Apparently, January 29th is National Corn Chip Day in the United States, a day that celebrates the American almost addiction for corn chips. It comes with a challenge to eat corn chips for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

To mark the occasion, Scott Kleinberg of Chicago's free newspaper RedEye went looking for and found 18 of what he calls "Strangest Corn Chips from Around the World." Images of his choices were made into a slide show that is gathering a following on digg.com.

Among his chosen corn chips are 10 varieties of Doritos. 16 are manufactured by FritoLay. Two, from corn chips originator Fritos.

The 15th entry in the slide show is Doritos' Scream Cheese, whose caption reads, "I'm assuming this is spicy cream cheese flavor." It is actually a Canadian one. In fact, its name originated in a user-generated marketing contest to find a marketing "guru."

I came across the unnamed chips one work day during lunch. Curiosity got the better of my palate and I purchased a bag.

Unnamed Flavour of Doritos' Corn Chips

Ingredients

Corn Chips
Ordinarily, I avoid Doritos' corn chips since the flavouring powder contains either an artificial cheese compound or a preservative that makes me cough. Attempting to become Doritos' new marketing guru, I came up with "Fieri Cheese" and based my proposed marketing campaign on one of the Food Network's most annoying personalities, Guy Fieri. It made sense, the chips tasted rather artificial like the Doritos I have tried before. Only, this flavour had bite. I envisioned a series of commercials where Fieri goes around saying "Got Fieri", pops a chip, and breathes fire, setting various objects and national monuments ablaze. Happily, I never found time to submit the idea.

Instead, a much more deserving Montrealer named Ryan Coopersmith was chosen guru. Here was his entry:


Anyhow, I have partaken of several cream cheese-based dips, spiked with a chili puree. Each tasted far better than Scream Cheese from Doritos. Each was served with plain corn tortilla chips, two made from corn (not flour) tortillas.

If you plan to celebrate corn chip day next year, I encourage you to make your own from corn tortillas and whip up a nice salsa to accompany them. Better yet, homemade nachos (beef or chicken) with freshly grated cheese is always a crowd pleaser.

On a weekly trip to a local Asian supermarket, The New 168 Market (1050 Somerset Street W.), something caught our eye in the cookie aisle.

Celebrity Endorsed Processed Food
Resembling Swiss rolls, only made out of yellow cake and filled with a pink cream, the cakes we have actually seen before. Only this time, we recognized the Asian celebrity on the box.

After looking over the box, we found the name of the celebrity nestled amongst a handful of Korean characters, Rain.

Winged Rain

Rain is a successful Korean pop (KPop) music star who was introduced to American Hollywood audiences via the Wachowskis' forgettable Speed Racer and, more recently, Ninja Assassin.

Ninja Assassin is where Jenn and I first saw Rain, having watched the movie at the Silver City movie theater in Gloucester.

Ninja Assassin Movie Poster
Source: Imp Awards

Wildly violent and excessively bloody, the movie features some impressive oriental-style fight choreography that reminds me of the ninja movies from my youth, even co-staring Sho Kosugi, the actor and martial artist who was most sought after to play ninja in the 1980s.

Before Ninja Assasin's premiere, Beyond Hollywood's Nix asked if Rain underwent a physical transformation for his role.

Rain as "Raizo" in Ninja Assassin
Source: Ooh La La blog

To answer Nix's question...Umm yes and he spent much of the movie shirtless too...

As for what do the cakes taste like, neither Jenn nor I have mustered up the courage to try them yet. We're wondering if they resulted in the marked transformation from Kpop star to fearsome Ninja Assassin.

Particulars:
New 168 Market
1050 Somerset Street W.
(613)729-8895

In Ottawa, the battle between big box and locally owned has descended upon Chinatown. With a newly opened T&T supermarket, the Vancouver originating chain's 4th largest in Canada, pressure has been applied on Chinatown. Chinatown shops are smaller, locally-owned, and specialized in Vietnamese, Thai, Chinese, and Malay groceries. The monopoly the shops once enjoyed is gone.

Now, the formerly pre-eminent Kowloon Market in Chinatown, once an extremely crowded and bustling business, has lost significant customer-base. The store is far less busy on Saturdays, normally peek shopping hours. Parents who drop off their children for Saturday Chinese language school, caravan to T&T in the Riverside South area. They fill its enormous parking lot, making Ottawa's T&T the consistently busiest one I have ever come across. Do not expect a leisurely shopping experience after 10:00 am. For perspective, I have been to several T&T's in Vancouver (including its first location), Toronto, and Edmonton.

To make matters worse, many of the shops lost employees to T&T. The butcher Jenn and I frequented at Kowloon Market for barbecued meats is now masterfully wielding her cleaver at T&T. In-house bakers, fish mongers, and cashiers defected. Even waiters from Chinatown restaurants, familiar faces from Yangtze (700 Somerset Street W.) and Chu Sing (691 Somerset Street W.), can be found working shifts at T&T. Prevalent reasons: better pay and an opportunity for benefits.

