Food Week: Yogurt World

Today I was in El Cajon to observe an ESL class. On the way home, I went to Mission Trails for a run. After that, I stopped at Yogurt World.

I first heard of Yogurt World from a student last semester. He came into class with a slurpee-sized cup of frozen yogurt. When I asked when he'd gotten it, he said, in the most obvious tone, "Yogurt World."

Of course.

Today was my first visit to one of the chain's locations. It's self-serve with yogurt and toppings, and you're charged thirty cents per ounce.

I opted for acai-blueberry and mango yogurt swirled together. After many happy years of Souplantation patronage, I fancy myself a yogurt-swirler dilettante. Today, my swirling was just average. Which was fine; I covered up the oblong spiral with toppings.

The extremely happy woman behind the bar helped me choose what to add to my yogurt. Of course there were sprinkles and strawberries and sno-caps, but those are too boring for Food Week. I settled on three toppings.

Long-yen: This is my phonetic spelling of the word. It's a fruit that looks like very large, peeled, white globe grapes. They have the texture of fibrous lychee and are sweet. They taste like something I've eaten in Central America that I can't place right now. Not termites, though. Those taste like carrots. There's one long-yen visible in the bottom of the photograph.

Candied fruit: These are the red, yellow, and white strips visible in the picture. Sweet, they remind me most of really thick Jell-o Jigglers.

Sweet white beans: These are white beans that have been soaked in sugar (brown sugar?) and cooked. They taste like, well, white beans in sugar.

And to think, after finishing my run, I could've drank Gatorade and missed out on all this colorful, Asian food fun.

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