Sainsbury's wholegrain Apple & Cinnamon Crisp (Sainsbury's)

Sainsbury's wholegrain Apple & Cinnamon Crisp (Sainsbury's)

Ah - dried fruit.  The very grown-up snack.  Both healthy and full of great flavour at the same time.

In the very-olden-days when I was at school my Grandmother was addicted to the health food shop (her very own FoodStuffFinds adventure) and would try pretty much anything. There was of course a 'children's section' with the same toxic concoctions but in brightly coloured packaging.  There were few safe options, but as I was given pick of the store (in a contrast to every sweetshop ever) I got to figure out what was edible very quickly.  Hedgehog crisps were great because you could pretend they were made out of either hedgehogs or things hedgehogs eat (slugs!) which was very Dahl and great fun. They were basically corn puff crisps with non artificial flavours like tomato, and were nice.  Much later on this odd brand of crisps that only ever had one flavour turned up called Kettle Chips and then went on to rule the world. Many happy evenings were spent as a child eating an entire big bag of those.  Even though they have gone all mainstream now I still love them.  The final safe section was the dried fruits, my favourite of which was a little bag of dried apple.

This little bag seemed to barely contain anything. It probably represented the concentrated remains of a couple of apples easily though and all the juice seemed to still be there.  I remember taking a bag into school once and people mocking my strange choice of snack, until they had tried some that is.  Apple is a universally loved flavour and is probably written into the DNA of the British at some fundamental level. This is seen no where more than in our love for cider.

Sainsbury's have wisely not opted to make a cider breakfast cereal (although if you ran out of milk...), instead taking the contents of that little bag of apple and chucking it into a wholegrain granola kind of affair.  As the box states it's a 'crisp' and so they have chosen softer bits of fruit which works well.  Apple and milk may not be to everyones taste, but it's nicely refreshing and the apple flavour lingers on nicely.

I like it when supermarkets but a bit of effort into their own brand stuff. It's like they feel the need to compete with Marks & Spencer's and Waitrose and produce something just different enough to make you go 'lets go to Sainsbury's this week so that we can get that apple cereal your dad likes' and in this case it's paid off.  While it's not a staple eat-every-day affair, on these decently warm summer mornings it hits the spot and future special trips are assured.

By NLi10