Monday, September 10, 2018

This did not put me in the Christmas spirit

but the subtitle could be: but it did make me laugh!

My lovely cousins send me a box of random, odd, and fun items for the holidays. Last year I received many different things, but the most odd one was a Santa Claus toy that excretes candies into a chimney*.

What was truly disconcerting, besides the idea of eating candies that Santa had "excreted," was that to set up the toy, one had to cut the zip tie off that attached his head to his body, remove his head, break open his "guts" from their plastic lining, then dump the contents back into his body. The whole time his head was shouting, "ho ho ho!"

I didn't know whether to laugh, or to scream in terror.

*There are so many things wrong with this.

Wednesday, September 5, 2018

A questionable German-Turkish-Mexican mashup

In Heidelberg on the main street, there are two restaurants back to back. One is "Mexican" (or the owner's approximation of such) and one is Turkish.

They decided to make a  German-Turkish-Mexican mashup of questionable tastiness.

However, it turns out that someone I know had eaten a "burrito" from the Mexican side of the house one night after visiting the bars. He thought it was the best Döner he had ever had. Ha!

Monday, September 3, 2018

Dutch stuff: the international food aisle in Michigan

Earlier this summer, I went home for an almost one month-long vacation. It felt surreal to take so much time off but it was excellent!

In addition to traveling to Boston, seeing old friends and coworkers in Michigan, and eating dang good Mexican food, I stopped by the local stores to bask in good ol' products that I can normally get in the US but not in Germany (which, ironically, usually entail ingredients from other countries or hippie foods -- think all of the wonders of Trader Joe's, because I am not into typical American food).

I took a gander at the foreign food aisle in Meijer, a giant superstore with groceries, and had a gander at the Dutch goods. Having been to the Netherlands, I can say that these products are familiar and similar to what they have in bigger grocery stores.


There are King mints, Hagelslag (my mom's side of the family eats this but I think it's not palatable - sprinkles on toast), and of course, the ultimately unpalatable drop (salted black licorice).