Who would have thought that dried fruit could be so difficult? Today’s twofer was born out of frustration. I was hungry and excited for something I was fairly confident would taste good. Dried fruit is always good, right? Even bananas seem to taste ok dried.
The first attempt was mangoes. I love mangoes. It even says it “Taste best !” at the top!
Mango. Looks safe.
But wait. Why is it brown? And why does it feel leathery?
And why oh why does it taste like it’s fermented, and have some sort of hard leather shell on it? It was HORRIBLE. It was like throwing a hand deep into a compost pile and eating whatever you pulled out. And they packaged and sold it! GAH!
Ok, so I had to put something else in my mouth to remove the awful taste. What about the plums? The package says “Cream flavored dried plum” and “Treasure flavour”, clearly putting in both spellings of flavor to appeal to all Western countries. Surely something in there would taste like cream, plum, or treasure.
Looks a little strange, but I’ll put it in my mouth anyway.
Come ON! Apparently in China “Creme flavored” means “extremely sour vinegar” and “Treasure flavour” means they leave the pit in as an extra gift inside every one. After sucking off the Sour Patch Kid level of flavor coating the fruit, and gnawing the morsel of plum off the pit, I was done. Defeated by inedible Chinese fruit snacks.
It has to get better than this. Maybe I’m using them wrong. Maybe they aren’t snacks at all but are meant to be used in some kind of larger dish? I can’t imagine them improving the flavor of anything they’re put in, so I’ll have to just conclude this horrible horrible aisle of packaged things is not intended for my demographic.
4 comments
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Paul
March 23, 2012 at 2:10 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Keep these coming. It brings back many memories of living in Korea a few decades ago
Ken
March 28, 2012 at 2:33 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
I wonder if you can stock up on food in Hong Kong and bring it back with you. I had much better luck in Hong Kong with snack foods. Oh, well… at least it is entertaining… for some.
Bob Baddeley
March 28, 2012 at 2:40 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Yeah, I could do that. Hong Kong is a lot more expensive, though. I don’t really want to spend American prices for American food while I’m in Asia, though. That said, I was there last weekend and had the most amazing mint avocado smoothie. Totally worth the $4.50USD for a 12oz cup. Plus, I like the adventure (and perhaps infantile nature) of sticking foreign things into my mouth.
Leigh Williams
March 31, 2012 at 11:29 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Warning:
I recently bought a dried banana snack thing at a Vietnamese market in Pasco. I don’t know that it’s a Vietnamese thing, though, so I thought I would pass on my warning. I figured, as I would expect you to also, that dried bananas are pretty safe, and I really like them.
This thing was the size and approximate appearance of a small tortilla, but composed of banana slices held together with something that created a flexible patty, honey? some kind of vegetable gum? I love those sesame/honey patties, so I put out $2.79 so I could take this thing home. Uh oh. One bite was enough. It tasted like shoe polish! Some kind of aromatic hydrocarbon that you know can’t be food! Into the compost!