Photos by Eric Barton

Leave it to your boss to inadvertently ruin your good mood. After last week's grass jelly debacle, I decided to take fate back into my own hands and hand-select the food I'd be eating for this week's post. At my last trip to Publix, I was waiting in the checkout line, just behind someone writing a check for three bucks of groceries, when a bright-yellow package caught my eye.

It read Ocho Rios Tamarind Ball Candy and had a comical picture of the world's happiest bee. It also boasted a couple of "Guaranteed A-1 quality" and "100% Natural" stamps on it. I quickly grabbed the package, paid for it, and put my mind at ease knowing this week, my taste buds wouldn't risk permanent damage.

I walked into the office, smiling and proclaiming I'd found my food item for the week: what looks to be delicious sugar-coated candy. The boss tells me he's had it before, and it's an ingredient in a sauce that I'd never be able to guess. Rather than ruin it, I asked him to keep it a secret so I can taste the Tamarind Ball Candy unadulterated. About an hour later, he confesses he can't keep a secret and blurts out "Worcestershire sauce" before walking back to his office. Good mood: gone. How does one make a candy from a major ingredient in a meat marinade? I sulk around the office for a while before deciding to go ahead and take my medicine.

There's no sugar-coating this one. I knew from the moment I saw it on my desk it was going to be bad. I feared eating this so much, in fact, that I "accidentally" forgot to bring a can opener into the office for three straight weeks. The boss stopped putting new items on my desk last week, leaving me no choice but to pry open the can and get it over with.

The can reads "Grass Jelly," and it has only three ingredients: Grass Jelly, Corn Starch, and water. How the name of the food -- and not grass -- is the primary ingredient in Grass Jelly is perplexing. There also seems to be almost no nutritional value at all, only 100 calories in the whole can, no sodium, fat, sugar (surprise, surprise), or carbs and only a minuscule amount of vitamins A and C with a hefty dose of iron.

Finally, I can avoid it no longer. I place the can opener on the lid and begin sawing away. As soon as the lid on the can pops off, the small crowd gathered around the desk lets out a groan like we've just seen a fatal car crash. The grass jelly is as black as midnight, like staring into the abyss conveniently packaged in a can. I take an apprehensive sniff toward the open container, and my nose is greeted with just a hint of black liquorish, another food that turns my stomach. Before we dig in, we decide to see what it looks like out of the can.

When I was a kid, I remember my mother packing lunches in a brown paper bag and throwing in a little note on my napkin throughout grade school. As I complained of embarrassment, the notes disappeared, as did the carefully prepared cream cheese and sliced green olive sandwiches. They were replaced by Lunchables, prepackaged slices of cheese, meat, and crackers that were as easy to pack in my backpack as they were to open and devour. After middle school, though, I pretty much made it a point to avoid prepackaged meals for lunch, but I always get a bit nostalgic when I see them on the grocery shelves. Not nostalgic enough to submit my intestines to what's behind the cute and convenient packaging, mind you, but nostalgic nonetheless. When I saw the Sera branded Stuffed Cabbage Leaves sitting on my desk, it really took me back.



The packaging on the cabbage leaves is bright, colorful, and inviting. Four translucent white leaves sit in a row with lemon slices between them and a mint leaf in the foreground. Just above this picture is a scene of a babbling brook running through a little valley village. I'm not sure what this has to do with cabbage, but it plays right to that whole nostalgia factor, as if by opening this can, you'll be transported to a simpler time. Or perhaps it's an omen of what my intestines will experience a few hours after consuming the can's contents.

I'm hoping that whole "you can't judge a book by the cover" thing pans out in this situation, because if it doesn't, I'll certainly be sick. As I type, there is a bright-orange package sitting on my desk with a clear window running down the middle. The package has been vacuum sealed and weighs about a pound.

The most concerning thing isn't the large reddish-brown stain on the back of the package, which is either blood, motor oil, or something from the inside of this package seeping out. No, the things that make me want to stop writing this blog post altogether are the sickly brownish squiggles peeking out from the clear plastic. They honestly look like tapeworms, freeze-dried liver, or some sort of woodland creature's candied intestines. The only English on the package states "Chili Radish," so I'll assume these are radishes and hope that isn't some kind of sadistic typo.

I grab a nearby pair of scissors after snapping a few pictures of the packaging and slice it open. I bring the opened bag to my face and make the mistake of inhaling deeply.

