31 May 2017
Savsé Protein Smash (Waitrose) By @SpectreUK
This Savsé Protein Smash is sported as a strawberry milkshake with a twist of coconut and apple. Often smoothies have a secret banana ingredient that makes the smoothie just taste of banana. There didn't seem to be any banana in this drink's ingredients, although it was a yellowish milky colour after a good shake straight from the fridge. I do hate sneaky banana in smoothies and milkshakes as to me it spoils the taste of the other ingredients.
On opening the bottle there was a luscious strawberry smell with a good hit of apple and a hint of coconut milk. Okay good no banana in the ingredients… check! No banana in the smell… check! Once I began drinking I realised the 100ml serving suggestion would go straight out of the window. This Strawberry Protein Smash, which is what it should be called, has strawberry as a dominate flavour mixed well with the creamy coconut milk throughout, whilst my tastebuds were tickled by the apple that lends an extra tang. This was a simply delicious pudding drink that felt healthy as well as wholesome. I'd certainly have it again, and not one banana in sight!
Information on the bottle;
The 250ml bottle contains per 100ml serving 2.2g of fat, 6.9g of sugar, and 0.1g of salt. Ingredients included; apple (40%), strawberry (20%), coconut water (20%), coconut milk (10%), whey protein milk (5%), and lemon (5%).
30 May 2017
McVitites Hobnobs Apple Pie Flapjacks (Morrisons) By @Cinabar
Apple flavours seems synonymous with autumn more than summer, but somebody in product development seems to disagree with me. Yesterday I wrote about the new Taste of Caramelised Apple sweets from Werther's Original and today’s new product is McVitites Hobnobs Apple Pie Flapjacks. On the bright side I love these flavours, and welcome them at any time of the year. I get a bit tired of the idea that cinnamon has a season too, I have it all year round.
There are five Apple Pie Flapjacks in the multipack and they are all individually wrapped, making them perfect as a lunch box treat. They do seem fairly small but I think this counts towards good portion control as flapjacks tend to be rather rich.
The flavour is impressive, the apple taste is pleasingly strong and fruity, and the rich syrupy golden taste shines through, with a lovely background spiced buttery flavour. The texture is good, the bars are jam packed with oats, and they are firm but not hard. They give easily when you bite in.
I thought that these McVitites Hobnobs Apple Pie Flapjacks were superb. I don’t eat a lot of flapjacks but the addition of the apple and cinnamon made these perfect for me. It added a nice fruity edge and it made them a lovely treat. Certainly one I’ll be packing in my lunch box.
29 May 2017
Werther's Original Sugar Free Taste of Caramelised Apple (Morrisons) By @Cinabar
These were tucked into our latest shopping order from Morrsiosn, they are the new flavour from Werther's Original, Taste of Caramelised Apple, and they are Sugar Free too. The box is a lot smaller than the picture suggests, these are very much pocket size, so perfect for slipping in to a handbag too. Perfect for travel. The pastels are two tones and are swirled in appearance, but not individually wrapped. I think perhaps because they are sugar free they may not get sticky. The sweets are hard solid pastels and are not chewable.
I tried one, and found that they were quite delicate in taste. They are sweet, and have a hint of apple and custard, but it is just a hint. What is lacking is the rich creamy flavour that I associate with Werther’s, these particular sweets were not rich in that way, just mild. To be fair the apple tasted fairly natural, and the toffee taste was pleasant with it.
These are nice easy going sweets, but not something I’d rush out to buy again. If you are following a Sugar Free diet it is nice to see companies like Werther's Original catering for this, and hopefully they will bring out some stronger more exciting flavours.
28 May 2017
Disappointment Wars - Three Eggs & an Onion (@NLi10)
Disappointment Wars I
Occasionally on Food Stuff Finds I come across items in the store that I know are going to be disappointing, the only question is the exact nature of that disappointment and it's scale. Living in a very multicultural area I can often find a lot of knock-off and obscure import things to add into this category - and because this is the second time I've done it we now technically can call it a series!
Here we have a DC Super Hero Girls Egg, Another Pokemon Go Ball, WITH TOYS! by Vira, and an Indian onion that I also happened to buy at the same time.
