Turkish Delights

Well since there aren’t really any new restaurants opening, ethnic or otherwise, I’m still having to have my global flavor fix delivered. I found a very reasonable snack box on Amazon from Turkish Munchies and ordered up their Midi box.

The neat little pamphlet on top was something I appreciated. It has a list of possible snacks you could receive and each one has a thumbnail picture, a bit about the item and a couple of other nice touches. One being a group of icons showing major allergens that might be present as well as beverage pairing icons (non-alcoholic). There are also Stars you can use to rate the snacks and they encourage you to share on social media, because who doesn’t like free advertising. Here is a layout of the contents of my box.

I didn’t take photos of the individual snacks out of the package except the Kagit Helva wafer cookie on the bottom right.

I only did that to show the scale of the thing. Unfortunately that was the only impressive thing about it. It had the taste and texture of one of those cheap ice cream cones you get in the super market, one step above sweetened Styrofoam. There were some really nice ones though. The chocolate cupcake that was supposed to have cherry filling was really tasty. The cherry filling had just been absorbed by the cupcake so it was actually just a moist center but the flavor melded in a lip-smacking way.

The Bidolu wafer cookie’s filling of chocolate with nuts and crisp cookie was a standout along with the herb coated Krispi snack sticks. The banana wafer cookies and the coconut / chocolate ones were both more than acceptable versions of their type. The Cubuk Kraker pretzel sticks were nothing special but they had the advantage of being the most plentiful snack in the box.

I wasn’t in love with the sour bubble gum or what was supposed to be popping candy (there was no popping). The weird strawberry cupcake with sprinkles was in my bottom four as well. It wasn’t so much bad as it just wasn’t my deal.

I would definitely recommend this little slice of Turkish snackdom for the price, quality and taste. They offer other options too but I think for under $15 you can’t beat this for an intro.

Egyptian Yums

Happily the August box from Universal Yums was not a repeat and instead filled with treats from a first time country (to me at least), Egypt.

I thought this box was a notch over average with none of the snacks being rock stars but on the other hand none totally tanked either. My favorite of the Yum turned out to be the least photogenic of the lot.

The Chocolate Wave Hazelnut was one of 3 snacks that had wafer cookies. In this case the chocolate got a little melty and presented a patchy appearance. Fortunately I was grading on taste. The wafers were crispy and the hazelnut filling was appropriately nutty so the end result was a delight. The one I’d say was my number 2 was a savory snack.

I’ll have to admit when I first saw these the apparent lack of salt had me skeptical that this would be good. My bad. Although they weren’t at the salt lick level of a lot of American pretzels they had a very pleasant flavor. These were butter and herb flavor and they lived up to the billing. The butter was evident and the outside had a light dusting of an herbal mixture that went splendidly with the turkey and Swiss cheese sandwich that I paired them with. Solid pretzel.

The most disappointing yum for me was the Cono Puffs Crazy Tomato.

Even one of the Puffs on the package looks less than enthused about the product. On the positive side the puffs were all nicely uniform and pufflike. The ingredient list was short and often that’s a good thing but in this case it seemed like something was missing. The initial flavor was a bit oniony then an acidic tartness that I guess might have represented the tomatoes and finally there was a sweet corn taste that didn’t all meld together. I felt like that pissed puff after a few of them. Cono didn’t totally let me down though.

Now I didn’t find these Mind Blowing as the title suggests but they did have a pizza flavor quite loaded with olives which I love on a pizza. So unlike the grumpy cone on the bag I was sold on crispy corn and pizza flavor of the Bugle like cones. Oh and like I have done every single time I’ve ever had one of these cone shaped chips I had to turn one into an edible talon.

The other snacks included some chili & lemon chips, a Halawa & coffee wafer cookie, a date filled cookie reminiscent of a Fig Newton but with dates, a weird green apple gummy called Spaghetuss Apple that you could tear into, you guessed it, spaghetti like strips. There were a few more as well in the solidly above average box. Next month is going to be from South America but I’m not sure where. Looking forward to it.