"It might have some kind of fish in it, but I'm not sure." Those were the first words out of the boss' grinning mouth as he handed me a shrink-wrapped styrofoam plate. I'm not exactly an adventurous eater. For instance, I don't eat things that swim. I've always said when I see a cow swimming, I'll swear off hamburgers for life. Just the thought of eating something with fish in it makes my stomach turn just a bit.

Upon further questioning, I found out that it's probably not in any way composed of fish. Instead the grocer was struggling with the proper English word to describe the ingredients. That's not surprising at all once you get a good look at this "food." Small squares with centimeter-thick layers of goo in various shades of green. One layer has the same slimy shine as lime-flavored Jello, and the next one looks more like pistachio ice cream that's been freeze-dried for astronauts.

I peel  back the plastic wrap and inhale deeply, but there's nothing there. It smells like a combination of plastic and styrofoam with only a slightly sweet undertone. I'm relieved that I don't smell salmon. I gently press my finger into one of the green squares, noticing that my fingerprint sticks around long after I've lifted it from the hardened goo. It's got the consistency of a hunk of pre-chewed bubble gum.

The plastic fork cuts through the square like it's hardened gelatin. The lighter layers of green move and jiggle, while the pistachio layers stand solid. It feels like a flattened gummy worm on my tongue, one that has been run over by a bicycle. It tastes exactly like it smells, like nothing. It's more texture than anything else, and the texture is even boring, somewhere between Jell-o and a gummy bear, and it only has a faintly sweet taste. We decide this might be meant to cleanse your palate, but more likely it's been fiendishly designed to bore your palate to death.

It's been nearly a week since I put that bitter melon in my mouth, and I swear I can still taste the damn thing once in a while. Either that or my taste buds are still having nightmares from which I fear they'll never awake. Seeing that today I have another mysterious package on my desk from the same grocer which spawned that green cylinder or bitterness, I think about drinking boiling water first, if only to dull my taste buds.

The pale yellow block sitting on the desk looks more like a candle than food. Holes the size of dimes litter the outer layer surrounded by what looks like bread mold. The block is much heavier than it looks, weighting at least two pounds. A small label inside the plastic wrap reads Indian Kolhapuri Jaggery, and the nutrition facts only tell me that a 15 gram serving size yields 56 calories, 14 grams of carbs and 12 grams of sugar. At least it will be sweet.

As soon I open the wrapper, I get a strong scent of honey and sugar. The plastic knifes we're forced to use at the office do very little to cut into the rock hard exterior, but after a bit of sawing and hacking, a slice about the size of a pea falls off and reveals a soft, gummy interior.

As soon as I taste the Kolhapuri Jaggery, I know it's some kind of sugar cane. It melts upon contact with my tongue, sending waves of pre-diabetic shock throughout my jaw. There's a slight aftertaste which reminds me of a candy I used to eat as a child, but I can't put my finger on which one. Some people around the office suggest it's like Bit of Honey or Marzipan, which are both close, but not quite there. Either way, Kolhapuri Jaggery is immensely sweet, and probably not meant to be consumed all by itself, but rather as an ingredient to sweeten just about anything. I wonder what would happen if I spread it over that bitter melon? This Jaggery was purchased at Indian Grocery and Spices, 3062 N Andrews Ave., 954-561-8606 for about $3.50.

If looks could kill, you'd call this thing the plague. It's roughly the size of a cucumber, and covered with green bumps that make it look like the bastard child of a cucumber and a head of broccoli. My trembling hands pick it up and the cold outer layer feels like Astroturf. I was assured that this was indeed edible.

The New Times office wisely doesn't contain knives of any kind, save the disposable kind that come with delivery food. The plastic knife cut easily through the strange green cylinder. I hold a fresh slice of up to my nose and notice it smells exactly like a freshly cut lawn and looks like a banana covered in moss. The yellow fleshy inside contains a few small white seeds, which we assume are edible. I silently say my prayers and bite the piece in half.

This is easily the bitterest thing I've ever had in my mouth. There seems to be almost no taste, except a faint "green" taste, like raw broccoli. It's the bitterness that really is what this fruit is all about. I decide to take a bite of just the yellowish flesh on the inside, and the pulp alone has a slightly faintly sweet flavor and the consistency of an overcooked water chestnut. Cringing, I take a bite of the outer green layer alone, and realize that's where the bitter lives.

Once my taste buds stopped screaming, I was informed that this fruit was ingeniously named Bitter Melon. There's no false advertising here. This particular Bitter Melon was purchased at Indian Grocery and Spices, 3062 N Andrews Ave., 954-561-8606 for under a dollar.

The whole crew is standing by

Next Friday we launch our weekly Friday Feature, "Ask The Critic," invented for the sole purpose of allowing us to show off.

