Category Archives: Travel

Forget Chocolate Milk – Banana Milk Is Where It’s At

I don’t remember the last time I had chocolate milk.  It’s too sweet, tastes more like powder mix than any good chocolate I’ve ever had, and drinking it out of  paper milk cartons ruins the entire experience. It used to taste good when I was 12, but it’s not suited for adult tastes.

Don’t even get me started on strawberry milk, that’s gross.

Just when I was about to turn my back on flavored milk altogether, I discovered something delicious on a recent trip to Korea… sweet banana flavored milk!

Why hasn’t anyone in the United States thought of this?

Click here to read more about Banana flavored milk!

On the Texas BBQ Trail – Lockhart, Texas BBQ Tour Comparison. Who’s BBQ is Best?

With the title of the “BBQ Capital of Texas”, you know that Lockhart, Texas’s brisket, sausage, and ribs are going to be special. But with 4 famous BBQ restaurants within a mile of each other, which one should you go to?

For us, the answer was all of them! This weekend, myself and 8 friends spent the greater part of a day discovering not only which Lockhart Bar-B-Que restaurant (Kruez Market, Smitty’s Market, Black’s, or Chisholm Trail) has the best grub, we broke the rankings down by meat type in each establishment and have a suggested itinerary for you if you want to make the same meat eating journey.

To Find out which Lockhart BBQ we liked the best, click through to the entire article

What does Kangaroo Taste Like? Eating Kangaroo Meat in Australia

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Australia? Crocs? Shrimps on the barbie? Koalas? Whatever you think of, kangaroos can’t be far down the list.

I recently took a vacation down under and the bizarre food eater in me had a craving for unique food experiences. In Australia, weird food means bush meat like croc and emu, but the most common and widely available game there is kangaroo.

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Hawaii – Eat Like a Local: 6 Great Foods that Won’t Break the Bank

Take from the Hilo Farmer's Market

Hawaii is known for being a tropical paradise with amazing beaches and beautiful natural surroundings. However, a Hawaiian vacation is also known for holding tourists upside down by the ankles and shaking all the money their pockets. The main issue is that stores and restaurants in touristy areas charge sky high prices for necessities such as food – which is a bummer for foodies like us.

Everyone knows that once you leave the touristy areas you can get some reasonably priced grub, but most people don’t know how the locals manage to keep expenses in check. Here are 6 tasty, unique, and inexpensive local options we discovered in Hawaii that will help you have fun and save money at the same time.

Read about good Hawaiian food on a budget after the jump

Discovering Okinawan Sweet Potatoes in Hawaii + 2 Tasty and Easy Recipes

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Here’s a fun and delicious ingredient that you might not have encountered before, Okinawan Sweet Potatoes, AKA Hawaiian purple potatoes, or purple sweet potatoes. They are known for their distinct purple color and unique sweet yet earthy taste, and I think they are way better than a regular sweet potato.

I discovered this culinary delight on my recent trip to Hawaii and have been hooked ever since. Because it was so delicious in all of the forms I tried, I had to experiment with this ingredient once I got home and I decided to make something from it for Thanksgiving.

Click here to read more about Okinawan Sweet Potatoes

Mantis Prawn – You Ate What? / Overseas Bizarre Fooding

Mantis Shrimp on my Dinner Plate

Today’s “You Ate What” adventure takes place on a boat cruise through beautiful Halong Bay, Vietnam. On this amazing trip, we visited a floating live fish market literally built into the middle of the bay, where I ate some of the freshest and tastiest food I’ve ever had in my life.

The market vendors sold all sorts of fish, clams, crabs, and fruit, but the absolute best thing I had there was the delicious and somewhat unusual mantis prawn.

read more about the tasty Mantis Prawn…

Shrimp and Grits (Prawns and Hominy) – Great Meals

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If you are a regular to the blog you might know that I went to South Carolina a few weeks ago to photograph a wedding in Charleston and get my Southern Cooking fix. I’ve already written about my fast food experiences on this trip (see my post on Bojangles’ fried chicken), but I did get to sample some highbrow South Carolina cooking during the wedding as well at the restaurant Tristan at the French Quarter Inn.

The bride and groom really love food, and their reception seriously had some of the best wedding food I have ever eaten. The highlight of the meal was definitely the Shrimp and Grits, or ‘Prawns and Hominy’ as the restaurant Tristan likes to call it. While those who have never had this dish might think that the combination of shrimp and grits together (pictured above on the right) is weird , trust me on this one – get over it, eat it, it’s delicious and you won’t regret it.

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Fooding Overseas – Taiwan Live Fish Restaurant

Shiyuan Taiwanese Live Fish Restaurant

“Waste not, want not” the old saying goes – and the next Fooding adventure definitely does just that.

As you probably know, most people outside of America are not squeamish about the fact that meat was once a live animal. In Asia, they take it to the extreme. There, the ultimate sign of seafood freshness is being able to go to a restaurant and point at living meat (future meal) swimming around in a tank and then 10 minutes later, have that formerly living meat show up at your table cooked in 5 delicious ways, head, skin, and bones still attached – almost every part of the fish utilized in some way. This is the story of my Taiwan Live Fish Fooding adventure.

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Din Tai Fung Dumpling House

If you ever find yourself in Taipei, wondering to yourself… “What should I do for dinner tonight?”, well I have the answer for you. Din Tai Fung. Din Tai Fung is a first and foremost a dumpling house, but these are not your typical Sunday morning Chinatown Dim Sum type of dumpling, these are pure ecstasy for the taste buds.

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Their signature dish is the pork dumpling with soup. I’m certain there is a more elegant name for them, but that was the translation the group of friends that I was with gave to me. These dumplings were exactly as described, a dumpling filled with tasty ground pork and soup. So naturally my first question was, how do they get the soup in there? After some speculation about needles and secret magic, no one knew the answer. Thus, I made my way down to the kitchen area to watch the 20 or so employees frantically making the dumplings(this is a very popular place). I watched them closely as they assembled the dumpling first the wrapper, add a bit of meat, then a glob of something that resembled jelly, only it was brown. Then it hit me, they were using congealed broth! Brilliant. They would place a small amount of the congealed broth, then seal the wrapper. During the steaming process, the broth would melt and become tongue searing hot soup.

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No Durians

Can durian fruit really be so bad, that they are banned from the Singapore Metro?

There isn’t even a fine associated with it.

nodurian

Update: Turns out durian does not smell all that great.

Update 2: Cracking one open in your house isn’t such a great idea.

Update 3: I don’t care for durian.

Update 4: Neither of my dogs care for durian.

Update 5: My wife has forever banned durian from the house.

-Jon