Month #1: Taiwan Snacks

 Yes, the Japanese/Korean Snack series is over a year old and still hasn't completed, what is this nonsense? Well, this year for my birthday I asked for no gifts so obviously I got enrolled in a "snack of the month" club automatically guaranteed to last another year!

And what is the first month's collection? Taiwanese snacks, of course, so here we are. I didn't get what I wanted this year and I'm passing the suffering on to you. Let's get started...

Taiwan is home to 430 unique species of butterflies and is known as "Kingdom of Butterflies." On the first full moon of the year, people in North Taiwan celebrate the Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival where they send up paper lanterns into the sky. People in South Taiwan light fireworks in the street and getting hit by a firework is seen as a sign of good luck. 

In Taiwan, each receipt includes a lottery number; it's common for businesses to close for 2-3 hours after lunch to allow for naps; garbage trucks play Beethoven to announce they're in the area and no one gets married in August due to superstition.

1) Soft Yuzu Citrus Cake

Yuzu is a citrus fruit that began in China and spread to the rest of South East Asia.

This tastes a lot like a Fig Newton. It's like a Fig Newton that's bigger, thicker and has a twinge of citrus flavor to it. Not bad.

2) Soy Cracker (Korean Kimchi)

Kimchi is Korean pickled cabbage. And Kimchi is so popular in Taiwan that they made their own version that's less spicy and more sweet and sour.

As you can infer from the bag, these are like the Taiwanese Fritos. Fritos, with a little bit of BBQ, a little spice and some sesame. Not bad.

3) Black Truffle Fries

Point of order: I've never had black truffle. So I don't know what they're going for but I can still assess whether it's good.

As the bag suggests, they're chips shaped like french fries, not unlike your Andy Capp's and what not. And I think they've done well because there is a strong mushroom taste - definitely and powerfully.

And it's at this point, the thought occurs to me, "What if I'm deathly allergic to truffles?" There'd be no way of knowing, it's completely possible and I'm all alone. Is my tongue swelling up? I don't think my throat is closing but then, that's exactly what they want you to believe. Maybe my throat is closing. Maybe it's my imagination? It feels like it is - how do I know if it really is or I'm just panicking?

Living alone is scary. A slip and fall, a knife accident, a toxic truffle and that could be it. It depends on whether you can get to a phone in time, I suppose. I can't bring myself to get up on my roof. Suppose I'm up there and the ladder gets knocked over, then what? I could stay up there indefinitely. Will someone come by? Maybe. Maybe not. And then the alternative is to jump down. I don't want to imagine that but somehow it's hard not to.

Pretty good, overall. A nice salty, potatoey snack.

4) Pop-Smile Popcorn Bubble Tea

Bubble Tea (or Boba Tea) was invented in Taiwan in the 80s. The claim of ownership between Chun Shui Tang Teahouse and Hanlin Teahouse was fought over in the courts for years and eventually thrown out because no one had patented it. In 2019 the bubble tea market reached $2.4 Billion.

I, myself, have never had bubble tea and still don't know what it tastes like. You can think of this popcorn as like 70% of the way to Cracker Jack. The caramel taste is just lighter and there's another taste in there that I can only assume is the bubble tea part but doesn't taste like tea to me so... I don't know. This is the worst food review ever, I don't know what it's supposed to taste like, I don't know what it tastes like and I don't know how to describe it.

5) Taro Classic Wafers

Taro is a Taiwanese root and it's so big there that it has its own festival, the Taro Festival, held in October.

The genre of sugar wafer keeps coming up again and again with these Asian snacks. And here we are again. The look like this:

And they taste pretty much the way you'd expect. They're sugar wafers. Maybe they're less sweet than American sugar wafers but it's been a really long time since I had American ones so I can't say.

6) Taiwan Choco Ball

This one is labeled as containing/being "mochi" - glutinous rice paste. And though we usually associate mochi with Japan, it's apparently very popular in Taiwan.

The literature I have implies that it's the Taiwanese equivalent of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Coming up with the American equivalent is my job, literature. And, not being able to eat chocolate, I had to wrangle guest reviewers to eat it for me, "Mystery Diners," if you will. Here are their reviews:

"It's like gummy chocolate."

"It's not bad, it's just weird."

"It's springy... it's like a superball!"

So there you go. Take that for what it's worth.