Green Gelatinous Snack with Meat

Apparently this snack is for Tomb Sweeping Day, which was at the beginning of April. The best way to understand this is with an unveiling of the snack in photos:

Here is the snack, in a cute and unassuming little box, no more than a couple of inches across. Looks pretty harmless.

Inside we find a green globule.

Unwrap and...who's in here? It's meat floss (dried shredded meat).

The meat floss begins to emerge.

I had to play with it awhile before I ate it. Maybe it's because it was actually just like that green slime we used to play with as kids, only slightly firmer. But the texture was identical.

Taste: Sweet, sticky and soft outside, and meaty, salty and fuzzy inside. I don't think those adjectives should go together. Ever.

Cici Aloe Drink (?)

Well, after the last entry, I thought I needed more of a challenge, and I found it in an aloe flavored snack-in-a-pouch. It winningly has Jay Chou on the package, who my girls assure me is the current heart-throb in China and beyond. I asked Allyne what it tasted like, and then stopped listening as I put the straw in my mouth. I took a long sip and..Whoa! Those were chunks! My eyes got big and Allyne laughed at me, "Mom, I just told you it had jelly chunks." Turns out it isn't even actually green, but it's from a green plant, in a green package, and I think I kind of turned green trying it. That qualifies it as a green snack right there.

Kiwi and Aloe Yogurt

I've always shunned green colored foods, unless they look like they just grew out of the ground. I remember as a kid being sorely disappointed in mint-chip ice cream (I think I cried) and avoiding green KoolAid at birthday parties. Green candy and Jello were other's I've stayed away from, as I've found the "apple" and "lime" flavors to be inedible. Fortunately, artificial green foods were few and far between, so it wasn't hard to avoid them.

Well, no more. After my last post, I realized how many green snacks there are here in China. I could avoid them as I always have, there are so many others to try, but I think it is time I face my fear of "green" and review some of the several green-colored snacks I've noticed on the shelves here. So next, I've tried a green yogurt, kiwi and aloe flavored (it was even in English so no guessing this time).

Normally, aloe is associated with medicinal or cosmetic purposes, so I was wary of this one. What does aloe even smell like? It just doesn't seem like a food. I'm kind of neutral on kiwis, and combined with what seems like a non-food flavor, I really didn't expect much from this one. But, to be honest, it wasn't that bad. It had a good amount of kiwi chunks, not too big, in it, and I really couldn't detect what was supposed to taste like aloe, reinforcing my colorless and flavorless opinion of it. I probably just liked it because I love the not-too-sweet, full-fat Chinese yogurt, and pretty much any flavor I've tried so far I've liked okay. So maybe this one was too easy. We'll see about the others...

Caplico Ice Cream Cone Cookies

I had to buy these, since they look just like little ice cream cones. The vanilla one tasted exactly like cream-filled wafer cookies. The green one I assume was supposed to be mint, but it really didn't taste like it. Actually, it tasted a bit like fish. Ew.