You’re familiar with Pocky Sticks, right? Iris is. Today we went to H Mart, a huge Asian supermarket that recently opened in Federal Way, and when I mentioned to Iris that we might get some Pocky, she started chanting “POCKY POCKY POCKY” with a crazed look in her eye. It was like that episode of Alias where the guy turned into an assassin whenever someone said the code word, only in this case Iris only assassinated a pack of chocolate cookie sticks.

Pocky has a sister product of sorts, a savory stick called Pretz. It’s available throughout Asia and elsewhere in a wide variety of flavors including tom yam, larb, and corn. One of the cool things about Japan, at least as far as I can tell having never been there, is that many things are corn-flavored. Another true thing is that there’s a flavor of Pringles in Asia called Wild Consomme.

I figured the sticks would be made of corn, but it turned out they’re baked wheat sticks dusted with corn powder, made from dried ground sweet corn. There’s a weird fake butter flavor to them, but the corn flavor is quite honest. The possibilities of corn powder are endless. Would it be wrong to put it on popcorn?

The box of Pretz was pretty small, but they crammed an impressive number of sticks inside. Kind of like Japan. When I had finished all the Pretz (singular: Pret), I felt just like this kid:

The story of lard must be told. Not just to faithful blog readers, but to the people at large. Hence today’s feature.

Probably we’re a few years past the time when this was a bold declaration, but I like sweet wines better than dry wines. I was trying to figure out why this is so–I do have a sweet tooth, but I like my savory food unsullied with sugar and have no problem with sour or bitter flavors. Then I realized it has everything to do with price.

Right now, I’m finishing up a great bottle of madeira. It’s the Rare Wine Company’s Boston Bual. The bottle was a gift, but for journalistic purposes I looked up the price, and it was probably about $45. This bottle brightened at least a dozen evenings, which makes it a great deal. This is another nice thing about fortified wines in particular: you can keep them around for weeks and they don’t go bad. I try to keep port and sherry on hand, too.

But you don’t need to spend anything like $45 to get a bottle of sweet wine that will make you tingle. A couple of years ago, when the great 2001 vintage was released, I got a bottle of German riesling auslese for $22 that knocked me on my ass–not in the way you’re thinking, since this is a low-alcohol wine.

Because dry wines are still the fashionable choice, sweet wines are comparatively underpriced. When was the last time you spent $20 for a dry wine and had it rock your world, oenologically speaking?

A great introduction to the world of sweet wines is James Peterson’s book, Sweet Wines.

Bartender: One Bonnezeaux, one Sauternes, one Okanagan Valley icewine, please. (Sweet wine drinkers always say please.)