prasantrin

I bought from them when I was in grad school in VT. They have great service, and are very prompt with delivery.

But it's a good fat! Maybe they have those sunflower seeds in Canada. You could do emergency seed runs to the North.

I thought it might be you! So do you consider yourself a PNW-er now, or do you still think of yourself as being from Australia? Like Chufi, I also want to know what foods you most miss when in each location, but I want to know about junk food, specifically!

If you find one, let me know which convenience store it was at. I find it very annoying that Family Mart and Lawson's don't always carry the same things, so I have to go to either one or the other to get what I want. Cool! So, he's an oyaji now? By the way, I tried the ube (purple potato) Tirol chocolates. They tasted very much like ube, which would be a good thing if I liked ube. They had a wafer center rather than a mochi center, too. The bag was very cool, though! The ume ones are very ume-ish. Quite sweet, I thought. They reminded me of umeshu.

The yubari one has been out for a while, but it was a limited edition Hokkaido one, I think. A friend of mine brought me one as a souvenir from Hokkaido two summers ago. I'd like to try the lemon and kiwi ones. I've seen the banana one, but don't like bananas enough to want to try it. Do you know if the lemon and kiwi ones come in mini-sizes or are they regular-sized KitKat bars? I hate the minis, because they only come in big bags, but I will usually only eat half a regular KitKat bar, and give the rest away.

If you haven't already read it, check out The Great Banana Revolution! Banana peeling is serious business! And we're as smart as monkeys!!! I also used to scrape out the inside white part of banana peels with my teeth, and eat it. I liked them. I think I mentioned that on egullet before, and I was pointed to a recipe using the inside scraped part. So it can't be a very weird thing, can it? A lot of people I know eat sunflower seeds whole (I used to, too, because I'm too lazy to spit out the shells), but peanuts???? The shell would ruin all that yummy roasted peanut flavour!! (Plus who knows where those shells have been!)

I've been thinking of those onion rings almost every day since I saw them! Good onion rings just don't exist in Japan (the ones at Kua'Aina aren't bad, but they're expensive, and I've never been to Okinawa to try the Japanese A&W ones) and I'm an onion ring lover, so yours just called out to me. It's quite hot and humid right now, undortunately, so deep frying isn't an option for me right now. I like to make fried chicken with 100% cornstarch, by the way. I love the crust I get. I don't know if I'll be able to get any kind of seasoned flour here, so I'll have to experiment with flour/starch/rice flour combinations. Thanks for your help, and I'm looking forward to seeing your last blog dinner! (But I'm a little afraid I'll be too jealous of your onion rings!)

I have one more question that I've been meaning to ask for quite some time (but I keep forgetting, so I hope you don't mind my asking here rather than the original topic). Over on the Dinner topic, you posted your recipe for onion rings--soak in milk, dredge in flour, fry. But your coating looked so solid, that I was sure they were batter-dipped rather than flour-dredged. Did you dry the onions before dredging, or were they still wet from the milk? And is it just a single dredging, or do you dip them in the flour two or three times? I'm wondering how you go the flour to stick to the onions so well. And have you ever tried using cornstarch instead of the flour mix?

I first thought was SE Asia, and I found that Melkor once did a foodblog from Cambodia, but I can't remember anyone mentioning a visit to Cambodia recently. Then I thought perhaps Australia, knowing that Shalmanese is back there for a bit during his holidays from college. The clue would be a bit misleading, though, since Australia is really his home, and (afaik), he is only in the US for his studies. This is a difficult one!

Ahemmm....back to the popsicle reply... Now about oreos, I used to scrape out the filling and only eat the cookie part. I hated that frosting. I always peel my bananas from the softer end, 'cause that pointy part is the handle. I never realized that was strange till someone commented on it.

I'd probably eat that. And if the eggs were mashed and the whole thing were mixed with a bit of mayonnaise, I might even grow to like egg salad sandwiches! Once in a great while, I suddenly get a craving for an egg salad sandwich, so I make it myself. I go through the trouble of boiling the eggs (the boil, cover, turn off the stove way, so I know the eggs aren't overboiled), adding whatever ingredients I think will make the salad taste good, and then I eat. And I always finish my meal thinking, "Why do people like egg salad?" In my case, it's the egg. Hardboiled eggs are evil, even if they are mixed with other things. Although if I try the garlic, anchovy, and caper combo, I might change my mind.

That huckleberry coffeecake looks delicious! Looking at it made me think of the cranberry upside down cake in Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours (I think that's the title). I've never had a huckleberry, but I wonder how they'd taste instead of cranberries in that cake. When I was 5 I spent a school term in Nelson, BC, and we sometimes drove down to Spokane. I remember it as being a really small town, but it was so long ago, that I could be wrong. I used to get a kick out of having been to both Spokane and Slocan (I was 5, so forgive me that). I have a cousin who lives in Spokane now (he's a firefighter out there), and now I'm determined to visit him sometime during huckleberry season!

