Thank you Heather and Evan!

Our daughter and her husband sent us a big box of Japanese goodies for Christmas. There were so many unusual and tasty treats! I’ll get to those in a minute but first …
A bento box and furoshiki! How awesome! :) Bento is a boxed lunch that is a work of art in addition to being delicious. A furoshiki is a cloth to secure around the bento box. Check out Bento Bloggers and Friends for bento inspiration. The artistry with food is amazing! Seriously, you have to check Little Miss Bento, and Just Bento. Or do an image search for bento. wow. I plan on getting a book about bento and making some tasty and beautiful lunches. A furoshiki is a piece of cloth used to wrap and carry things. It’s especially useful for tying around a lunchbox. Check out Pinterest for more ideas.

So I figured out how to wrap my bento box. What a sweet way to carry a lunch.

The furoshiki becomes a small table cloth for the bento box when it is unwrapped.

And now for the treats!
First up… Gummies.
Wow, Japanese flavors are really delicious. The strawberry tasted just like strawberry jam, and the peach was deliciously tart peach. I didn’t taste the cola but the boys said it tasted exactly like cola.

We really liked all of them.
Next was the strangest treat. We probably would have liked these better if we could get past our fears. Quail Eggs in a foil pouch. Really, these were real eggs, at room temperature, in a foil pouch that wasn’t vaccuum sealed. Oh my! No one got sick but we had to be really brave to try them.

These were delicious little snacks – mushroom-shaped cookies with caps dipped in chocolate.

The hard candies were delicious too. We’re not sure what the ones in the pink wrappers are but they tasted fruity and minty. They were quite a taste treat because the flavor changed as you sucked on them. The outside was minty and fruity, a little tart and then they were really sweet. But then the center was soft and …. salty! What a surprise. It was actually very very good. They were probably my favorite.

The Molasses Brown Sugar candies were sweet and yummy too. They were super hard and I made the mistake of trying to bite one and broke off a piece of a crown on one molar. Oops. I completely forgot I had that crown and shouldn’t bite down on hard candies. Oh dear. The candies certainly were good though.

The Pretz Sticks were just like Pocky only savory. They sure didn’t last long.

The crispy shrimp sticks were really good too. The texture was light and airy and crispy and the flavor was very subtle. The bag didn’t even smell fishy when we opened it. The illustration on the back of the bag was so cute and we wished we could read Japanese.

The last treat took courage to try too – squid jerky. It was shredded squid meat, dried and chewy like beef jerky.

The texture was exactly what it looks like, stringy and chewy, and the taste was surprisingly good, not fishy at all.

In fact, after eating some, I decided that I liked this better than beef jerky. Eating beef jerky is like chewing salty cardboard to me, it becomes an inedible fibrous lump. I still enjoy Slim Jims but this dried squid takes its place as my favorite salty chew.

After opening all the treats, I decided to display some bento-style in the new box.

I don’t have a photo of the chestnut package or crispy nori-wrapped treats. The nori-wrapped treats were so good! They came with peanuts and were delicious eaten together.

Last are some sweets.
The Mango Twix were super good. Yum! I’d like more of those.

It was so fun tasting all these treats. I’m hoping to take a trip to Japan later this year and look forward to more tasting adventures.

Thank you again, Heather!