Melona Ice Bar (Strawberry Flavour)

Do any of you remember how, approximately three months ago, I set myself the seemingly impossible task of trying all four Melona Ice Pop flavours (widely touted as the "Melona Ice Pop Challenge")? Well, I did. And then I never got around to trying the strawberry flavour and it just languished in my freezer. Until today.

I didn't make a .gif. Partly out of laziness and partly because
I forgot to take enough pictures to do it. I guess it was
ultimately just out of laziness.

 I started to write the strawberry post shortly after I posted the banana post, assuming that I would just fill in the blanks when I actually tried it. This is what I wrote:

"Lately social media has been a-buzz about the ice bucket challenge, but absolutely no one is talking about my recent Melona Ice Pop Challenge. Rather than dumping a bucket of ice water on my head, I managed to consume all four Melona flavours over the course of approximately one month, and in doing so, raised just under four dollars for Binggrae. Today I will be writing about the final flavour: strawberry."

Well, now it's nearly November (or perhaps it is November--I guess it depends when I will get around to posting this), and no one even remembers what the ALS ice-bucket challenge was. In a sense this means I beat ALS (in the sense that this Melona Ice Pop Challenge has dragged on way longer. I didn't cure ALS ... yet).

So let's wrap this up: the strawberry flavour was pretty good. I still don't love these things, but for what they are, yeah, I would say the strawberry flavour is a good flavour. I didn't love it. It didn't shock me in the same way that the melon and banana flavours did; it was more or less what I expected it to be. It's definitely the "safest" of the flavours, so I think that if I, for some reason, bought one of these things again (I really don't think I will), it would probably be the strawberry flavour. There were no surprises here, and that is how I like my food: predictable.

In conclusion, here are the awards I would give to each flavour if I was in the business of handing out awards to popsicle flavours:

• Mango - Biggest Disappointment
• Melon - Most Closely Resembles a Honeydew of the Four, or so I Assume. I Have Never Tried a Honeydew.
• Banana - The Dark Horse
• Strawberry - Safe & Predictable

I finally tried strawberry, and yeah, whatever.

I'm just glad this stupid challenge is over.

Melona Ice Bar (Banana Flavour)

The Melona taste challenge rages on, with three Melonas down and only the strawberry yet to come. Today I tried the banana flavour, mostly because I expected it to be the worst by far, and I wanted to end on what I would hope to be a relatively positive note (strawberry: among my favourite artificial flavours).

But in a bizarre, totally unforeseen twist of events, banana might actually be my favourite Melona of all--which isn't actually saying much, because none of them are particularly good, or at least not outstanding. But the banana flavour was surprisingly good, which is weird because banana is, hands down, my least favourite artificial flavour. Even the idea of artificial banana is revolting to me, so I had extremely low expectations for this Melona. Perhaps that's why I think it's so good--just because I expected it to be the worst, and it wasn't. But ... I don't know. It was pretty good. It was definitely better than mango and melon. Even the melon flavour was surprisingly okay, or at least a lot better than expected.

Here's a rare gif set of me having a change of heart.

I mean, the banana one was good. I still don't think I would go out of my way in the future to procure it, but I don't know, I'm kind of into it. I think I might eat it again at some point. It definitely has a banana "flavour" without actually tasting like a banana. I think maybe the creaminess is what made it better than just an artificial banana candy? I'm not sure. I really don't know what to think. I feel like everything I thought I knew about the world was just turned on its head, and I am having a hard time coming to terms with that. I thought that writing out my feelings might help me try and clarify all of the emotions I'm experiencing right now, but it hasn't. I am still confused. I'm obviously glad that it wasn't as terrible I was expecting, but I'm also kind of disappointed in myself because I feel like I generally have a pretty good grasp on what kinds of food I will like without having tried them before, and I don't like having that sense of self challenged in such a fundamental way.

I made a commitment to eat

All of the Melona ice bars--what a feat!

Artificial banana (I thought it was obsolete)

Turned out to be a most surprising treat.