With significant turnover, some of the bakery at Kownloon Market has changed. Prices have been knocked down to compete with T&T and the buns are physically bigger. Curious, Jenn and I purchased baked (as opposed to steamed) barbecue pork (char-siu) buns (bao or baozi) from both T&T ($1.39) and Kowloon market ($1.09) and compared them. In the process, we happened to attempt to re-invent American South comfort food, fried chicken on a waffle, but more on that later.

Regarding the buns, both were brushed with an egg wash to brown. The Kowloon Market bao seemed more evenly browned.

T&T (left) and Kowloon Market (right) Char-Siu Bao
Both were baked in-house the morning they were purchased.

Customarily, our T&T bao came individually wrapped in a self-sealing cellophane bag.

Individually-wrapped Bao
In fact, no matter where you go, bao from T&T are sold in the same bags. In fact, the char-siu bao pictured above was purchased from the T&T in the West Edmonton Mall.

To compare the Ottawa T&T and Kowloon Market originating bao, we weighed them and cut them open to look at their crumb and fillings.

Firstly, off to the scales:

T&T Char-siu Bao - 150 g

Kowloon Market Char-siu Bao - 144 g

Next, dissection:

T&T (left) and Kowloon Market (right) Char-Siu Bao
Both white bread buns had the texture of super market dinner rolls, only sweeter. The T&T bao's filling was more centered. Conversely, the Kowloon Market's was off-center and it was much more red in colour.


T&T Char-Siu Bao Filling
Filling-wise, the T&T filling was predominately lean meat and included little sauce.


Kowloon Market Char-Siu Bao Filling
The Kowloon market filling was a mixture of fatty meat, onions, and sauce.


T&T (left) and Kowloon Market (right) Char-Siu Bao
Flavour-wise, we found the T&T filling less intensely flavoured and more savoury. The Kowloon Market filling was strongly flavoured, tasting almost entirely of hoisin sauce.

If I were forced to choose, I would slightly favour the T&T char-siu bao, but bao wasn't our lunch that day.

At Kowloon market, Jenn and I eyed the hanging roasted pig after picking up a char-siu bao for the comparison. When we saddled up to the counter at the back of the store, we lucked out, ordering 2 lbs of belly-portion crackled roast pork.

Belly Portion Crackled Roast Pork

With our roast pork sporting an expertly crackled skin that was crisp and flavourful, I decided to stop off at Viva Loca in the Irving Greenberg Theatre Centre, home of Great Canada Theater Company (GCTC) for something to accompany it. The theater center is located at the corner of Holland Avenue and Wellington Street W.

Oat and Whole Wheat Pancakes
We used the stack of made-to-order oat and whole wheat pancakes to re-invent the fried chicken on a waffle.

Roasted Pork Belly with Crackling on a Pancake
And yes, it tasted great with maple syrup.

Aside: We observed Loblaws Superstore on Richmond Road selling individually-wrapped and Northern Chinese-style buns, starting in September 2009.

A Variety of Bao from Loblaws Superstore
A closer look at the labels reveals the source of the bao.

Source from a Toronto Bakery
Purchased from Jin Xin Bakery Ltd in Markham, Ontario, the buns are shipped in in refrigerated trucks, arriving cold. Not only is it interesting that Loblaws CEO, Galen Weston, has been espousing the virtues of locally sourced produce and products when one of his Superstores sells trucked-in bakery, but Weston completely missed the point about why Asian supermarkets have in-house bakeries. Customers like fresh buns, not ones that taste stale. Shipping perishable buns in refrigerated trucks causes them, like fresh bread, to change texture. Refrigeration changes the protein and starch structure of fresh bakery. At least this means Loblaws Superstore cannot compete with T&T and Chinatown supermarkets.

Particulars:
Ottawa T&T
224 Hunt Club Road (corner of Hunt Club and Riverside)
(613)731-8113

Kowloon Market
712 Somerset Street W.
(613)233-1108

Viva Loca
1233 Wellington Street W.
(613)728-8482

Loblaws Super Store
190 Richmond Road
(613)722-5890

I came across a very interesting piece about the cost of eating local today on independent writer Charmian Christie's food blog, Christie's Corner. On it, with the help of Toronto Food Writer Dana MacCauley, she explained why local food is so much more expensive. It is a very good read.

I commented in the discussion that followed with some of my thoughts. They follow:

As Cheryl Arkison points out, there is a seeming luxury premium to eating local and/or organic. Whether this is because of an inability to achieve economies of scale has not been determined.

In the past several years, I have seen large chained grocery stores sell organic or heirloom produce from large scale production that have achieved economies of scale. Yet, these products are priced at the same price point as local produce (organic or mostly organic) that come from much smaller scale production (e.g. people instead of machines).

The reasons I look toward local producers or retailers of goods made from local products involve

1. supporting the local economy and
2. my finding smaller scale production produces better quality ingredients: taste-wise and texture-wise.