This edition took place in Birmingham Children's hospital where I was visiting a young relative, she has helped to grade the disappointment of the things inside the containers.
First up we have the DC Super Hero Girls Egg - which must have been about 70p.
Inside you get a puffy sticker of a character I didn't recognise, a super girl sticker and some tasteless coloured sugar. I'd assumed that this was a knock off, but I think it must actually be official. Yes - all of the production quality is on the outside wrapper that went straight in the bin, but these are reasonable quality things. And there was a range of things you could have found inside so you could force an adult to waste money on the whole series.
Our junior tester was quite pleased to get stickers as she can put these on the furniture in her bedroom if she didn't lose them before she got home. The sweets were tried and discarded - as expected they were the weakest part.
This was reasonably impressive! You essentially got three 'prizes' and sweets. The car is generic plastic rubbish reminiscent of the other Pokemon Go tat we had. The stickers are cheap and nasty, but will decorate the house at some point. The sweets actually had flavour and were worth the money just for the fun of guessing what colour was supposed to be what (they had seemingly grass and mint as green, and lemon and banana as yellow which is bizarre).
The highlight has to be the chubby, faceless pikachu. They clearly took an existing molded Pikachu, and then just cast their own told from that figure - with holes in odd places so you can sit it on a pencil. Our Junor Tester didn't like it until she drew eyes on it with a sharpie.
Surprise score: Minor Surprise
If you could have seen the contents ahead of time you'd never willingly spend £1 on this, but the sweets were edible and shared, the Pokeball snapped open and closed so we could pop the stuff back in, and half of the contents were actually on theme. I don't feel the need to see if there are mutant versions of other Pokemon inside other versions, but the Junior Tester was pleased (once eyes were added) and going into the final item hopes were high.
The Vira chocolate cream WITH TOY was the cheapest of the lot at about 40p (didn't get a receipt so I'm only 100% sure about the Pokemon one) and promised to be a knock-off Kinder Joy.
The most complex of all the offerings this was totally the wrong thing to take onto a children's ward. First of all it doesn't reseal. And the toy...
...is proper old school Kinder where you make it yourself. I miss those days (choking hazards and all) but understand why we've moved on. Trying to make this fiddly thing with my arthritic hands resulted in one key piece bouncing across the ward.
He lost his head!
The dip certainly smelt the part, and the cereal stars were a lovely touch although 100% stale and inedible. Clearly designed to be smelt by the parents, and only eaten by the children it tasted foul. Im not sure whether this was also stale, but nobody wanted more of this and we binned it.
But when we tidied up we did find the guys head - and realised he was supposed to have a trumpet. Much better than the odd plastic car then.
Surprise score: Disappointed Surprise
The hard to get wrong Nuttella style dip was terrible, and the cheap plastic kit was actually really endearing (if not completely inappropriate for small people). As the cheapest and only non branded item I expected the focus to have been on the food, but really - again - the cost was mostly the packaging and as such it was a disappointment to the Junior Tester most of all.
The only things that she actually wanted to keep was all the stickers, and the plastic Pikachu (but she did keep trying to give that to her brothers) so for her - all the food was a disappointment but the DC girls stickers were the best surprise
To find out what happened to the Onion and whether that was any good tune in Thursday!
UPDATE TO DISAPPOINTMENT WARS ONE!
Being the sucker that I am I returned to the shop where the Gusto Mega Surprise crisps came from and got two more to give the the crazy colleagues who actually liked the crisps.
And their surprises were as follows
A large plastic green sheep - with a rabbit night time scene on it - and what do you see through the little window on the side?
Why - it's an aquarium of course! Reasonably low tech, but fairly interesting and as a prize in a 59p bag of crisps it's pretty cool. The crisps are still inedible.
The second prize was from the same range as my original prize which was in itself disappointing. This one's head bobbing action worked a little better but otherwise still a toddler targeted toy, and not the super hero toys that everyone else seemed to open on YouTube. Still a disappointment then.
Occasionally on Food Stuff Finds I come across items in the store that I know are going to be disappointing, the only question is the exact nature of that disappointment and it's scale. Living in a very multicultural area I can often find a lot of knock-off and obscure import things to add into this category - and because this is the second time I've done it we now technically can call it a series!
