Yum…ouch!

One of my favorite things to do while traveling is to experience the weird junk food of the places that I am in. I think this fascination can be traced to my discovery of pickle flavored potato chips on a trip to Canada when I was 15.

How people choose to consume there empty calories interests me. In the US, there are Cheetos, while Serbia has Smoki – also made from puffed grain of some sort, but flavored with peanuts instead of cheese. And the Bulgarian entrant into this weird subcategory of food is butter flavored with an even more Styrofoamy texture. There is totally a dissertation here...

A friend recently went to Israel and brought me back what might be the world’s weirdest junk food, ‘Milk Chocolate with Popping Candy.’ It is the love child of a Milka bar and Pop Rocks. I am a big fan of chocolate and of Pop Rocks. But still, this thing is so so weird. I can’t even figure out how to eat it. If I bite into it, the imbedded pop rocks explode and hurt my gums, but it feels weird to just let the whole thing dissolve in my mouth. It’s a pretty amazing eating experience, but I won’t be rushing out to stock up on more. The whole is definitely less than the sum of its parts.