snacks & goodies

Ugh, the weather has been so hot the past couple of days. The temperature was about 35C (95F), stepping out of the house smelled like a sweaty locker room and felt like when you open the oven door....blah!

But enough about that...the nice thing about having family come to visit you, is not only being able to spend time with them, they also bring you nice goodies.

Like this trek mix from Trader Joe's. I really like Trader Joe's and wish there was one in Hawaii. But, it also keeps the excitement alive for going to one in the continental U.S. I brought most of this on our climb.

A huge bag of Hershey's Extra Dark miniatures. I've posted about the chocolate bars previously,(here).

A bag of dark chocolate dipped mac nut shortbread cookies from Big Island Candies.

A bottle of mom's bread and butter pickles. These are great on tuna sandwiches! If I ever venture to try making these, I will definitely share the recipe!

A bottle of mom's strawberry guava jelly. Strawberry guava is a type of guava in Hawaii, there is no actual strawberry in the jelly.

And a box of cookies from the Honolulu Cookie Company.

I also wanted to share some of the food finds from our recent journey.

A shiomame daifuku (salted bean rice cake stuffed with salted beans and sweet bean paste) found in a little shop called Kikyouya in front of the Ootsuki station. Sorry, I didn't get a picture of the inside, but it was really soft and delicious!

Kikyouya
1-2-1 Ootsuki, Yamanashi
Phone: 0554-23-2011
http://www.kikyouya.co.jp/

A cocoa daifuku (rice cake stuffed with cream and chocolate bean paste). This was found at a little shop called Miyazakiya near the Gotemba station. They also have a cafe daifuku which has coffee flavored bean paste, but we didn't try it. My mom didn't care for this one, but my dad and I enjoyed it!

Miyazakiya
1991-2 Shinbashi, Gotemba
Shizuoka
Phone: 0550-82-1629

The hotel we stayed at in Hakone served us a juice made from Wasei mikan. Mikan is a type of mandarin orange. It was very light and refreshing.

Hope you are enjoying the weekend--we have a three-day weekend here!