Melona Ice Bar (Melon Flavour)

I'm nothing if not fair, and so tonight I tried a second Melona ice bar, and this time it was the melon flavour. I mentioned in the previous mango Melona post that I thought that a specifically honeydew-flavoured popsicle is a weird choice. And aside from the banana flavour, I was pretty certain I would hate this one the most. But you know what? I didn't. I kind of liked it. I didn't love it, but I definitely didn't hate it. And maybe I even liked it more than the mango? I don't know. I'm very confused right now. So if you're going to try a Melona ice bar, I think I might recommend the melon.

Here's this gif.

But can someone who has actually tried a honeydew confirm whether or not the melon flavour actually tastes like a honeydew? Because I have never had one and I never will.

Anyway, now there are two flavours left for me to try: strawberry and banana. I am really not looking forward to the banana one. That sounds so disgusting.

Oh a little icey pop, icey pop

It's Korea's biggest export: the Melona

These flavours aren't great, when you gonna stop?

When you gonna give it up, Melona? 

Although the melon is kind of okay

But the creamsicle I will not betray

My tastebuds you will not sway

You're not m-m-m-my Melona.

Melona Ice Bar (Mango Flavour)

Several readers will likely remember a recent Dear Food Thoughtz post in which a young woman had come under the sway of these mysterious Korean popsicles and feared they were ruining her life. In order to provide the quality of service that Food Thoughtz has built its reputation on, I tried to track down these ice bars myself before writing a response--but to no avail. I have recently uncovered a cache of Melona bars in a nearby Korean grocery story (you may remember this grocery store from my Japanese chocolate biscuit craze-daze), and yesterday I bought one and ate it.

 And ... it was just okay. I have had better and I have had worse, but I don't imagine I will ever become addicted to these. I recently had an orange creamsicle and was amazed by how delicious it was. I love creamsicles, and these Melonas just don't cut it. There are so many quality icepops out there, and it's not enough anymore to have a fairly rich, creamy, fruity flavour. I'm slightly curious to try the other flavours, but honestly, I just don't think these things are going to win me over.

I actually don't really like creamy popsicles. Creamsicles are almost an exception, but not really, because it's only the ice cream centre that is creamy (and tastes like those delicious Screamerz at Shell that were so expensive I could never afford to buy one) and the shell is just like a generic popsicle. I just don't really find popsicles that are really creamy or taste too much like real fruit to be refreshing on a hot summer's day.

Here's a series of pictures of me looking terrible while eating a Melona bar. But does anyone want to talk about how
Baskin Robins is still in business? I had no idea it was until I moved to Toronto. At least there is still one in business.

So, I don't know. I don't know what else to say about these. I was really disappointed, but I didn't hate it either. One day I might try the honeydew flavour, just to test it out, but I'm in no big rush to get another. One good thing about them, I guess, is that they're pretty cheap. I think this cost 70¢ in the store, which is a pretty decent price. 

In closing, I would just like to point out that Binggrae, the company that produces Melona, also produces a red bean popsicle, and even the idea of it is nauseating. It is, according to the Binggrae website, the "No.1 red bean ice bar in Korea since 1970's." How many red bean ice bars does Korea even have?! Is this even an accomplishment? Would it be possible for me to make a red bean ice bar at home and market it as the "No. 1 red bean ice bar in Canada since just now because this isn't even  a thing and also it's disgusting but still No. 1"? You should all take this invitation to read through the Binggrae product list on their website because some of the descriptions are really great, and I'm kind of interested in that Melona waffle...  Oh. Nevermind. I just read the description. It's full of red bean paste and shaped like a fish. There were a lot of other interesting looking ice creams at the P.A.T. though, some of which might of been Japanese, which based on their chocolate-filled biscuits, seems a lot more promising.

Here's the P.A.T.'s selection of Melonas, plus this disgusting looking
"B-B-Big" red bean bar.

I'm only human and got swept up in the craze

Of these South Korean ice pops, hoping they would amaze.

But they didn't, not really, they were only okay.

Asparagus

Tonight my roommate cooked asparagus for dinner and it smelled like one thousand cats had just peed everywhere. Of asparagus, Proust once said: "[It] transforms my chamber-pot into a flask of perfume." Proust also spent nearly his entire life in a cork-lined room.

I have hated asparagus for as long as I can remember. Eating it always reminded me of eating a slimy, plump, green worm bloated with urine. The worst is when it is slightly over cooked and so it’s too soft to cut or bite through cleanly, so you end up having to tear through a bunch of stringy, wet asparagus strands. The only way I could choke it down was by slathering it in butter first. I also don't think it's healthy to eat a food that so drastically alters your urine so quickly.

