Posted on 06/10/2002 12:52:35 PM PDT by PJ-Comix
What is your favorite munchy food? I am always on the lookout for UNUSUAL munchies. You can list potato chips as long as it is an offbeat flavor or type. OK, so here are a few of my favorite munchies:
1. Chicharones---Similar to the fried pork rinds in the bags but much more flavorful. They tend to be long sticks of a softer texture. Very popular with Cubans and other Latins in South Florida.
2. Vegemite---You'll either hate or love this yeasty treat from Australia. Most Americans hate the stuff if they try it spread on crackers but I love it. Australians go absolutely ga-ga over it.
3. Kabanosi---A Russian or Hungarian dried sausage that is very garlicky. Goes great with beer.
4. Buffalo wings---Love the stuff but why are they called "Buffalo" wings?
5. Zweiback toast---A guilty pleasure. It's terrific when dipped in milk.
6. Garlic Rolls---The ones you pick up hot from an Italian Restaurant.
7. Swiss White Chocolate---I picked up some dirt cheap at the flea market. It was IMPORTED from Switzerland and was REAL chocolate, not the chocolate flavored candy so prevelant here.
Then you can wash it all down with some Grass Jelly. Yum!
Truly one great culinary creation -- found only at the finest NY style delis. Yum!!!
Moxie: an old-fashioned soda pop flavored with gentian root extract for a bizarrely metallic bitterness. My brother calls it "the Marmite of soft drinks".
Kim-chee: Korean spiced cabbage. This is nearly the ideal food for me. I love cabbage, I love spicy food. There's an oriental buffet at Penn that stocks it; when I really have the muchies I buy a dollar's worth of kim-chee and wallow in it.
Natto: fermented soybeans eaten in Japan. The spoilage polymerizes the complex sugars of the beans, and they end up covered in an amazingly sticky goo with entertaining physical properties, and an indescribable flavor that is generally masked with copious amounts of wasabi mustard. I lived in Japan for a year and a half and grew fond of it. Invariably, natto would be held up as an example of native Japanese fare disliked by gaijin. When I would profess to like it, the Nihonjin would just as invariably respond, "oh, gross, you really eat that stuff?"
Stonewall Chile Pepper Company Salsa Habanero: I collect hot sauces. My capsaicin tolerance is such that I'm nearly insensitive to Tabasco sauce. And yet, this stuff is almost too hot for me. It's hotter than all but a few hot sauces in my collection, but beyond that, the flavor is outstanding. It is hot enough to induce acute colitis within hours, which none of my sauces can do. Dip a corner of a chip in it, and it's agony. Scoop some, God forbid, and it's a full twenty minutes of unalleviated tears. When I'm in a mood to descend to the ninth level of Habanero Hell, I soak my gills in this stuff, and I stay near a bathroom.
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