Last-minute gift shopping: weird foreign snacks

Honestly, haven't you finished your gift shopping yet?!

No, of course you haven't, and you're not alone. So here are a few hot tips for everyone's favorite stocking stuffer, last-minute gift pack, or holiday hostess gift: weird foreign treats!

JAPANESE

How could we not start with Japan, whose economy, as far as I can tell, is entirely based on bizarrely bright, incomprehensible treats? In Portland, you can hit Anzen, or, if you have time and wheels, the Mecca of Asian foods, Uwajimaya.

Now, you can also buy lovely ceramics, lacquered chopsticks, sake sets, and other nice gifts, but this is a food blog, so we'll stick to the edibles.

For the "intelligent connoisseur who enjoys the finer points in life", may I suggest some Men's Pocky, or delicious Pocari Sweat drink mix? You'll find Tomato Pretz, Kiss Mint gum, and, of course, Black Black Gum, full of caffeine and "high technical taste and flavor." There are sushi gummy candies and Meltykiss green tea chocolates, not to mention beautifully-packaged teas, sakes, and crackers.

MEXICAN

At Mexican grocery stores, you can get delicious Mexican chocolate tablets (dissolve a quarter tablet into hot milk for delicious, subtly cinnamon-almond flavored hot chocolate) or tangy-hot tamarind-chile candies. Oh, and everybody loves the Chupa Chups! (I found this image doing an image search for Chupa Chups. Yikes!)

EUROPEAN

Duh. Europe is all about the chocolate (well, the cheese too, but that's harder to do as a gift), and we are lucky enough to be able to get fantastic European chocolate in Portland. Try Martinotti's downtown and Pastaworks in Northwest or on Hawthorne for Italian imports, Edelweiss for German goods, or head to Taste of Europe for an emphasis on Eastern European imports (all of these have products from France and Switzerland as well, which is good news for us chocolate lovers).

As for brands, you can hardly go wrong, but Lindt, from Switzerland, is generally considered the queen of chocolates. German Ritter Sport chocolate comes in fun square packaging, while Milka comes in purple packages and is particularly known for its milk chocolate.

As far as flavors go, there's nothing wrong with sticking to the basics of milk or dark (true conoisseurs swear by extremely high percentages of cacao, up to 85%, but this results in a significantly less sweet and creamy confection), but I particularly enjoy marzipan, nougat (this is not like American nougat, but rather a divine, meltingly creamy chocolate filling; it's also called praline) or rum raisin hazelnut. Martinotti's (and nowhere else) also carries my favorite chocolate of all time. It has little crumbles of amaretti di saronno almond cookies in them (I could only find this kind of weird picture online); it is amazingly delicious. You can also get delicious chocolate confections, like truffles, liqueur-filled chocolates, or the wonderful Kinder Surprise Eggs, filled with awesome, tiny toys.

Of course, you'll also find delightful candies (Haribo gummi bears taste better than any other brand), jams (some in flavors we don't have here like sour cherry, red and black currant, and quince), cookies, liqueurs, shaped marzipan fruits, and a hundred other things anyone would love to get.

...OK, now it's time to stop reading this entry and get at the last-minute shopping. Good luck from all of us here at Digest!