A little known fact about me (or perhaps very well known, depending on who is reading this) is that I once worked on a farm harvesting asparagus. It was one of the best times of my life and is, I’m sure, directly responsible for why my back now looks like a well-loved leather purse. Although I hate asparagus, it was a pretty fun vegetable to harvest, and one time I even tried it raw (word to the wise: asparagus is way better when consumed raw because it tastes almost identical to garden peas, although I am not sure if it only tastes like this when freshly sliced from the ground). I especially liked harvesting it because I always felt like I was thwarting its will to live by constantly cutting it down.

While I worked on the farm I always thought I was engaging in a slightly unethical activity by bringing asparagus to the masses, as well as encouraging my own family's consumption by bringing home free second-rate asparagus. That summer taught me a lot about myself--namely that I am willing to do just about anything for a very nominal amount of money.

Our bodies often warn us that a food should disgust us

By wreaking havoc on our digestive functions.

What is it about the asparagus

That so grossly alters our renal productions?

So how is it that one continues to devour with glee

A vegetable that so violently alters the smell of our pee?

These Weird Chocolate Mushroom Shaped Biscuits

If the purpose of this blog is to create and maintain a catalogue of all the foods I have encountered, and a brief note on whether I will eat (or will eat again) that food, then let this post be one loud, resounding YES!!!

I bought these tasty treats in Lethbridge, Alberta.  I know what you’re thinking: Alberta? Lethbridge?  When did Alberta—let alone the rural southern part of Alberta—become such a trendsetter and the epicentre of novelty foodstuffs vaguely resembling non-novelty foodstuffs?  The easy answer is whenever the Real Canadian Superstore opened in Lethbridge, but the more accurate answer is whenever the Asian market found out about southern Alberta.

I was tempted to lump this, along with a few other recently discovered gems, under a generic “cartoon food update” header and be done with it.  But there’s something about these ChocoBoy chocolate mushrooms that sets them apart … and I think it’s the chocolate.  These biscuits really
don’t resemble food in the way the gummi burgers did, so I decided to treat them (along with the EveryBurger, coming up soon) separately.  The most important thing to keep in mind, which is something that I hope I stressed in the Cartoon Food post is that cartoon food (I mean that is onTV, not what you can buy in stores) sets a standard for that entire food.  For me, a cartoon mushroom must always be a white mushroom and always be on a pizza.  You know what mushrooms I'm talking about.

There are a lot of things I really liked about this snack.  For starters, I love the milk chocolate and biscuit combination.  It’s a pairing I really got into when I was in France—yes, France—and lived almost exclusively off of those biscuits with a thick layer of milk chocolate on top.   There’s something about the fusion of firm milk chocolate with crunchy biscuit that’s just … so … satisfying.  At first you might think the milk chocolate is too firm, but you would be mistaken.  Pushing down on that chocolately bulb is almost like plunging a French press: you get the same soft compression and slow resistance.  And just as you’re two rows of teeth are getting close to meeting, you snap the brittle biscuit because that tension—albeit slow, and albeit soft—has been building up and is finally released when it comes into contact with the biscuit. 

The second reason I really liked these choco-mushrooms is because they’re shaped like mushrooms.  In terms of balancing the biscuit-chocolate ratio, a mushroom design does make sense: it’s really nice to have all of the chocolate concentrated in one area so that you can decide which part, the chocolate or the biscuit, that you would like to really focus on and savour.  But on the other hand, isn’t it so weird to make a little cookie shaped like a mushroom?  And not even a normal white mushroom, but one of those weird, wild, really phallic mushrooms? Like, what a weird choice for a cookie.  But you know what? It works.  And it especially works for someone like me who would never actually eat a mushroom (or would I?).

