Sunday, August 29, 2010

Oh, that's disgusting.

Ener-G Foods has vacuum-sealed bread that supposedly stays good for a year on the shelf. 

So I would love to know why I plucked this loaf out of the case of 6 and opened the outer bag to find ... wow, that's kind of a dark green-gray shade on that side.  And flipped it to see ... wow, that's a bright chartreuse on that side.

So ... I pulled out another loaf and it was fine.  Still.  The moldy loaf is so moldy that part of the loaf is eaten away by it.  Gross.  At least it's vacuum-sealed, but ... still gross and a waste of money to boot. 

Monday, August 16, 2010

Glutening Tokyo: Convenience Stores

I used to love convenience stores, with their ever-changing selection of items and hot, greasy fried slabs of chicken.  Now, since quittin' the gluten, not so much.  Going to the convenience store is this awful trial that requires a lot of holding packages over my head (can't flip them over and the ingredients are printed on the bottom), sighing, and shoving them back on the shelf.

What can you eat?  Well, there's the typical stuff.  Drinks are usually fine.  I've yet to find a drink that wasn't.  Ice cream, basically you need to use common sense.  Cut fruit should be okay.  After that?  Beware.

Salad:  Most salads are fine.  Watch out for "pasta" salads that have cold spaghetti at the bottom or salads with fried or marinated meats on top.  I've also encountered totally safe-looking salads that list wheat as an ingredient.  I can only guess it was in a marinade for some vegetable piled on the top.  Salad dressings are hit or miss.  I went to Family Mart the other day and they had ZERO safe dressings.  Out of six. 

Sushi:  Sushi in the convenience store is iffy at best.  The ingredient label may lump in soy sauce with the regular sushi ingredients, so sometimes it's hard to tell if it contains wheat there or elsewhere.  Usually the varieties available are "salad," "natto," "negitoro," and a combination of various types of sushi.  The variety pack is iffy, as the eel (maybe in there) and egg (definitely always in there) are not safe.  Because the pack does not individually list ingredients for every type of sushi, I wouldn't trust it.  Negitoro is mashed tuna with onion.  It usually lists wheat as an ingredient, which could be the soy sauce, but since the tuna is mashed, I have no idea what's in it.  Natto might be okay.  Except it's rotten soy beans.  Salad flavor almost always contains wheat in the mayo.

Onigiri:  Onigiri are rice balls.  I'll lump maki-zushi in with this (looks like a sushi tube).  These are almost never okay if they contain any sauce or mayo.  A plain onigiri with just salmon in it is usually okay, but be careful and check for 小麦 on the label.  Lawson is the worst offender.  They seem to shove wheat into everything.

Desserts:  Most of these contain cake.  Frustrating, yes.  Pudding is even only safe about 50 percent of the time.  Even things that look like they should be okay are usually not okay.  You need to check for wheat. 

Meals:  These are almost never okay.  I have found TWO entrees in the past year that were okay.  One was a mistake (shipped to the wrong area, whoops!) and the other disappeared as well.  One was jambalaya (at Sunkus) and one was a kimchi pork on rice meal (at Family Mart).  Similar meals at other convenience stores were and are not safe to eat.  Basically, most meals contain soy sauce or oyster sauce or some kind of sauce.  What's in the sauce?  Wheaaaat.  You can read labels if you want, but it's pretty futile.  You can definitely eat the salt-grilled fish at 7-11 and white rice anywhere.  Make sure the white rice is not mixed with barley.

(I saw a website talking about the gluten-free fried rice dishes at Lawson and balked.  Nothing in Lawson is or has ever been safe to eat.  Fried rice in Japan is never ever safe.) 

Fast Food:  Most convenience stores have hot snacks up front.  Your options are limited. 
Family Mart: Nothing
7-11: Hot dog on a stick should be okay, in Tokyo.  Sometimes this is different for different areas.
am/pm: Pretty sure nothing
Mini Stop: French fries, Idaho stick potato, hot dog on a stick, ice cream (in a cup), and some parfaits are okay
Lawson: Pretty sure nothing

Packaged foods:  Chips and chocolate are not always safe!!  I've found salt flavor potato chips with both wheat and pork in the ingredients.  Watch out for chocolate, as it often contains rice crisps (malt).  Also, m&ms and Snickers both use wheat starch here.  Plain chocolate should be okay.  Plain Choco Flake is okay (no malt).  Pringles are not (same as home--wheat starch), but Chip Star (plain flavor) is fine. 