Here we have a DC Super Hero Girls Egg, Another Pokemon Go Ball, WITH TOYS! by Vira, and an Indian onion that I also happened to buy at the same time.
The challenge is this - which has the most disappointing food element, and which has the most disappointing toy element? Would any actually be considered good value?
Place your bets now!
This edition took place in Birmingham Children's hospital where I was visiting a young relative, she has helped to grade the disappointment of the things inside the containers.
First up we have the DC Super Hero Girls Egg - which must have been about 70p.
Inside you get a puffy sticker of a character I didn't recognise, a super girl sticker and some tasteless coloured sugar. I'd assumed that this was a knock off, but I think it must actually be official. Yes - all of the production quality is on the outside wrapper that went straight in the bin, but these are reasonable quality things. And there was a range of things you could have found inside so you could force an adult to waste money on the whole series.
Our junior tester was quite pleased to get stickers as she can put these on the furniture in her bedroom if she didn't lose them before she got home. The sweets were tried and discarded - as expected they were the weakest part.
Surprise score: Slight Surprise
I'm sure that had I spent £1 on stickers in The Entertainer I could have come out with much better girly hero related things and so I didn't feel it was good value. After the shockingly poor Pokemon knock off last time I really didn't want to spend £1 on this Pokemon Go Ball, but it was in a different section and although it looks even less official than the chocolate version I guessed it wouldn't be as bad.
This was reasonably impressive! You essentially got three 'prizes' and sweets. The car is generic plastic rubbish reminiscent of the other Pokemon Go tat we had. The stickers are cheap and nasty, but will decorate the house at some point. The sweets actually had flavour and were worth the money just for the fun of guessing what colour was supposed to be what (they had seemingly grass and mint as green, and lemon and banana as yellow which is bizarre).
The highlight has to be the chubby, faceless pikachu. They clearly took an existing molded Pikachu, and then just cast their own told from that figure - with holes in odd places so you can sit it on a pencil. Our Junor Tester didn't like it until she drew eyes on it with a sharpie.
Surprise score: Minor Surprise
If you could have seen the contents ahead of time you'd never willingly spend £1 on this, but the sweets were edible and shared, the Pokeball snapped open and closed so we could pop the stuff back in, and half of the contents were actually on theme. I don't feel the need to see if there are mutant versions of other Pokemon inside other versions, but the Junior Tester was pleased (once eyes were added) and going into the final item hopes were high.
The Vira chocolate cream WITH TOY was the cheapest of the lot at about 40p (didn't get a receipt so I'm only 100% sure about the Pokemon one) and promised to be a knock-off Kinder Joy.
The most complex of all the offerings this was totally the wrong thing to take onto a children's ward. First of all it doesn't reseal. And the toy...
...is proper old school Kinder where you make it yourself. I miss those days (choking hazards and all) but understand why we've moved on. Trying to make this fiddly thing with my arthritic hands resulted in one key piece bouncing across the ward.
He lost his head!
The dip certainly smelt the part, and the cereal stars were a lovely touch although 100% stale and inedible. Clearly designed to be smelt by the parents, and only eaten by the children it tasted foul. Im not sure whether this was also stale, but nobody wanted more of this and we binned it.
But when we tidied up we did find the guys head - and realised he was supposed to have a trumpet. Much better than the odd plastic car then.
Surprise score: Disappointed Surprise
The hard to get wrong Nuttella style dip was terrible, and the cheap plastic kit was actually really endearing (if not completely inappropriate for small people). As the cheapest and only non branded item I expected the focus to have been on the food, but really - again - the cost was mostly the packaging and as such it was a disappointment to the Junior Tester most of all.
The only things that she actually wanted to keep was all the stickers, and the plastic Pikachu (but she did keep trying to give that to her brothers) so for her - all the food was a disappointment but the DC girls stickers were the best surprise
To find out what happened to the Onion and whether that was any good tune in Thursday!
UPDATE TO DISAPPOINTMENT WARS ONE!
Being the sucker that I am I returned to the shop where the Gusto Mega Surprise crisps came from and got two more to give the the crazy colleagues who actually liked the crisps.
And their surprises were as follows
A large plastic green sheep - with a rabbit night time scene on it - and what do you see through the little window on the side?