The third great thing about this product is the packaging.  I remember going into the Shell when I was younger and being so jealous that they had entire box displays of Baby Bottle Pop or Ring Pop.  Until I realized you could just buy all that stuff in Costco, I really thought that it was a sign of success to have the display box.  These ChocoBoy mushrooms come in a similar display box, but obviously were not designed to be sold in the same way as Ring Pops (in part because there are too few in a box, but also because they’re all just loose in there and that would be disgusting).  At any rate, the packaging was a nice little bonus.  They didn’t have to do that, and you know, I really like when companies say to themselves (or so I imagine), “You know, we really don’t have to do this.  But I tell you what — I bet there’s a little girl out there who’s really going to appreciate it.”  (This is actually how I imagine a lot of businesses working.)  And this goes without saying, but the cartoon versions of the mushrooms on the packaging really wet my appetite.  At first I thought there was no way the real cookies would be anything like the depiction on the box, but then I opened the box and was like, wow, these cookies are really similar to this depiction.

Overall, this was a really positive experience for me.


UPDATE: 
A fellow food hero has already written about these and it turns out the ChocoBoy (a Korean company) chocolate mushrooms are a knock-off of the Japanese Kinoko No Yama cookies, which have been in circulation since 1975 and, according to the author, have been the leader in the "'sweets that look like mushrooms' market."  What is it with all these amazing food blogs lately?


FURTHER UPDATE:

After reading about an entire world of chocolatey biscuits that I didn't even know existed, I used the internet to track down a cache of Japanese snacks.  I discovered that the Korean supermarket a block away also carried Japanese products, and so I hotfooted it over and bought the following:

I also bought a box of the meiji Kinoko No Yama chocolate mushrooms, but they're not in the picture because I
gobbled them up immediately. A picture of the empty package will follow.  From left to right: some Japanese chocolatey biscuit in the shape of what I assume are pinecones (by meiji); some Japanese chocolatey biscuit in the shape of tree trunks (by meiji); a Korean chocolatey biscuit in the shape of koalas and called "Koala's March" (by Lotte).

And here's a picture of meiji's Kinoko No Yama, which I believe translates to "mushroom mountain."

Here are some pictures of the tree stumps:

The interior of the carton is similar to EveryBurger: two foil-wrapped plastic trays full of cookies.  The others only
haveone large foil pouch, which you will see later on.

Here's a closeup of the biscuits themselves.

And now the pinecones:

The opened package.

The individual biscuits.  These were my least favourite of all the snacks, and it definitely had to do with the biscuit
part,which was much more crumbly than the others. It almost had an artificial nutty taste.

The actual biscuit in comparison to how they are presented on the packaging.  I wish they would have included marzipan
facial hair and sunglasses on the actual biscuits.

Last but not least, Koala March:

And finally, Lotte's "Koala March," which I haven't tried yet, but
am really excited to open. Apparently all of the koalas are different,
and there's even an "appendicitis panda," although I believe
it is quite rare.

A brief note on my experiences: The link posted above to serious eats is a taste test between ChocoBoy's mushroom biscuits and meiji's Kinoko No Yama. The taste test revealed ChocoBoy to be the better biscuit, despite a general consensus that Kinoko No Yama is better quality. What sealed the deal in favour of ChocoBoy was the taste of the biscuit, which is a lot sweeter than Kinoko No Yama. My impression is that while both are great, I too must side with ChocoBoy. Unlike the taste testers at serious eats, I didn't really discern any difference in the quality of the two chocolates, but I definitely did prefer the ChocoBoy biscuit stems. One point in favour of Kinoko No Yama (although this might just be an issue of shopping) is that there were fewer broken biscuits.

Next I tried the tree stumps, which taste nearly identical to the meiji mushrooms. I love them for their novelty factor -- seriously, tree stumps? -- but ultimately I preferred the shape of the mushrooms when it comes to actually eating the biscuits. What I don't like about the tree stumps is that you pretty much have to take bites that are both chocolate and biscuit, whereas I like to be the master of my own destiny when it comes to what section of the cookie is in my mouth at what time.

Finally, I tried the pinecones and as I mentioned in one of the photo captions, these were my least favourite. The biscuit was decidedly different from the others, and I didn't enjoy it nearly as much. What I think I would have liked a lot more is if they had made the biscuit a hollow cylinder because I think I would really enjoy lodging the point against the back of my front teeth, and then crushing the pinecone by forcing my tongue into the hollow cookie.

