for a share with your family and friends. 

Here's some extras on the other incredible flavours that they have:

Beanbozzled - Great for a neat game of truth or dare/spin the bottle

     

The big Five-Oh

And as always...

Hungry Bunny over and out!

Food Quest #1 Korean Sweet Potato Noodles Jap Chae(Part 1)

Note: I didn't make this exact one, but my goal is to make it something
like this. Hopefully. taken from google pics.

Jap Chae! It's something that I've always loved eating in a Korean restaurant. Non spicy! my favourite. So here's to me trying out this awesome dish, and giving you some tips and notes that I've made, so hopefully it'll help you with the other recipes you can find online.

The first site that caught my eye when I googled it was this . I don't know, Perhaps I should check out other sites just in case there are simpler ones, but this one looks pretty good.

OKAY. Overall, most of the recipes have similar ingredients, only varying with vegetables and meat. So I guess you could use the Vegetables that YOU like, and the meat that YOU would want to eat. That way, it'll be your own dish, and it's a hell lot easier too. Alright?

Anyway, Here's a list of vegetables/meat/other stuff that I found in most Jap Chae dishes, besides the noodles. They would probably work in any combination and amount, so treat it like an ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT Buffet. You might want all of them or just one.

Vegetables You Could Use:
-Onions
-Spring onions/green onions
-Carrots
-Shitake mushrooms (does that count as vegetables?)
-Cucumber skins (Might as well throw in the rest of the cucumber)
-Peppers (Red, Green or Yellow)
-Seaweed
-Spinach
-Scallions
-Garlic
-Toasted sesame seeds (Makes it look a lot more professional)

If you want it to look like Jap Chae, I suggest slicing everything you have into long, thin, shredded sticks. I guess the reason behind it is that it'll be easier to eat them sliced like that with noodles and chopsticks. 

*Jap Chae's supposed to be a vegetarian dish but I've seen variations with meat, which I suppose works either way

Meat That's Most Common In Non-Veg Jap Chae:
-Beef, Sliced (Best choice in my opinion, since it goes really well with the sauce)
-Minced chicken (Soaks up the sauce pretty well)
-Shrimp/Prawns

Now, the sauce for Jap Chae's pretty easy. Almost all of the recipes online give these three main ingredients:

Sesame oil
Soy Sauce
Brown Sugar

It's like the super combo pack of Jap Chae. So long as you've got these on your plate, it'll have more or less a similar taste to that of Jap Chae. That sweet, salty, homey taste. If that helps. Add salt and pepper to your own liking, but keep in mind that soy sauce is salty enough without any extra help. 

So here's a shopping list summary of the things you'll need. Just cancel out the stuff you already have.

Things to buy
1) Your choice of Vegetables
2) Your choice of meat
3) Sesame Oil
4) Soy Sauce
5) Sugar
6) Korean sweet potato noodles
    (Or Vermicelli as it's sometimes packaged in, also another great alternative if you can't find Jap Chae noodles specifically.)
7)Pepper/salt
8)Sesame seeds

Cooking's pretty self explanatory, boil the noodles, fry the vegetables, mix the sauce, add the sauce, stir fry the whole thing together. But here's a collection of useful tips I found:

1) Boil the noodles in salted water to give it more flavour
2) Remember to cut the noodles so that they're easier to slurp up
3) After boiling the noodles, drain and rinse under cold water before tossing them with sesame oil for flavour. Kinda like meat marinating, just that's it's noodles. So start with the noodles first so that they've got more time to soak in all them goodies. Also, it prevents the noodles from sticking together.
4)Dissolve sugar in soy sauce before adding it to your noodles. This way, you won't get the sugar scattered unevenly and all over the place.
5) Prepare your meat in bite sized slurpable portions. Chunky stuff just gets in the way from enjoying the wonderful slurping of noodles.

