Snow Peas, Snow Pea Crisps

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It takes some effort to make a good stir-fry. The vegetables should be cooked just until they’re crisp, and the meat or seafood should be tender. And if you want to make it an interesting stir-fry, the ingredients should be of varying colors and textures.

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It’s for those reasons that snow peas are one of my least favorite stir-fry ingredients. I usually have them in stir-fries at restaurants and I’ll eat them if they’re in the dish, but I’ve always found snow peas limp and boring.

So would I like their taste any better if they came in a chip-like form?

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Tamarind Candy, Sweet & Sour Tamarind

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I’m going to assume that some, maybe a lot of you, are unfamilar with the taste of tamarind. The tamarind pods of a large, tropical tree are used as a flavoring in such things as drinks, soups, and candy, lending them a sweet/sour/tart taste.

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Fresh Lychees, Lychee in Syrup

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One of the best things I like about summer, besides the long days of sunshine, is the seasonal fruits like lychees.

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These fresh ones have a unique flavor, sort of like grapes but not really, although their fleshy textures are pretty similar.

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You can eat fresh lychees the same way as fresh longans, by peeling the skin and chewing around the seed. Although lychees are usually less expensive than longans, I prefer them because I think they’re juicier and have a better level of sweetness. (You may be wondering why I don’t have photos of peeled lychees. Well, the ones I took made the lychees—flesh and seeds—look gross and other sorts of wrong; I blame my developing photography skills. The lychee isn’t a gross fruit, and I didn’t want to convey that it is.)

Anyway, like longans, lychees also come in canned versions.

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Bin-Bin Rice Cracker

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Having this Web site has reacquainted me with many childhood favorites, like this Bin-Bin Rice Cracker. I remember that it used to cost 69 cents then, and now it’s 89 cents. I won’t Go There by telling you how many years ago that was; I’ve got to keep some things to myself.

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Preserved Sweet & Sour Mango With Chilli

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I’ve had a Ziploc bag of this Preserved Sweet & Sour Mango With Chilli—minus two pieces—in my refrigerator for a week now. And you know what that means. I didn’t like this snack. I found its taste too briny, so much so that I couldn’t concentrate on any other existing flavors like the sweet and sour. I think this is one of those items that’s better in theory than execution. One good thing I have to say about it, though, is that it’s crunchy like a pickle. The end.