Why - it's an aquarium of course! Reasonably low tech, but fairly interesting and as a prize in a 59p bag of crisps it's pretty cool. The crisps are still inedible.
The second prize was from the same range as my original prize which was in itself disappointing. This one's head bobbing action worked a little better but otherwise still a toddler targeted toy, and not the super hero toys that everyone else seemed to open on YouTube. Still a disappointment then.
27 May 2017
Caple Rd Cider (@DegustaboxUK) By @SpectreUK
It's rare I drink a cider, as I'm more of a beer kind of guy. It's even rarer that I drink a dry cider, as I usually prefer sweeter ciders. This Caple Rd dry cider was produced by Weston & Sons, in Herfordshire, who were established in 1880. It was very kindly sent to us from the online supermarket Degusta within a box of treats. We've been very lucky to have three of these boxes so far and are still sifting through the Foodstufffinds' possibilities. It's been a fairly hot and damp day here, and after a long trip to the gym and whilst watching the rain drip down from the grey sky, a dry cider suddenly appealed.
There was a pleasant fizz on opening the can and that familiar fermented cider apples smell. This golden almost amber dry cider filled my waiting beer glass excitedly. I say "beer glass", but it doesn't always have beer in it, often soft drinks and this time cider. On first taste I was quickly reminded about the difference between dry and sweet ciders. Fresh pressed apples, double filtered and slowly fermented with the finest yeast over an eighteen month maturation period, this cider smacks the tastebuds with it's dry bitterness from the outset. There is complex flavours here however, as there isn't just bitterness, there's sweetness moving into the aftertaste and left to linger. Leaving me wanting to pick up the glass for another hearty swig!
26 May 2017
Hagen Dazs Mango And Raspberry on a stick (@NLi10)
phew - it's a scorcher! Or at least it is in England, and relative to the rest of our weather. Before the inevitable rain of the bank holiday weekend let us quickly review icecreams again.
We return to the Hagen dazs range that imitates but surpasses the Magnums that we love so much but to try the fruitier version.
Freeze dried raspberries are one of my favourite things so sticking them on something automatically promotes it in my eyes. And these are good - they don't detract from the overall idea and remind me of the dipped Pocky.
And look at that marbeling
! The raspberry is deep and luscious and like the caramel has a unique (patented) deep swirl that means the fruit flavour builds towards a crashing finale. A superb way to spend the summer - all two days of it!
25 May 2017
Crackling Crisps (Marks and Spencer) By @Cinabar
Ok I actually tried these for the first time last week, but someone pointed out to me that last week was National Vegetarian Week, so I thought I best leave the review until today. Not that I did anything special for National Vegetarian Week it is just that it didn’t seem the most appropriate time to review meaty based snacks.
These Crackling Crisps were found in the chiller cabinet at Marks and Spencer and seemed to be in with the place where you would find posh picnic snacks, olives etc. They are not in a bag like most pork scratchings instead they are in a plastic tray and were kept chilled. There were enough to share in the pack, and indeed the idea of eating the whole contents would have been a bit much for me! The “crisps” are meat based and look like they are pork scratchings rolled to create a flat spiral.
I tried one and absolutely loved the flavour and texture. Although these are unquestionably crunchy, they had a lightness to them too, sort of like there was enough air mixed into stop them being too hard and instead they were nicely crispy. Flavour wise these were very much pork scratchings, they tasted meaty and fatty, and so a bit naughty but very tasty. They were seasoned nicely, with slat and pepper and were fun to snack on. These would be a great accompaniment to a picnic, but they felt a bit posh just to munch on as a casual snack.
24 May 2017
Snaffling Pig Colman’s Pork Crackling (@SnafflingPigCo) By @SpectreUK
Previously I have tried Snaffling Pig Salt and Vinegar Pork Crackling, and also tasted their super hot Pig of Doom chilli pork crackling. I must say I could happily eat the Salt and Vinegar flavour every day. The Pig of Doom were so hot I almost blew a gasket biting into them! These new Snaffling Pig Colman’s Pork Crackling seemed like a decent compromise. I have Colman’s English Mustard on my sandwiches almost everyday. I’ve never found a mustard I like more. So my favourite pork crackling laced with Colman’s English Mustard sounded like a gift from heaven - literally a gift as Snaffling Pig very kindly sent me these to try.