For instance tomatoes are naturally sweeter and more succulent if they can spend more time on the plant. Yes, California strawberries may be physically bigger. They have been bred to be that way, but I find them water logged and tasteless. The strawberries I adore are half the size, not nearly as plump, have a powerful fragrance, and are sweet beyond compare. They come from field to plate in hours, not days.

In Ottawa, we have several farmer's markets whose vendors proudly sport Savour Ottawa posters. These posters denote that the producer or retailer has been certified via an audit by a third-party organization to produce local products or sell goods that are made from local products. Further, many of the locally-owned restaurants have already diversified their supply chains, pairing themselves with local farms. Some have even taken to growing their on produce in personal gardens. Many have even partnered with our local sustainable fin-fish and shell-fish supply.

I encourage buying local as much as is possible and going to eateries that do the same. That is, when the produce and/or products are available. Canadians face several months of inhospitable weather.

The way I see it, and I could be wrong, if local producers can be guaranteed more sales of their wares either directly or indirectly through up market products or supermarkets, perhaps they can be convinced to sell their products at lower margins. Big box stores, at the same time, need to be convinced to support local business, keep markups low, or have no business at all.

Now, I should point out that I am a foodie. I believe that, to appreciate food, you need to learn how to cook. At the moment, I can afford to spend money on quality ingredients, but, with salaries not accounting for inflation, I know many can't. Families tend to be most hard pressed to eat local.

Interestingly, the article appears not a day after CTVOttawa reported on Loblaws Superstore in choosing to cease doing business with two Ottawa bakeries, Rideau (1666 Bank Street and 384 Rideau Street) and Hanna's (1228 Old Innes Rd.). Customers will no longer be able to buy Rideau Bakery rye or egg bread or Hanna's pita from any of Ottawa's three Superstore locations. Accordingly, the reason that Loblaws gave was an e-mail that contained the jargon: "SKU rationalization."

A SKU rationalization is the process by which large scale retailers analyze their product offers to determine how each product contributes to profit. Products follow a life-cycle. Some move through the life-cycle quickly. Others, are longer lasting. The goal is to eliminate products that threaten the bottom line.

Since retailing quality bread from a local bakery cannibalizes sales of in-house baked bread, perhaps a decline in sales of Rideau's varieties occurred and it was projected that they would no longer be viable profit-generating products.

Me, I think that Rideau Bakery's bakes up an extremely fine loaf, whose premium price I am willing to pay even with the markup from Loblaws. As such, I urge Loblaws to rationalize the projected viability of its bakery if customers simply boycott all of it as I plan to. Loblaws Superstore already ceased reselling Ottawa Bagel Shop's sesame bagels several months ago.

Happily, Rideau's Rye is still accessible in my neighbourhood at both the afore-mentioned Ottawa Bagel Shop and Herb and Spice. Not everyone is so lucky.

BTW, if Loblaws Superstore is capable of these changes to their product line, do you really think it sincere when its Executive Galen Weston interviews for national newspapers, espousing his company's new buy local "Field to Fork" philosophy? Stick a fork in it Weston! I'm done!

This just in (an hour old too): Interestingly, it seems CTVOttawa now reports that Ottawa-area Loblaws stores are doubling their orders from Rideau and Hanna's bakeries. Ottawa-area Superstores shelves remain stricken. I was also told today that the Superstore's bakery section has increased the amount of in-house breads on sale.

In the past, I have been known to snap a pic or two with a camera in a grocery store. Apparently, this risks the ire of store management and could result in a potential lifetime ban from the premises. Yes, even though there are no signs alerting customers to the the policy, management is quite serious about banning people for taking pictures of their products. This is why the more recent "megamartFinds"-categorized blog posts are about products that I have already purchased.

This said, the following are older images from foodiePrints' photo archives. I found them while rummaging around for material to include in another blog post.

Introducing Johnny's, a brand of sauces and seasonings that sport some amusing packaging:

Johnny's bottled salad dressings

Johnny's Jamaica Mistake

Honey You're Terrific, with Mustard

Johnny's seasonings:

Jamaican Seasonings
I'm a little troubled by the fact that the "Jamaica Me Crazy" salad seasoning contains natural ingredients. Where as, the seasoning salt and steak seasoning are "all natural."

Natural or not, when it comes to thirst quenching, squash isn't the first thing that comes to mind.

Grantham's Squash Drinks
Apparently, they are flavoured with citrus.

Baby mumbles about citrus?

Baby Mum-Mum

Speaking about babies, these were 2 steps away from the "family planning" aisle...

280 mL Beverage Container

Priceless

To end, let's take a step back a few years to the reason I stopped watching television:

Fear Factor Popsicles
When reality television went the way of Fear Factor, I canceled my cable subscription.

BTW, two potential reasons why store managements at certain supermarkets would prefer its customers not have cameras follow after the jump...

More after the jump...