Readers: Send us your easy questions, send us your torturous riddles. "Where can I find beignet in Lauderhill?"; "Who makes the tastiest shark n bake?"; "How many calories are in the Kitchen Sink Sundae at Jackson's Ice Cream Parlor?", "What does balut taste like?"; "Is it true that Chef X is shagging his prep cook?"; "Do these pants make me look fat?"

We'll endeavor to find out. Pose your questions to the group or tag one of us in particular.

Our areas of expertise are multitudinous and overlapping, but we've worked out a rough division of labor that seems to have broken down along these lines:

Bill Citara: Wine Snob
John Linn: Pit man. Barbecue, Japanese, Mexican, or anything that narrows the arterial walls.
Brett Gillin: Intrepid & Parsimonious  (he'll eat anything, particularly if it's cheap)
Gail Shepherd: Inveterate lush. Social climber. Chocolate. Oh hell, just ask me anything.
Eric Barton: Once his wife knew somebody who knew somebody who got them a table at the French Laundry. Maybe she can get you one too.
Vicki: Licorice whip tester and Jawbreakers aficionado.

Send us your questions NOW and we'll answer them NEXT FRIDAY!

An innocuous looking chocolate bar wrapped in silver foil and a paper Whole Foods bag sat on the table in front of me with a note reading "Try this for the food blog and don't open the bag until you've tasted the chocolate." I was confused as to how this would qualify for this blog, but it's hard to complain about eating chocolate for a living.

I unwrapped the foil to reveal a large milk chocolate bar with "Vosges" printed on each square. Breaking off a square, I lifted it to my nose and inhaled deeply. It certainly smelled like chocolate, but there's a hint of something else... something salty. Upon further inspection of the broken edge of the square, I noticed several small pink and red flakes sticking out. Before I thought myself out of eating it, I tossed about half of the square into my mouth.

The chocolate tasted sweeter than I'd anticipated, but before I could truly react to that another taste flooded my taste buds. Salty. Fatty. Bacon. As the chocolate melted, the mixture of the sweet milk chocolate and the smoked bacon danced back and forth, fighting for space on my palate, and it became abundantly clear that this was not bacon flavored chocolate, but chocolate with bits and flakes of bacon mixed in.

Once the chocolate completely dissolved, I was left with a gritty feeling in my mouth and pieces of bacon, most are smaller than what you'd put on a salad, resting on my tongue. The smoky, salty flavor of the bacon lingers much longer than the chocolate, and it's easy to fall into a vicious cycle of breaking off another small square to get that original flavor back.

Mo's Bacon Bar, made by Vosges Haut Chocolat can be found at most Whole Foods Stores for about $7.

I arrived at work and found a pea-green bag on my desk with a note saying "I have no idea what this is." Printed across the top of the bag is "Vishwas," and "Roasted Chivda" along the bottom. In the spirit of this blog, I know I'm not allowed to hop online and find out exactly what this is, but I'm a bit scared.

The plastic bag is about the size of a bag of Doritos and is literally bulging with air. It reminds me of those generic bags of cereal at the grocery store, with clever names like Oat Rings and Chocolate Puffs. Through the small clear window at the bottom of the bag, I see pale yellow flakes that seem destined to float atop a five-gallon aquarium. Shaking the bag around reveals what looks like dried corn, some whole curry leaves, and a peanut or two. This is either meant to be eaten as a kind of bar food or to sustain five-cent goldfish.

I carefully open the bag and pour a handful of chivda into my hand. It feels gritty, earthy, and again reminds me of the dry texture of fish food. But it smells like a cardboard box coated with curry and coconut. I raise my now-shaking hand to my mouth and pour the mixture into my mouth. Dry, grainy flakes coat my tongue. A taste of coconut, cumin, and mustard washes down my throat.

The flakes have a more complex taste than I was expecting. The sweet  coconut mixing with salty peanuts, mustard seeds, and curry provides everything a stoner could want in a snack. Add to that the strange texture and it's a wonder this stuff isn't more popular with the Phish set. As I pour out my second handful, I read the ingredients on the back of the package: "rice flakes, peanuts, roasted split gram, palm oil, mustard seeds, green chilly (sp), turmeric, curry leaves, dry coconut, cumin, poppy seeds, and salt." The 'chilly', curry, and coconut are the most prevalent flavors, but after reading the rest of the ingredients, the other tastes fell into place on my pallet.

Roasted Chivda should be available at your local Indian market for under $2. This bag was purchased at Indian Grocery and Spices, 3062 N Andrews Ave., 954-561-8606