I have yet to try the Koala March biscuits, but it is my understanding that they are merely the Korean version of the meiji pandas, which I have had and which I really, really liked. I've always been a fan of cookies that are chocolate pockets, which is exactly what these are. The added bonus is that each cookie has a printed image of, in this case, a koala. Apparently each koala is different, so I will be sure to update this post with some individual pictures of the biscuits themselves.

And finally, to close things out, here's the poem that was missing from the original post:

So you have a selective eating disorder, what could be worse?
What sins did your parents commit to burden you with this curse?

You won’t eat sandwiches, salads, or fettuccine alfredo.
You won’t eat red pepper, beet, cucumber, or tomato.
But do not despair; there’s more to this world.
There’s the entire Far East just waiting to be unfurled.
Korea has ChocoBoy, the chocolate-capped mushrooms
And Japan has Meiji, with its entire forest in bloom:
Mushrooms, and pinecones, and tree stumps — oh my!
A whole new world of chocolately biscuits for you to try!

The Pickle

One time an incorruptible-Huxtable  babysitter chased me into the basement and threatened to force me to eat a pickle. To this day I don’t know if she was merely exercising her authority over me or if she thought that pickles are so good that it would be criminal to let me live another day without trying one myself.

But I was triumphant, and to this day, I have never tried a pickle.

This is what I imagine the outcome would be if I ever tried a pickle.

It wasn’t until 2008 that I figured out what a pickle is. I remember this moment very clearly. I was working on an organic vegetable farm for the summer because I like to be close to the earth and I respect the welfare of our planet. I was directed to gather some cucumbers and some pickling cucumbers. As I repeated “pickling cucumbers” over and over to myself while looking at the pickling cucumbers, it suddenly dawned on me that cucumbers are pickles--just pickled. And I thought to myself that I better keep this little insight to myself because it was 2008 and about 17 years too late to make this connection.

I don’t want to suggest that I was totally unaware of the pickling process or that the final pickled product must have pre-existed in a non-pickled state; of course I knew these things. But pickles have always been so far from my mind that I never really thought about it. And I certainly never considered that this was an activity that everyday people engaged in. I assumed that pickles just appeared on the shelves of our grocery stores, fresh from a container from China. And besides, even though we all (now) know that pickling is a process to preserve food, “pickles” are always referred to as just “pickles,” whereas “pickled asparagus” is never referred to as just asparagus or just pickles, or “pickled beets” as just beets or just pickles. I think as a society we have accepted pickles as a food unto themselves with no important connection to cucumbers in a way that we have not done so for other foods that can be pickled. As a result, I don’t think my late in life discovery of the nature of pickles is all that embarrassing. 

It is my understanding that a pickle can be either crisp or soft, and come in a variety of flavours, like sweet or... I don’t know, sour? Bitter? Are these even flavours? Maybe you can put some other food in the jar with the pickles and it flavours them? Oh, dill obviously. Dill pickles. I know that because you can get everything in dill pickle flavouring. I don’t know how these things work, and it doesn’t matter because I would not be more inclined to try one flavour of pickle over another flavour of pickle. However, the varying texture does interest me somewhat. I find nothing immediately offensive about biting into a crispy substance because I think it would be similar to biting into a carrot, which is a sensation that I enjoy. Similarly, a soft pickle might have a similar texture to a banana. Except in both cases I expect that a pickle is much more slimy than a carrot or a banana, so why would I bother? I can’t imagine that that pickles taste very good and I also can’t imagine how my life might be improved if they became a part of my diet. Pickles are almost always served a as a side dish and are therefore easily avoided. Plus, I can’t get it out of my head that pickles are just scientific specimens of syphilitic penises stored in jars. I also don’t know how the flavour of the cucumber interacts with the brine, and as of yet I have not been convinced that a cucumber marinated in brine for an unspecified period of time would taste any different from a syphilitic penis sample that has undergone the same process.

Are these animal penises preserved in jars or various tubers marinating brine?
I'll never tell...

When does the cucumber cease to be and the pickle to became?
Is there no change in substance and merely change of a name?
What is the exact moment of transition?
We shall place all our faith in the powers of human cognition.
Let us test our hypothesis; grab a jar from the shelf.
For the purpose of science we shall sacrifice the self.
It doesn’t matter which one you pick--
I’m certain they all taste like a pickled syphilitic dick