Castle Mischief: December 26, 2011 - Rockets, Mogu Mogu, and BAWANG!

Months ago, the boys and I went to the Space and Rocket Center after dropping off Esther at the airport for her exciting scouting trip out west. Today we revisited with both the women. The dinosaur exhibit from September is long gone, but the core collection of aging attractions are still there. Considering that we got in again for free thanks to our partner membership, it's hard to complain too much but as I've said before, the place is in need of an update.

One of the newer attractions that the kids usually gravitate towards is the climbing wall. (Climb a wall- just like the astronauts!) I gave the hardest route a try and a picture of me just before I fell to the ground to my certain death can be found over at Esther's blog entry for the day. The kids did much better than I.

We made the standard walk among the empty shells of rockets and aircraft in the back lot. Both the centrifuge thingy and the shoot you up into the air thingy were closed due to "inclement weather". Oh and Esther and I managed to take nearly the same picture, as we are prone to do.

From there we took a more leisurely stroll inside the Saturn V building.

At this point I'll mention that I'm listening to Casey Affleck's reading of Sex on the Moon, by Ben Mezrich. So I was more than a little pleased in finding a display for an actual lunar sample. I'm always more than a little skeptical when the Space and Rocket Center labels something (case in point, the A-12 Oxcart parked outside that's written up as an SR-71 Blackbird) but I did a little looking around on the internet and found that the sample is indeed legit and identified as "Sample 12065" which means that it's the 65th identified sample and that it came from the Apollo 12 mission. Based on the size of the rock (about that of my fist) and the information in the book, I'd put the value at something near... a few years in federal prison.

Take me, you know you want to. I won't tell.

Somebody put memorial bananas on Miss Baker's monument.

But the real excitement of the day was during the ride home and the obligatory stop at... FAR EAST MARKET! I think it's officially an addiction at this point. We stocked up on mochi, noodles and Mang Tomas All Purpose Sauce.

And now I give you: MOGU MOGU brand drink! In not one, but two flavors!

Strawberry!

Lychee!

I'm sure most of you have some passing knowledge of what a strawberry is, but I'm just as sure you have no idea what a lychee is. Well, I'm here to help. Lychee (also known by a handful of other names, all of which sound like somebody trying to spell "lychee" without spell-check or perhaps with head trauma) is a fruit found across Asia, the sole member of genus Litchi in the soapberry family. What? Soap? Huh? It's a little pink fruit. If pink were a flavor, it would taste like the color pink. If bubblegum grew on trees there would be a botanical arms race to hybridize lychee and the bubblegum trees for world domination. Learn more here.

A common theme I've noticed in the Asian fruit drinks (and aloe drinks for that matter) is the use of something floating in the liquid that is kind of chewy and slippery. Like swallowing tadpoles made of pure sweetness and good. Mogu Mogu uses this as well. Reading the ingredients in both of these I saw that they both had something called "nata de coco". Could this be the source of the gummy droplets that hang in a colloidal suspension inside the bottles of sweet yummy juice?? As luck would have it, YES! Nata de coco is made from fermented coconut water and forms a thick jelly-like food. YUM!

But how does it taste?!?!?!

Fermented coconut water = pure joy.

Need I say more?

Another food we selected from the shelves of Far East Market was this bag of... Well. I'll tell you what it is: corn nuts. But what is it called on the packaging?