October Skoshbox Candy Review

Earlier this year I was given a year-long subscription to Skoshbox as a gift, and I look forward to it arriving every month because I get to try out new candies and snacks from Japan, and it's always fun to see what gets delivered.

And because I'm sure somebody out there cares, I figured it might also be fun to review the snacks that come my way.

Ramune Bottle Candy - A tiny plastic bottle filled with little round ramune-flavoured candies. They taste like Rockets (Americans call them Smarties, I guess, which is completely different candy in Canada), only with a more spherical shape and a slightly less chalky texture. Pretty good.

Blueberry Plus Bar - (I can't find an Amazon link for these, so the link goes to the Skoshbox site, so you can see what it looks like.) It's a wafer with blueberry-flavoured cream filling. It's supposed to be a high energy snack, but I can't see how it's more high-energy than anything else that's loaded with sugar. It's okay, but it's nothing special.

Chocolate pie stick - Dark chocolate filling in a flaky pastry shell. It's not as sweet as you'd expect, and unfortunately, much of the chocolate flavour gets overpowered by the flavour of the pastry. Which just tastes like pastry. It was good to try, but it's nothing I'll be sad about if I can never have another.

Kimchi Senbei Bites - Last time I tried something spicy from one of these boxes, it was Tom Yum Soup Pretz. And I'm not one who likes spicy food; the Pretz made me have to run to the kitchen for a drink after a single bite! So I expected the kimchi senbei to be similar, especially because they're bright red in colour! But they're not as spicy as I was expecting, which made me really happy! They taste mostly like fish oil, with a little bit of a spicy burn on the aftertaste, but it's mild and not at all overwhelming like I feared they'd be. Pretty tasty, but mostly as a novelty thing, I think.

Kajiri-cho grape soda soft candy - A soft kind of melty candy stick that tastes like what grape soda would be if you could remove the "aggressive purple" flavour from the soda. In other words, tasty but mild. Like a lot of Japanese candies, not overly sweet, which is one of the things I like about it.

Torotto Choco-bites - Holy crap, you guys, these are the best things ever! They look like mini deep-fried brownie bites, and the package says they're supposed to be crispy outside with a chocolate centre, really they're more like melt-in-your-mouth chocolate that has a consistency closer to a brownie than anything else. I tried the pure chocolate one, but apparently there are different flavours, like chocolate-banana, chocolate-stawberry, chocolate-matcha... I might die of happiness if I ever find a chocolate-orange one! Seriously, though, these are delicious and I love them! The real highlight of this month's box!

Nama-ume plum candy with jam centre - These are candies that I don't think would go over that well with a North American market, because they're so unlike a lot of other hard candies I've ever tried. They look just like clear white hard candies with a blob of jam at the centre, and they taste like mild green grapes crossed with something floral. Floral without being fake, I should say; a lot of novelty floral candies I've had try to play up the flavour of flowers, but this just lets the flavour come naturally. The real kicker is the jam, though, which is unexpectedly salty, and I think that would throw a lot of people off if they don't know in advance. I like them, though, even though I don't think they'd be an everyday kind of candy, and I'm glad I tried them and would absolutely eat them again.

The Daily Grind

~ Was absolutely unproductive last night. I played some Torchlight, washed the dishes, read a little, and otherwise just screwed around online.

Which doesn't sound too bad, because I'm trying to keep activity to a minimum until I get my health card and can get new medications for my lungs, but there's still plenty of things I could do that involve me being perfectly stationary. Like reading more. Or making a whole load of progress in a video game. Or catching up on some TV. That all counts as being productive, I figure, when it's all stuff I want to do. But instead I just jump from one activity to another and don't get much accomplished with any particular thing.

Sometimes I frustrate myself that way.

~ Now that the weather's turning colder, I feel like I should knit things. I think I know where most of my yarn stash is packed, but I'm not so sure about my knitting needles, so finding supplies might involve many chilly trips to the basement. Still, it will be worth it when I can get back to some half-finished knitting projects.

Though I really ought to finish my current embroidery project before I do anything else like that...

~ There's a new farmer's market nearby called Mango Fresh Produce, which unlike the regular farmer's market is open all week long. Because I was woken up early again, I decided to take a walk and check it out.

They don't have much there at the moment, and it's only been around for about a month or so, but it's nearly all local produce, except for the imported stuff like daikons and starfruit and different kinds of tea! There's more variety there than at the farmer's market I usually go to. I bought ginger root, a daikon, some yellow plums, pears, a bag of garlic bulbs, and a persimmon, and it all came to less than $12.

There was more I wanted to buy, like cinnamon pecans and ground cherries, but that's enough for now, and I can go back another day and get more fruits and vegetables.

They're also practically next door to a local bakery, so except for meat, I can get just about every perishable thing I eat in one small area. I love it!

~ And now I just feel spectacularly dizzy and nauseous, so I think I'm going to spend tonight lying down a lot.