Butter. Cookies. Butter cookies. Need I say more? Maybe a little more.

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Bitter melon:

• It leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.
• Its name says it all.
• It’s an acquired taste…that I haven’t acquired.

True clichés aside, I’m undecided about bitter melon. I think I don’t like it because it’s too bitter-tasting for me. The first time I tried it was when a relative cooked it. I took a bite out of the piece of bitter melon covered in black bean sauce and almost spit it out because it was so bitter. But I took another bite, thinking it couldn’t have been that bitter. It still was. Yet I took another bite because I’m a glutton for punishment. Then I gave up.

I’m not into bitter-tasting things but I’m willing to give bitter melon another try. I know some people find it delicious (others are constantly reaching for it at the supermarket, at the same time I’m grabbing a vegetable that’s bitter melon’s flavor-opposite—a head of Napa cabbage).

So how the heck do you cook the darn thing?

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Add Botan Rice Candy to the list of fun Japanese candies. They’re sweet and chewy, have an orange-lemon flavor, and are covered in an edible inner rice-paper wrapper that melts in your mouth. The photo above shows the two sides of one box.

But the fun doesn’t end at the melts-in-your-mouth rice-paper wrapper.

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If you’re wondering if these chips taste and smell shrimpy, wonder no more—they do. You get a whiff of shrimp as soon as you open the bag, and I realize that may be enough to turn some people off of trying this snack. But if you soldier on, you’ll find that the baked chips are light, crunchy, and slightly salty, with a mild shrimp flavor. So I guess I’m saying, don’t knock these Shrimp Flavored Chips until you’ve tried them.