MAYrathon 2.0 Day 18 - Haepyo Fish Meat Sausage with Cheese

This one is so weird and visual that I'm going to attempt a review using only pictures and captions.

This is Fish Meat Sausage with Cheese. Not JUST a name for a 90s ska band.

Delicious ingredients include frozen surimi, cheddar cheese, cheese flavoring oil, seasoning liquid and fiber gel. YUM!

Take them out of the plastic jar and you see white, globulous sticks encased in plastic and sealed with metal.

gourmet!

The human flesh color really makes it pop

I take a bite and it tastes and smells like old fish sticks dipped in cheese wiz. It sucks.

But as an added bonus, if you manage to digest all 12 of these cheese-meats, you get to convert the jar into a piggy bank. Worth it!

Just terrible...

MAYrathon 2.0 Day Two - Tako (Octopus) Chips

Check yo' spelling, son! Some of you probably looked at the title and said, "Taco Chips? Have you gone soft in your old age, Matty Mac?" But no, we're taking a look at TAKO chips, as in octopus flavored chips from the famous Nongshim food company from Seoul, South Korea. Famous because they are one of the most recognizable brands of ramen noodles worshiped by college kids and street tramps alike. As I've stated before, I love octopus, so I am really excited to try these. Let's see what the company's website has to say about this product:

"Tako chips are made from yellow corvina. The fish and flour are combined to create the paste that shapes this delicious snack. Children are especially attracted to the tako shape."

I'm not really sure what to say to that. I guess I'm a little bummed that it doesn't include actual octopus, but I'm guessing yellow corvina is probably a cheap substitute or something. Looking at the

"I hope this becomes an octopus chip one day."

ingredients however, it DOES include both shrimp and octopus powder. I looked online to see what octopus powder is and it literally took me to a link about a potion in a Harry Potter video game: http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Octopus_Powder

The pink bag with the swimming octopus is cute enough, and apparently the shapes are made to look like fish and octopi/pus/puses.

So it's time to rip open the bag and see what yellow corvina and octopowder smells like. WHEEEW. It smells just like the Asian market where I got these from. It doesn't smell like your typical American corn chip product; this is pure seafood through and through. And it's weird to say, but I can totally smell the octopus in these chips. Let's taste...
It's...different from what I was expecting. The aftertaste is 100% seafood. But other than that, I would say it most resembles a slightly less sweet version of Kix cereal. Really. That's what I get out of this. That was pretty unexpected, but at least it didn't make me throw up corvina, so I'm putting this one in the win column! I'm going to go to the fridge and get the milk.

Yeo's Asian Juice Boxes: Sugar Cane and Snow Pear

I'm starting to look into eating and drinking a little healthier these days. Don't worry, I'll still inject possibly toxic liquids down my gullet once(ish) a week for my five fans, but I'm looking at some non-soda substitutes in my daily routine. And since Asia has never let me down (that's a goddamn lie) and juice boxes have always appealed to my slimmer inner-child, then why not wind down this Thursday with some exotic Asian juice boxes? What could possibly.........

Ah, Yeo's. Singapore's finest beverage company with such classics as Longan Red Date Drink, Bandung Rose Syrup Milk Drink, Cheng Bou Leong and so many other classics that have graced our refrigerator for generations. Actually, these all seem like flavors of stupid that I'll eventually spend way too much money to try. The website also offers a "cool" tile game that I can't figure out and a "fresh" Yeo's Screen Saver! Party to the MAX. Several of the Asian drinks sitting in my fridge come from this company, but I've never heard of them until today. My two treats this evening are, I'm assuming, juice boxes not marketed to kids with the tag line: "The Natural Choice." Besides the recent Ecto Cooler, I don't think I've had a juice box in 15 years, so let's get our SingaPOUR on! GET IT!!!! It doesn't even make sense because it's a juice box and you drink from a straw and I suck at tile games and punctuation%

Sugar Cane Drink
Now here's an odd thing, pretty much everything I've eaten over the last 30 years contain some type of sugar, but I've never really seen a sugar cane in real life, and I've certainly, to the best of my knowledge, never tasted one. Sugar cane produces sugar, so is this to just literally be sugar water? I can make that at home Macgyver style without all this fancy Asian lettering. Let's read the ingredients: Water, sugar cane extract, cane sugar and caramel." Wait, wait, wait. You have a drink where the main ingredient is literal sugar, and you've added an additional flavor of...sugar? Well I'm probably in for a sweet treat as this little 8.5 oz box contains 7% of my daily carbohydrates. I'm definitely going to have to go stare at the gym after this.
So I opened up the straw, poked it in and tried to smell it by giving it a little squeeze and it literally went up my nose. I wish I was kidding. Can't smell anything since it's in a juice box so I guess I'll go right for the taste. Yea I'd say it's pretty much sugar water. There is a slight herbal flavor to it, but it's basically just really, really sweet water. Singapore kids probably move it. Singaporians?

Snow Pear Drink

Lots of helpful info here...