After a lengthy session at the gym I popped open a bottle of lager and then popped open the huge 300g jar. There was a decent porkish smell form the yellowish pork crackling jammed into the huge jar. On first taste these double cooked pork crackling melted in my mouth after a little encouragement from my old gnashers. Biting into the salted pork crackling there is an unmistakable mustard burn from the Colman’s, which is light and not overpowering, but definitely there. As I ate more and more the mustard burn built tickling my nose hairs. Yet don’t be put off if you don’t normally like mustard, as the flavour never distracts from the salty pork crackling. Only enhancing it, nibbling and tickling the senses as I munched more and more. Mmmm… Yum!
Information on the jar;
The 300g jar has 667 calories per 100g, having 55.9g of fat, 1g of sugar and 2.3g of salt. Please see photograph for ingredients.
23 May 2017
New Honeycomb Crunch Cornetto (Morrisons) By @Cinabar
The weather is heating up (albeit only a little), and so my focus is falling on the joys of summer ice-creams. I may well be eating this in doors, having had the heating on briefly earlier in the day to take away the chill, but it is technically May, so I’m running wth it.
This new Cornetto is honeycomb in flavour and goes the extra mile with chocolate topped with honeycomb pieces, honeycomb liquid filling, and honeycomb flavour ice cream. Aces. I took one out of the pack and unwrapped it found that the chocolate on the top was in a solid disk with crunchie honeycomb bits embedded in it. I ate this first and was impressed with the rich sweet flavours. Next stop was the ice cream which had a stunning taste to it, now I have to mention that I have a high tolerance for all things sweet, but this was sugary and divine. The creaminess of the ice-cream helped balance out the sugar rush a little, but I loved the rich sweet flavour. Inside the ice-cream was a honeycomb flavour sauce that just added to the magic, the taste was rich and just like liquid cinder toffee. The cornetto cone was lined with chocolate, which helps stops ice-cream dripping through, but also adds a nice touch of milk chocolate flavour. The cone was still firm and crisp when I came to eat it, and it was a nice finishing touch.
I loved these cornettos they were filled with all the rich sweet flavours of cinder toffee and caramel, and the ice cream was so nice I’d love a tub of it. Perfect for those with a sweet-tooth.
22 May 2017
Magnum Classic - Press To Crack Ice-Cream (Morrisons) By @Cinabar
So this is the new ice cream in a tub from Magnum. Magnum Ice lollies are always coated in a chocolate, and this ice ice-cream is no different. I know that sounds a bit weird, but inside the tub the ice-cream has a coat of chocolate all around it. The suggestion on the pack is to squeeze the tub and crack the chocolate which I did.
I could hear the foil under the lid making a noise when I cracked the chocolate, but it was still sealed when I opened it. In fact I found a sealed layer of thick chocolate under that too, which I had to break wth a spoon. There is certain layer of novelty to the Press To Crack nature of this ice cream tub, but I have to say all that broken chocolate made it difficult to serve, and some chocolate was lost onto the kitchen surface. I found this a bit annoying to be honest, and thought it would have been fine for them to have pre-mixed all the chocolate shards in, they actually had already done that with some of the chocolate.
Anyway I managed to share some out into pots, and gave it the taste test. I immediately forgave the difficulty in neatly serving the ice cream as the flavours were gorgeous. The base vanilla ice-cream was very creamy and very sweet, it had a lovely soothing feel and hit the spot. There was plenty of chocolate and the slivers of chocolate added a good mix of texture, which was satisfying to bite into. The chocolate added a lovely taste too, vanilla and chocolate do work rather well together (think Stracciatella) and its addition gave this a very luxurious feel. In short the odd nature of the Press To Crack is easily forgiven when you taste how good the ice-cream is, and this has put itself firmly on the buy it again list.
21 May 2017
Jam filled monkeys and Jaffa larvae (@NLi10)
I've been raiding the Polski Skleps again and found a few interesting treats.
They seem from the packaging to be variations on the Jaffa Cake theme. Take some sponge, slap on some sticky stuff, cover it in chocolate and decorate the box with pretty pictures.