I would suggest you contact some local businesses that have done what you want to do. Off-hand, I can think of a few local products that went from farmers market or small production to larger production/distribution. Clodhoppers is one, and I can't remember the names of the other two, but one is a butterscotch which is sold at places like Cherry Tree Lane (or at least it was) and maybe Scoop 'n Weigh, and the other is dog biscuits (they used to sell at the St. Norbert's Farmers Market, and now they can be found at places like Scoop 'n Weigh on Corydon). You might want to consider bottling it yourself first, and selling it at your own store. Then when it becomes more popular, you can branch out by selling to other local businesses, and so on and so on. Edited to add: I found the dog biscuit company. It's Lucky Dog, and if I remember correctly, it's owned by a young couple. I used to buy their dog biscuits for a friend's dog who loved them. They made a very good product, and I think there was only a year or so between the time they were selling at the farmer's market and when they started selling to retail stores. Their website shows they are now have a nationally distributed product, and I think it has only been about 5 years since I first saw them at the market. Still can't find the butterscotch info. Found it! It's Sweet Truth Candy Company. They make a very good product, by the way.

Strawberries. It remind me an awful lot of ichigo daifuku, so I think strawberries would be great (or biwa and maybe cherries, too).

Change your bread--little buns will, at the very least, appear to dry out less than regular sandwich bread. Other than the suggestions already given, that's probably your best option.

You can find them if you take #29 (Pembina) as well. I can't recall where, but they are in stores in ND/MN. They're just a great "Welcome to the USofA" snack. In the city, I've seen them at Shoppers Drug Mart on Keewatin - but that's a few years ago. I'll check my local SDM next time I'm in. (I love them, but I really try NOT to find them - if you know what I mean.) ← 42 is the Canadian end, 29 is the US end of the same highway. I went to the Canadian website, and Frito-Lay seems to have Munchos in Canada, but it's a minor product, but they suggest emailing to find where in your area your favourite products can be found! To mail or not to mail...

If she's eating with you, make arrangements beforehand with the restaurant. A few years ago I took my mother and aunt to Steirereck in Vienna, and I mentioned when I made the reservation that it was a special occasion. I was taking care of the check, and I would appreciate it if they could find a way to keep the total from the rest of my party. They kindly provided us with menus that had the prices removed, and I took care of the payment away from table.

It would also be helpful if you mentioned whether you speak Japanese or not.

You might be my doppelganger! I hate the yolk, but don't mind the white so much. I do like mayonnaise, though.

I wonder if I'm one of the few people in the world who hates egg salad. I think it's because I hate hard-boiled eggs (bad childhood memories about those things). That being said, if you make egg salad with miracle whip, I'll eat it. it's the only thing in the world that miracle whip is actually good for. (and deviled eggs, which are just a sort of deconstructed egg salad). Needs celery and shallots, too, because all that mushiness of egg salad just isn't good!

I'm a cyclical rut eater. When I get cravings for certain foods, I eat them for lunch and sometimes dinner, too, several days in a row. After my craving has been sated, I won't eat those foods again for a while--how long depends on what it is. I was on a hamburger kick a little while ago, and that lasted a week or so. I haven't had a hamburger (or even ground beef) since. Then I was on a salmon kick for a week, and now I don't even want to think about eating it (though I have some salmon in my fridge right now). But I'll go back to eating all those foods eventually. I'm just a creature of habit!

Darn! I never go down 59. When I go to the States, I always take 42. Pehaps the little gas station just south of the border on 42 has some, too!

That's what maids are for! My mother just returned to Canada, and she already misses them. It was good, but I ate it when it was still hot so I didn't get the full flavours. I just ate another quarter, and I'm glad the rest are already gone! If I had known just how good they were, I wouldn't have brought them to work! It's all about portion control! I have to admit, if it had been a bag of chips, I wouldn't have been able to eat just 1/4 bag! I wish! I'd love to get rid of some of the dead weight around here! The cupcakes were a huge hit at work. I got rid of the remaining 11 cupcakes. They're not too sweet (which I found surprising, since when I licked the bowls I thought it was very sweet!), so they suited Japanese tastes very well.

Last week I had to attend a speech contest. One of the speeches was titled "A Gift from Our Past" or something like that, and it was about bento!!! The girl wrote a little about the history of bento (books have been written about bento since the Edo Period, she said), etc. It was kind of interesting...

That's when counselling comes in handy... I think most people who struggle with weight and weight loss should start with counselling before even attempting any kind of change in diet. It's difficult to change yourself if you don't really understand why you are the way you are, and most people just don't have the self-insight required to figure that out on their own.