In the children’s novel 魔女館へようこそ (“Welcome to the Witch’s Mansion”), casting spells involves cooking. There’s a particular recipe that’s very important to the story, and is printed in full at the end of the book. It took me forty minutes to figure out what it was called.

悪い魔法を封じこめるウ・ア・ラ・ネージュ

For the kanji/kana-challenged, that’s “Warui Mahou o Fuuji-komeru U A Ra Neeju”. The first half is a straightforward prenominal phrase, “…which confines evil magic”, but what is it?

First clue: it’s a dessert recipe.

Second clue: the ingredient list consists of eggs, sugar, cornstarch, milk, and vanilla extract.

Third clue: the recipe requires separating the eggs to make メリンゲ (Meringe) and カスタードソース (Casutaadosoosu).

Fourth clue: the end result involves placing the poached meringe on top of the casutaadosoosu.

Answer below the fold…

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The folks at Boboli have a new line of flatbreads under the Ambretta label. I picked some up at Safeway last night, and this morning’s breakfast consisted of their rosemary flatbread, toasted and combined with roast beef and cheddar cheese into traditional sandwich form. The house now smells like rosemary and butter, which is never a bad thing.

[Update: threw them away. They may have used the right flavoring, but they used maybe half as much as they should have, on an inferior chip.]

This had better not be one of those “New Coke” deals. I get mean when somebody replaces a classic with inferior crap.

PS: Never visit doritos.com. The term “steaming pile of Flash” was coined specifically to refer to that sort of content-free bullshit.

With my mind already broken by the folks at H!P, today was not the day to confront me with a contradiction. I give you メロンパン風 Flat Pretz:

Yes, these Pretz possess both delicious flatness and melonpan-fu. The mind boggles.

[Update: Replaced the store link; I hadn’t realized that asianmunchies.com was now wholesale-only.]

One of my regrets from the trip to Japan was that I didn’t bring home more ginger-flavored crack(ers). I hoped I’d be able to find them in the US, but the only name I knew to call them by was a Kyoto cliché.

Today, I avoided the con crowd by heading up to SF Japantown, and while browsing through a grocery store, I found two different brands of Shouga Tsumami (“ginger pinch”). They’re a little thicker than the ones we bought in a Gion candy store, and not quite as fresh, but they’re still darn tasty, and they’re available online.

1. Pizza Hut's new meat pasta is pretty good. I'll be eating it for another two days, since they only deliver a family-size portion with breadsticks, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
2. I always thought the name "Rune Soldier" was an invention of the team who translated the anime for the US market, since "Magic Soldier Louie" sounded too similar to "Magic Knight Rayearth" and similar series. Nope, page six of the first novel glosses 魔法戦士 as ルーンソルジャー. Pity, really, since the change ruined a decent joke in episode 18.
3. Constructs of the form AたるB, where both A and B are nouns, are a bit of grammar that's hard to find a good explanation for in English. Historically, there were three different conjugations for adjectives, but for the most part only the -i and -na types still exist; there are only a handful of true -taru adjectives in modern Japanese. This does not stop people from occasionally attaching -taru to a noun to make an "A-looking B" or "A-like B" expression.
4. Speaking of -taru adjectives, I find this one charming: 死屍累々. Shishiruirui, it's like the "que sera sera" of carnage. I don't think I'll ever be able to sing the correct lyrics to that song again.
5. Speaking of songs we'll never be able to sing correctly again...
6. Nobody ever told me that Pixel Maritan had a webcomic.
7. On a vaguely related note, the trading figures for Moe yo! Tank School are, um, interesting.
8. And while we're following dirty links at Amazon Japan, I can see where the artist was going with this covergirl from MC Akushizu ("the hyper bishoujo military magazine"), but, anatomically speaking, he made a wrong turn.

…or they picked the wrong day to announce this:

From: PizzaHut@getmore.emailpizzahut.com
Subject: Pizza Hut is now Pasta Hut!

Our new Tuscani Pastas are so good, we decided to change our name to Pasta Hut. Try both delicious flavors - Meaty Marinara or Creamy Chicken Alfredo.

Finally, restaurant quality pasta delivered right to your door! Feeds 4 and comes with 5 breadsticks for only $11.99. Dinner’s done!

They updated the web site, too, but I’ve seen that trick before!

[Update: their web site is still Pasta Hut, so it was just their total lack of awareness that “April 1” means something other than “beginning of new fiscal quarter”, especially on the Internet]

The best damn sour candy in the world disappeared from every store in my area quite a while ago. Then their web site went offline. Last week, on a whim, I googled, and found that their online store was back. There are a number of error pages where they’ve deleted part of their product line but left the links in place, so I’m guessing they’re adjusting to the consequences of expanding their line without adequate distribution.

Naturally I ordered 5 display cases, for a total of 30 tins of concentrated, sugar-free joy. That should last me a few weeks, unless I share (“Hi, David!”).

Note: ordered on the 19th, arrived with free shipping on the 22nd. Good thing they didn’t show up in the morning, or I’d have had to share them with my friends. :-)