got_quiet

I picked up these two CDs at the CD exchange a while back (when I got that Dream Theater album) but now I'm gonna review them. Tl;dr my music sniffing nose did it's job this time. I've picked up a few duds by just buying used CDs completely blind but I guess judging music by it's cover works well enough.

First CD is Prorok Ilja by Patriarch. It turns out this is kind of a group I have already heard. Many years ago for a fandom gift box someone recommended to me the band Batushka, which I enjoyed a lot, and this group is some sort of splinter group that happened after a rights fight. The tone is the same. Orthodox church vibes slathered in black metal and noise. This has been my play on repeat car CD since I got it.

The other CD I got I lost, and I don't remember the name of the band, so I guess I'll have to come back to that when it surfaces.

I've been reading a lot of Arcane fic, though the frantic pace at which I'm doing this has started to slow down a little, so I'm working on something of a "rec" list. It's more of a review list because some of the fic I've enjoyed I've enjoyed despite some rather significant issues, sometimes even with basic SPAG, but imo while it's certainly rude to give an unsolicited critique to an author, the personal journal is fair game.

And I have picked up another batch of snacks from the Eastern European shop. And, good news, the wall of snacks actually has a back side, so there are double the snacks that I originally thought! The bad news is I forgot entirely which ones I had gotten, or which ones I liked or didn't like. I stuck to the newly discovered back wall to prevent dupes.

Today I tried Gulliver from AVK. I didn't notice when I grabbed it, but it's a vegan chocolate bar, which on AVK's website says was developed well before veganism was popular. So it's a hipster vegan bar. It was also twice as big as all the other snacks, and is part of the "wafer covered in chocolate" family. Inside the wafer there is more chocolate, like a mouse, so this was a very rich candy and the 6" bar was more than enough for me. To likely no one's surprise, the quality of the chocolate is significantly better than our counter options here in the US.

I also tried a chocolate flavor frozen cheese curd snack. I think I liked it more than the orange even though the orange was good. It was chocolatey but not too rich or sweet. I'm becoming a real convert to these things, but I don't think they're easy to find without a specialty grocery like this nearby.

I went back to the Eastern European grocery store last week and picked up more candy! This time the theme was fruit instead of wafers. I'm also too lazy to provide the Cyrillic this time, because I'm currently overwhelmed with unfun work already. But in exchange I'm adding links to pictures.

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Svitlogor'ye cheese curd snacks. In the shop they were called "cheese cakes" because I guess "curd snack" is not something an American would jump up for. And the one I tried was more sour than I expected a cheese cake to be, but it was still delicious and I can see why they're so popular. I got an orange flavor one and it was very orangy and zesty. They are also kept cold and are kind of fill an ice cream niche. Would buy again. I'm also unduly proud of myself for being able to read the wrapper, because the company title is written in italics which are hard as fuck for a noob to recognize. According to Wikipedia they are extremely popular in Eastern Europe.

Pekarro Orange. Continuing the orange theme. This is an oreo shaped snack. The cookies are vanilla and the creme is orange flavored. It tastes exactly how the description suggests imo and since I like orange flavor I was pleased with this.

Prihot'. This seems to mean whim or fad which both made the candy hard to find and is suitable for a little bite sized treat I guess. It's back to the staples of wafers and chocolate, with a sort of chocolate sauce filling. Nothing special, but also I could eat five million of them without realizing it probably.

Krasniy Mak. I did not manage to read the italics on this wrapper T_T so I had to do a little poking around. Luckily the company that made it was printed in standard script. Roshen is a Ukranian company that specializes in chocolate and this was just a chocolate inside a chocolate. That is too much chocolate for me, but it was still definitely better than a Hersheys.

Sufle by Pokrovsk. I guess it literally means Souffle? It's a combo of a marshmallow type layer, and a jam (this one was strawberry) encased in chocolate. A little overly sweet for me and the Jam part was kind of wetter than I would like.

Macul Rosu - According to the description I found, this is "chocolate coated sweets made of grinded cocoa mass, cocoa butter, peanuts, wafer crumbs, coconut oil and crystals of caramel mass." The texture reminds me a lot of Halva, which I don't like, so this goes to the bottom of the list for me. This candy comes from Moldova though which is pretty cool! I don't think I've had a natively Moldovan candy before.

Chuvs - The wafers have returned! This one is a big square chunk of strawberry jelly wrapped in wafer and chocolate. There is supposed to be peanuts in there too though they're minimal. I liked this one a lot because it had a firmer chewy texture, though after going through this batch I'm thinking the fruit based candies are a little too sweet for me.

Konti Stefaniya - A cherry in chocolate type candy but there is no cherry, only cherry flavored goo, and the chocolate is thick and as a bit of a grainier texture inside. It wasn't as intense as the liqueur cherry candy I got last time so I liked it more.

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I think I have one more round before I've pretty much exhausted the candy options on the candy wall.

There's an Eastern Europe grocery right next to a place where I have started to go for an errand. Every time I pass it I think to myself, I should check it out, but I am usually in a rush. This weekend I had some time and the curiosity had finally gotten the better of me, so I decided to poke my head in. Going in I'm instantly reminded of the tiny little Chinese groceries we used to go to growing up, where absolutely everything was an import, there wasn't a word of English anywhere, and the guy behind the counter didn't say a word of English too. Except in this case 99% of everything was in Cyrillic. The lady behind the counter kept saying things to me in Russian (maybe Ukrainian, I can't make the distinction =x) and then swapped to English when my answer was not satisfying. She did not smile a single time. I enjoyed the whole encounter.

There was an entire shelf for pickled mushrooms. There were like 10 different types of sour creams. I got two so I could compare the styles. There were snacks and a lot of preserved fish, and Kyiv style cured meats. I don't know what makes them Kyiv style, but I do know they were like half the price of the soppressata at the Italian grocers so I had to give it a shot and it was tasty! There was also a big wall of individual tiny candies. They weren't exactly cheap at $8 a pound, but I figured I might as well go a head and try them out.

I wrote up a little review of each of them, and used that as an excuse to practice My Cyrillic typing skills... but I don't think I'll every get used to the Cyrillic layout. I can't turn an f into an a or a o into a j in my mind easily. So if I ever get to the point where I am writing in Russian beyond the bare elementary level I will probably have to stick to the less efficient but less brain busting QWERTY with modifications. Also please forgive incorrect transliteration, I really am a Cyrillic noob.

Anyway here's some random Eastern European candy reviews.

( Read more... )

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