This one's admittedly a bit weak; the company which made these cookies is Goya, which is American owned. However, Goya's products are sold throughout the U.S., Central and South America, and the Caribbean, and as such they have manufacturing plants and distribution centers scattered all over these areas. And the cookies I'll talk about today were truly made in Brazil. Although they can be purchased in the U.S. in stores with good foreign food sections (For example, Wegmans supermarkets, and the Washington, D.C.--based Union Market district, where I bought these), they're mostly targeted to and bought in, Brazil. So long story short, I'm counting them.
The cookies I tried were all Brazilian variations on a common type, the vanilla wafer. These are the thin "sandwiches" which consist of two, cross-hatched outer wafers with an interior cream filling. As it turns out, the Brazilian Goya wafers come in eight different flavors--vanilla, chocolate, mango, coconut, dulce de leche, guava, strawberry, and pineapple. I tried the latter three. Incidentally, the three I tried don't contain any actual fruit, and I strongly suspect that the others also got their flavors from artificial means. So these aren't health foods. If you're suffering from scurvy, these cookies won't help you a bit. Also, each cookie had the traditional yellowish outer wafers, with fillings that are the same color as the fruit flavor, again, surely produced by artificial means.
I'll return to the U.S. scholastic system for rating these--"A" for excellent, "B" for good, "C" for average, "D" for unsatisfactory but barely passing, and "F" for failing, with pluses and minuses as necessary.
Goya wafers, guava flavor: B+. Very nice. I enjoy guava, especially its juice, and their chemicals apparently approximated this fruit very well.
Goya wafers, pineapple flavor: B+. Also very good. Once again, had the billed flavor. Kind of an unusual one for a wafer cookie, but it worked somehow. Even a bit tangy.
Goya wafers, strawberry flavor: B. Still good, and with the required fruit flavor, but a tad blander than the others. So the weakest of the bunch.
To summarize, all of these were at least good. Nice new (to me, anyway) twists on an old favorite. They were also modestly priced, being about $2-3 for a 5.6 ounce (160 gram) pack. I'd certainly buy these again, when/if I get the chance. I'll also eagerly seek out the kinds I haven't tried (except for maybe the vanilla and chocolate kinds, since I had these flavors in wafers many times before). But, they weren't awesome, either. They're not Nutter Butters, or Pecan Sandies, or Thin Mints. Just a good to very good wafer cookie.
Moving on, in case you're curious, the family that owns Goya, the Unanue family, is the second wealthiest Hispanic/Latino family in the U.S., with a fortune estimated at over a billion dollars. Founder Prudencio Unanue Ortiz was born in Spain, and came to New York via Puerto Rico. The company was started in 1936. Their headquarters are in my home state, in Jersey City, New Jersey.
Oh, and just to end on a short diatribe, as readers may already know, Budweiser is changing its name to "America" during this Presidential election year. Kind of ironic for a company owned by the Belgian/Brazilian run InBev. In my opinion, it's a pretty disingenuous gesture, to appear more patriotic. Not that I'm against foreign beers at all--I'm just against the sleazy dishonesty being shown here. So, to reference one of their annoying television commercials, instead of drinking (phony) "America," I'll "sip my pumpkin peach ales"--my craft beers, and good foreign beers, You know, beers which have some actual taste.
No comments:
Post a Comment