Here's the best site, and the easiest to follow (with step by step pictures), that I found, and would probably be following myself. Hope that saves you some time from scavenging in the mess of sites online. But if you're all smart and hardworking, This one's pretty detailed too. After all, the best recipe's the one that you yourself would put together with your own little tweaks and adaptations, so, GOOD LUCK! I'll be back with my finished product, which I'm going to be cooking for dinner with my family. I do hope they'll like it.

FOOD QUESTS! (For the Lazy)

You know how recipes online are really hard to follow? Well, they seem kinda cold and unfriendly to me, it's like as if they don't care if what you produce will be nice and all. So...

Perhaps I should start a whole NEW project. Sort of like a food quest. 

First, find something I've never tried cooking. Something random. Fun. But easy since I'm no Masterchef. 

Then, I'll get a recipe online, and cook. Done. Hopefully it'll be a legitimate recipe, so I don't end up with some scam of a dish. I wonder if there are people out there whose life ambitions are to screw up people's dinners. They would probably write fake recipes online while rubbing their gritty old mustaches and OKAY THAT'S NOT THE POINT.

I'll split this into two parts, Part 1 would be the recipe finding, and you can (whoever you are) follow me if you decide you wanna try it as well. Of course, this will be all through the eyes of a complete amateur, so you'll learn from the mistakes I would probably make and if the recipe's all professional and stuff, I'll break it up in layman terms. Plus, I'll add in some stuff I found useful and ingredients that you could substitute with if you don't have them. (Because I'm lazy, and you most probably would be too.) Part 2 would be the actual cooking and taste test.

I'm hoping that this will serve as a sort of informal recipe thing, for anyone who wants a guide to cooking stuff, that is if you have the same problem that I do: Trouble with online recipes that are so short and bare, it's like they don't even care. 

I'm working on one now, but you'll probably have to bare with my random rants and opinions, but HOPEFULLY they'll serve as somewhat of a form of entertainment! Hopefully. 

Hungry Bunny over and out!

Weird Japanese sweet #5 Watapachi grape candy

Who doesn't love cotton candy? It's one of the most beloved of all children's fantasies.

Who doesn't love pop rocks? It's the other one of the most beloved of all children's fantasies.

And so... some Einstein managed to come out with the idea of having this mutated version of a fantasy, by combining these two, very strange creatures into one.
Introducing, the Watapachi grape candy! Of course, it had to be the japanese that would do it, since all the crazy cool stuff comes from the land of the rising sun.

Now, as I sit here typing with pop rocks blasting away on my tongue, I tell you this. This is one awesome candy. seriously. The minute I opened the bag, a poof of grapey air escaped from within, and it smelled wonderful. kinda like those sour-ish grape flavoured hard sweets. 

At first I wasn't quite sure if I had understood it correctly. Are you sure it's a candy? It kinda looks like diaper fillings. a whole wad of purple, nice smelling diaper fillings. But no matter, I tore it open and it was like a less-sticky version of cotton candy. Not quite as airy as I had expected it. Perhaps it was because I made the huge mistake of stuffing it into the fridge. (Lesson learned: don't stuff cotton candy into cold, damp places.)

It melts straight away, as it touches the tip of your tongue, and if you're lucky to get some on your first bite, you'll have soft, tingling mini explosions ricocheting off the walls of your mouth. The pop rocks are sweet, but the cotton candy balances everything with its sour-ish grapey goodness (Probably artificial, so not that all healthy to be frank. Whoever frank is).

I guess this could be the japanese version of popin' cotton candy by Vat19.com 

Or maybe the other way round. BUT it doesn't matter who started it first, all I care is that it exists in the first place. I guess you could try getting it by whatever means is easiest for you, though I'd say get more than one packet, because you'd sure be begging for more! At least I did.

Hungry bunny over and out.

Thought of the day: I wonder if it's possible to make a weapon out of a mega pop-rock?

Next up: Bombalaska! (The dessert! the dessert! I have no intention of anything to do with international warfare.)

DIY Panda Dango! Suppanda!!