I can't say I've heard of a snow pear before. Lazy research tells me it's popular in western Asia and has a sour, mild taste. The ingredients are a little more extravagant for this one: water, extract of dried pear, dried mandarin orange, apricot kernal (it's in bold on the box; no idea why), bei sha shen, chaun bei mu, cane sugar, artificial flavor and caramel. So they're just messing with me at this point right? If there's no English translation for one of your ingredients, either leave it off the list or make something up. And WHY is apricot kernal in bold? It makes no sense to me. Just like the last drink, there's really no scent past the cardboard, so for the first time in my life, I assume, let's drink something with bei sha shen in it.


It's identical to the sugar cane drink. I mean identical. It may say it has different ingredients and different nutritional facts, but if you did the Pepsi taste challenge with these two drinks, no one would be able to tell them apart. Well this has been a giant waste of time, and I probably have apricot kernal poisoning. I'm going to go sit on the toilet for six hours and try and figure out that tile game. So long everyone.

Same

Pennywort Drink

Yep. Pennywort. Not recognized by spell check. Not recognized by any human being I've ever met. It's time to reach into my box of Asian drinks I bought online for a surprisingly reasonable/this will likely kill me price and drink some pennywort. What the hell even IS a pennywort? It sounds like it's either a concoction made by some 80s movie about witches having their revenge against a scorned lover, or the location of a corner convenience store. "Honey, I need to get some dog food, blanket, summer sausages and a rake, so I'm gonna walk down to Pennywort's; they always have the best deals." 

Let's access the power of the internet and see what I'm getting into before I drink this dented can from Asia that only costed me ninety cents...

Apparently the pennywort is a perrential herb (weed) that grown in moist areas. So...marijuana??? It's most common in parts of Asia, Northern Australia, India and Sri Lanka, and has been used for centuries as a medicinal property in those countries, including a remedy to help encourage lactation -  which means I'm in for a fun and confusing morning tomorrow. Everything I researched about Pennywort mentions some old folktale about an Asian Tai-Chi master, Li Ching-Yun, who lived to be 256 years old due to his daily consumption of Pennywort; he sounds like a dick and a liar if you ask me. Finally, I'm being told that Pennywort could have side effects, and I should contact my doctor before introducing it to my regular diet or if I'm pregnant. Which confused me because of the lactation and whatnot. 

Alright, but what can I learn about the Pennywort drink I hold in my hand right now? Besides being extremely dented, I am told that the ingredients are simply: water, Pennywort leaves extract (40%), sugar and citric acid, and it is a product of Thailand. I'm also told to shake well before use. Since I have no idea what to expect with this drink, I feel like this is one of the beverages where I need to pour it into a glass before consuming. Be right back!

Ugh...It looks and smells like the time I drank that celery extract. It claims there's sugar in here, but it just smells like a root vegetable and nothing else. Even Indiana Jones Kermit thinks it's TOO green. OK, I've rambled on long enough, let's give give it a taste. 

It actually IS sweeter than I had anticipated, but it's just so...Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Yea. I don't know how else to describe it. As a kid, my parents had a timeshare in Myrtle Beach and we'd spend a lot of time there. Drinking this instantly brought my olfactory/taste senses to that location. I don't know if it's the swamps, oceans, seaweed, low altitudes or my current lactation tendencies, but I can't really come up with a better explanation. Pennywort tastes like Myrtle Beach. This is the oddest comparison I've ever made, but there we have it. Goodnight! 

MAYrathon Day 24: Grass Jelly Drink (Banana Flavor)

Well, here it is, my last item form the Asian Market, and the first one that caught my eye when I was initially picking stuff up. Grass Jelly Drink. The name alone called out to my curiosities. The photo was equal party horrifying and intriguing. It looks like a black sludge with a straw. I can't tell if that is supposed to be ice or if there are chunks of grass jelly in the can itself. And I didn't even see this until I got it out of the fridge today - it's banana flavored. I don't know if that's a good thing or not.

So there's a picture I found online of a common grass jelly drink. I don't feel like going into too much of a history lesson today, but supposedly grass jelly itself comes from the leaves and stalks of the mesona plant popular in the Eastern side of the world. It's most popular as a gelatin substance served mixed with syrup, cream, milk or as a beverage mixed with other fruit flavors. I was initially prepared to be really grossed out by this, but I have to be honest, I am curious as hell. I am going to go for a double-taster. First, I just want to take a sip of the beverage by itself. Then I'll pour the whole thing into a glass, chunks and all, and try some grass jelly jello, or wherever it's actually called.

Cracking open the can delivers and overwhelming smell of banana. I wish I had known originally that this was flavored because I would have looked for the "original" flavor. I feel like all I am going to get is banana.

I have this vague childhood memory of banana milk. I don't know if it was put out my Nesquick or Yoo Hoo or if it was its own product, but I remember the sweet taste distinctly after tasting this. It's really good. As I thought, the banana flavor overpowers everything, but it's sweet, refreshing and nostalgic. I'd drink this again in a heartbeat. All the chunks immediately settled at the bottom and it was hard getting them out of the can. Bottom's up:

The brown, murky color and dark, gelatinous blobs are visually disconcerting. but the taste is still pretty great. I'm very impressed and surprised by ow much I like this. If it wasn't so weird and rare, I would certainly consider making grass jelly part of a balanced McConnell breakfast. Move over breakfast ribs and breakfast beer, there's a new sheriff in town!