Powdered Sweat - Pocari @ home style [@NLi10]

 Japan has an amusingly named rehydration drink called Pocari Sweat.  It's basically powdered grape juice and electrolytes but it's fantastically compulsive and really does seem to hydrate better than most drinks.

And I've found it in powder form!

As the bottom says this is 66g of powder to make 1L of drink. This is annoying but logical.

It does come with instructions but as they are pour into bottle and drink we don't need the translation software.

I almost brought home a Cha Dong to try - but there was no price on the section and a queue at the till so no-one to ask

As pocari has lots of extra goodness in it the bottles feel heavy.  I do like them though so the water bottle in my fridge is their brand. Unfortunately it's 1.5L, so I filled it - then measured 500ml out of it into a pint glass.  Easy.

Then cutting as instructed the tiny hole allowed for a super clean pour.

And one shake later it looked identical!

It tasted a bit of the accelerant/mixer though (like the UK versions do) so I left it to settle for an hour or so.

And it was magically just like the real thing!  I mean - it probably is the real thing, they almost certainly just dilute it in the factory.

At £2.50 a sachet it's about half price to buy it in powder form.  More importantly it's a lot lighter to carry.  And as I was feeling under the weather this week it kept me going.  All good from me!

The Traitors - Chews (WHSmith) By @SpectreUK

I do love watching The Traitors. The plots, the twists and turns, the back stabbing. It’s just so much fun to watch how people find it so hard to read each other.

I know I’d likely be rubbish at the game. I’m not a good liar, so if I was a Traitor I’d probably be like Richard E. Grant, and just blurt it out. I’m not good at reading people either.

Nevertheless, having some sweet and sour chews to watch The Traitors series sounds like a good idea. These The Traitors - Chews have some chewy sweets that are sour and some that are sweet. If you find a sour, then you catch a Traitor.

On opening the bag there were a multitude of wrapped chewy sweets. On unwrapping several sweets there seemed different sweet flavours from raspberry to lemon and mango, and then I caught a Traitor. It was a face twisting sour lemon sherbet filled chew, which really caught me. These sweets are great fun, not tough to chew and very tasty, whether they are sweet Faithfuls or deadly sour Traitors.

These sweets could be useful to all the teddy bears in the house that are playing The Traitors game at the same time as the celebrity series. Believe me, it’s been absolute carnage so far.

Information on the packet; The 120g bag contained 401 calories per 100g, with 6.1g of fat, 67g of sugar, and 0.06g of salt. Please see photograph for the ingredients.

Jaffaween Cake Bars Cherry (Tesco) By @Cinabar

As we are in spooky month, I feel like I can properly start tucking into the Halloween goodies we have lined up to tell you about. First up is these Jaffaween Cake Bars Cherry. The spell check does not like the name, but I don’t mind it!

Jaffaween Cake Bars are available in Orange, but I don’t think I’ve tried the Cherry ones before, so I went with those. Plus, red for Halloween seems a bit more themed than just changing the standard packaging on the orange ones. I opened up the wrapper and have to say, they have done a lovely job with the packaging. Each cake bar is made to look like a monster or mummy wrapped up in orange peel bandages, which is very cool.

Underneath that, we have a nice cake bar with a layer of cherry and dark chocolate. The flavour is sweet and tasty, with enough chocolate and vanilla from the sponge to contrast nicely with the cherry. These are tasty, and they fit perfectly into a lunch box for Halloween, or as a snack for Trick or Treaters.

The best part is the cute wrapper, though. I just loved that!

McDonalds World Heist II - Maple Chicken, Guava Sprite & Paprika Fries [@NLi10]

 Way back we did a World Heist review - it was terrible - and now the economic instability caused by that promotion has directly led to World Heist Two!

Ignore my colleague's sad Cheeseburger with no cheese - I can't remember why that exists.

(ed - I asked - it's the cheapest way to get a double burger with no cheese)

Annoyed by the lack of the German Rosti burger I decided to take a different route. Canadian Maple Burger, Dutch Paprika Fries and Indian Guava Sprite.

With only 3 ice-cubes and 27 calories this is a lovely refreshing summer drink. It's now October so hey-ho, but I enjoyed it anyway.  And it wasn't 60% Ice like the KFC specials.

I didn't try any Canadian McFlurry but it's a normal one with marshmallows and crumble added.

I did go for the Maple Chicken - so called because I had the plastic cheese removed.

It's got a million different things in there.  Hooray!

Except bacon - boo - should have added it in.

Good enough to go back and try that before these vanish at the end of Oct? Nope.  KFC still does this so much better.

I enjoyed the fresh salad and mix of textures, but McDonalds burgers are almost drinkable due to their lack of consistency.  Probably the best chicken burger I've had in modern McDonalds though.  Much better than the beef burger from last time.

And now - fries!

North Europe the McFries go stone cold even faster so having them in a bag is just smart.

Add paprika - get red fries!

The extra salt and pepper on these, combined with the cooling guava meant that this was the main event.  Like the Polish fries I'd have these again, but if we go back I have to have the German burger and the Mulan's Szechwan Sauce with my fries to complete the set.

Overall, reasonable value (about £10) but nothing to tell the grandchildren to hop into the time portal about. Better than the first time though.

Walkers Grilled Cheese & Chilli Jam flavoured crisps (Ocado) By @SpectreUK

If there’s one thing in life that I have discovered, it’s that I have a lot of favourite sandwiches. One of my favourites is the all time classic; ham and tomato sandwich. Add a bit of salad cream or mayonnaise, a lot of Colman’s English Mustard, and a little pepper and I am well away. Even if it always gets really messy.

I generally have some sort of bacon flavoured crisps to accompany my ham and tomato sandwich. Today, I found these limited edition Walkers Grilled Cheese & Chilli Jam flavoured crisps to review. I like a bit of grilled cheese on an sandwich, and chilli jam can have quite a kick to it. So, I wonder what these taste like.

On opening the bag there was an aroma of sweet chilli and a cheesiness to the red chilli flecked crisps inside. On first taste these Walkers Grilled Cheese & Chilli Jam flavoured crisps had a strong grilled cheese flavour to begin with, and then a mild sweet chilli tang followed. I could feel that sweet chilli heat building the more crisps I ate, and they were very moreish indeed. Yum.

Information on the packet; The 25g bag contained 128 calories, with 7.3g of fat, 0.8g of sugar, 0.16g of salt. Please see photograph for the ingredients.