Day 315

Fresh Flavour Preserved Vegetable: After yesterday's miserable experience with the preserved orange peel, I hoped that today's new food would be a lot better. I'm apparently in a habit of trying preserved foods lately, but the results haven't been so good. I found this little bag of Chinese preserved "vegetable" at the Great Wall Supermarket in Duluth last weekend, and yes, the packaging just says "vegetable." There was no indication of what kind of vegetables were in there, so of course, I had to find out.

I really wasn't in the mood to try anything new today, but as my readers know, skipping a day just isn't an option - especially when there are less than 2 months left in this insane project. Anyway, I cracked these open tonight as a post-dinner snack. In addition to the "vegetable," the ingredients also included salt, vegetable oil, sugar, MSG, and chili powder. Oh, and these mystery vegetables were made by the "Fish Well" company. Hmm.

Once I got them out of the package, I still couldn't tell what they were. Tasting them unfortunately didn't help much, either. Like the other preserved foods I've eaten lately, they were extremely salty, with a somewhat spicy aftertaste supplied by the chili powder. Texture-wise, they reminded me of bamboo shoots...or maybe some kind of onion? I really have no idea. It wasn't too appetizing on its own, and the packaging advised that it "can be eaten directly upon opening or can be eaten with rice, fried dishes or make a soup."

I really hope my next couple days of new foods are better. I think I'm staying away from preserved stuff for awhile.