Looks simple enough. Really isn't.

       So, I was at this year's AFA(anime festival asia; which was awesome, by the way) and while I was walking down the Japanese food section, I spotted this familiar looking thing. Yes! Panda Dango! Score!!!

     And I had no idea what had gotten into me. See, I'm not really that crazed up about pandas. Ever since Kai Kai and Jia Jia (Pandas in singapore originally from China) came over I've noticed a lot of panda merchandise sprouting up all over the country. Maybe, just maybe, I was subconsciously affected by the craze, because here I was, buying yet another panda related Japanese candy.

In Ume flavour! My favourite!

  I'll get into that later. For now, Panda dango!

So tearing open the package, this is what you'll get. A mixing bowl/container/whatever it is, a packet of black mochiko, a packet of white mochiko, a spoon and the powder for the sweet sauce.

I guess it's pretty much self explanatory. Well, except for the mixing-the-ingredients-part. Excuse me for my horrible Japanese, I got the spoon and the small little water measuring thingy mixed up. But I managed somehow.

The cute thing. All ready to get its head bitten off.

There came a point in time when I realised The yellow stick portrayed in the picture wasn't there. I was like, oh shucks, no stick, what now? To be honest I felt a little cheated. I mean, who doesn't include sticks with DIY dango kits? That's right, no one. Anyway, I made do with a chopstick and stuck the fella right through. 

     Making it was a pain in the butt though. I didn't really see the point of putting in much effort and making the dango look like a panda, since I'm going to eat it all up in the end no matter what it tastes like, right? The flour thingy? Not as malleable as I thought it would be. It sticks everywhere, and it's almost near impossible to get rid of the ugly crack lines and it was like trying to make stuff out of soaked play dough. Or maybe I added a little too much water. Well, the picture at the end of it all motivated me to make it presentable, so I spent a good half and hour assembling everything together (After much remodeling and sculpting)

     I feel like a Michelangelo. seriously. One of my best works yet, I must admit. 

   It tasted, alright, I guess. Nothing fancy, nothing surprising, in fact, if you've already tried the popin cookin sushi set, the dango has the sort of stickyness of the sushi rice. but tastes more like plain flour. But the sauce was crazy yummy. Just like the one you get in Japanese desert shops served with dango. You know, that syrup you thought was honey but ended up tasting more like someone dumped a hell load of sugar into a tub of soy sauce? Yeah, that's the one.

I'd give it a go, but if you used to be one of those kids who got so fed up trying to make play dough sculptures and squished them all together in one mush instead, Don't even think about it. Because that's all there really is to it, playin' with dough that's edible.

NOW, Suppanda!! I LOVED suppanda!! yes, The exclamation marks are there because it's part of Suppanda!!'s name. I was fortunate enough to find one of the rarer flavours, ume. (I think there was lemon and grape too.) Okay, so I wasn't able to get a picture of it because, 1) It was all melted together in the pack, 2) It was so good I finished it all before I felt like reviewing it. 

     It looks like a cute, pink, round ball of mochi, and from the package, it seems there's not one but TWO layers to it. So for scientific purposes, I tore the whole thing in half (which was really, literally, hard being stuck in the fridge and all) and yeah, it's true. The outside part's the chewy part, and it's kinda like those fruit plus sweets.  The inside part's made up of plum paste, I believe, a sour plum paste. It tastes exactly like the plum ball thingies I got quite a while ago. I thought it'd be as explosively sour as a warhead or sourbombs, judging from the poor panda's look of distress on the package, but it's really more of a hi-chew sour. a nice sour.

   This was truly and honestly one of my fave sweets of all time.

Hungry bunny over and out eating a homemade matcha pudding. OKAY it was a ready made supermarket packet, but I DID boil the water and I DID fill it into cute pudding cups myself. So it's homemade in it's own right.


P.S. I found the yellow stick for the dangos under the computer table. I wonder how it got there. Oh well.