I hope this helps if you're about to trek off to Japan.  Worst case scenario, you can just buy a lovely, individually wrapped banana. 

Unless you're allergic to bananas.

Nut Thins - Almond

What on earth are these things?  I opened them up expecting a cracker, but instead was greeted with a rice wafer with some dots on it.  Huh?  Okay.

My first impression was:  Salt.  I don't like salty foods so much, and found the salt overpowering.  Then I thought, "Fritos."  They do taste a lot like Fritos. 

I don't know if I like them.  They're odd.  But because they're a lot like Fritos, I thought they might be nice in chili.  So when I tried that madras lentil stuff, I dipped in a nut thin.  Not bad. 



Still not sure what these things are though.  They aren't a cracker.  They aren't a rice cracker.  They're just ... ricenut coins of SALT.

Madras Lentils

I like curry, but most Japanese curry contains wheat flour.  Even some Indian and Thai curries produced in Japan contain wheat flour.  So when I saw that Tasty Bites had Indian that was gluten free?  Well, sign me up!

I picked this one at random.  I'd already tried another variety and it was good, so I thought I would try another.

I boiled it in the bag, as I usually do with curry.  Microwaving is never a good idea if you can help it.  When I opened it, the first thing I thought was, "Chili!"

I love chili.  This is vegetarian, but it absolutely smells like chili.  Kind of looks like chili.  And hey!  It tastes like chili too!

It's a bit spicy, but not awful.  The lentils make up the bulk of it, and there are some larger red beans mixed in somewhere.  But basically, it's a lot like a vegetarian chili.  But not vegan.  It does contain butter.  And cream.  (Mmmm, butter and cream.)

It's not really what I was expecting--I thought it would have more of a curry flavor--but it's tasty nonetheless.  The end.

Saturday, August 14, 2010

DeBowling - De Boles Rice Pasta and Cheese

I was looking for a mac and cheese after several failed attempts at making my own with the limited resources available.  And Annie's was not available from my supplier.  D'oh. 

Well, the only one that wasn't creepyvegan was De Boles.  So I ordered 4 boxes, thinking that would get me through the year.  Annnnd they sent me 4 cases.  48 boxes of macaroni and cheese.  I'm still waiting to see if anyone but me has noticed this, but in the mean time, I might as well try it.

De Boles is not a single serving the way I felt Annie's was.  I like a big helping of mac, but according to De Boles, one box of mac is about 1000 calories.  And I didn't use low-fat milk or unsalted butter, so I'm sure that would make it more caloric (and delicious). 

Because I live alone and can't stand reheated pasta (or reheated mac in general, bleh), I decided to make a portion of it.  I'd save the other pasta just in case I needed it for something.  I used dry measuring cups and found that the box contained about 1 1/3 cups of noodles.  So I took out about 3/4 of a cup to boil and saved the other portion. 

I accidentally went a bit over the time limit and boiled it for 12 minutes.  It was fine.

Two tablespoons (pats--I get pre-cut butter and assume that each pat is about a tablespoon) of butter, 60ml of milk (Japanese milk is usually pretty high-fat), mix ... add powder ... mix ... try to stomp out the clumps ... stomp stomp stomp ... fail ... and ... eat.

Actually, it isn't bad.  Not at all.  I'd read it was bland or that it was unpleasant to look at, and while the latter is true, the former isn't.  It tastes like mac and cheese should.  Tangy, cheesy, and good.  The pasta's texture wasn't bad, even though I overcooked it.  I do prefer more sizable elbows, but this does the job I need it to do, which is to be macaroni and cheese. 

But I do agree that the color leaves something to be desired.  The pasta is the taupeish shade you expect from rice pasta, and the cheese sauce is white.  Not exactly the most pleasant look, especially for someone like me who despises milk and anything that looks like milk.  (IT COMES FROM A COW'S BOOB, OKAY?  GROSS.  Process it any way you like so it looks different, but ew, milk.)  Some color would be appreciated. 

I would buy it again, but first I need to get through some of these bajillion boxes I have.