Blogger still doesn't like rotating pictures |
The one on the box looks like a monkey...
...the ones in the box look like the Dr. Who villain version of a monkey. I can picture these following you down a corridor in a dramatic fashion. So what are they made of?
Dark chocolate, banana foam and apple jam! And aftertaste - these are mostly aftertaste.
Short aside, when I was tiny my parents got me my own tiny sweetshop with lots of things to give out and play with and eat. The very last thing that got eaten from the whole thing was the foam bananas. I think that one foam banana at a time is enough for anyone.
These taste of foam banana with a strong dark chocolate on top and an aftertaste of synthetic apples and bring back memories of that time. Similarly I will be giving most of these away. They aren't bad - indeed the quality on these is much higher than I'd expected - but they aren't something I'm going to crave.
Next we have Krakuski fasolki (which seems to actually be made by Bahlzen) a small, elongated Jaffa cake - in keeping with the above jungle theme these look like the grubs that celebrities are forced to eat on television to revive their careers. The art on the bag centres around an odd green blob which I guess must be on the TV adverts or something but appears to have nothing to do with the flavour shape or size. Maybe he is what the larvae eventually hatch into.
While the above monkeys look immaculate but misshapen, these have been jiggled around in the bag and are worn down. They are very bite size, but what is in that bite?
Mostly cake with a tiny bit of very strong Jaffa! The flavour is OK but again there is a really acidic aftertaste which put me off eating more than a couple - and I can eat a pack of Tesco Value Jaffa Cakes in one sitting without any assistance. Nothing special, and something I'm sure I could much through the remainder of the bag eventually but these can go on the sharing pile and I'll move on to nicer things.
20 May 2017
Wiper and True Milk Shake Stout By @SpectreUK
This Milk Shake Stout was produced by Wiper and True, in Bristol. It's called a milk stout due to the fact that it was brewed using sugar from cow's milk to give it a sweet and creamy flavour. Brewing stout in this way has been undertaken for generations in Bristol. Wiper and True have added oodles of Chocolate malt laced with vanilla, as well as Pale, Crystal, Roasted Barley and Flaked Malted Oats, for their individual spin on this traditional stout. The hop utilised was Bramling Cross, with Surebrew yeast left fermenting in the bottom of the bottle. Leaving as late as I could to the 'best before' date for the fermentation to have the fullest effect, I couldn't wait to pop the bottle cap and dig right in…
I could see what they meant by "copious amounts of chocolate malt" as that was the first smell that accosted my nostrils on opening. I half expected this almost black stout to pour out milky white considering the name. This 4.9% volume Milk Shake stout has a unique creaminess to it, I suspect this is from the cow's sugar it was brewed with and also the added vanilla. Strong sweet Chocolate and Crystal malts hit my tastebuds first, followed by the Roasted Barley smoothed out by the milk vanilla creaminess, with a hint of bitter hops and Pale malt into the aftertaste. If this type of stout has been around for generations, then where has it been all my life?
19 May 2017
Chocolate Fruit and Nut Salami (Marks & Spencer) By @Cinabar
Sometimes you need to take a second look at something on the shelves in the shop to really get it. I had a second look at this and was still a bit bemused. It is a Chocolate Fruit and Nut Salami from the new Spirit of Summer range from Marks and Spencer. Problem one, is a chocolate salami particularly summery? I have no concept of how to categorise it. Secondly did I just say chocolate salami, yep it appears that I did…
Ok I’m just going to run with it, I will stop thinking about the why, and get down to the taste test. The Chocolate Fruit and Nut Salami is traditionally packaged (for a salami) and is wrapped in paper. I unpacked it and fund the salami to have a white coating, which looks like some salamis, but on this one is just icing sugar. It was quite firm and I wasn’t sure how to share it, it doesn’t break and I didn’t fancy just biting in! I actually looked at the packet for instructions, but couldn’t find any. I figured if this was an actual (meat based) salami I’d chop it on a chopping board, so that is what I went for. It was quite firm but I managed to get slices to share.
Weirdly when I tried a slice it wan’t too hard at all, the praline nature was actually fairly soft. The taste was absolutely fab, there was loads of texture from the nuts packed inside, and the flavours of praline. There was a hint of the promised fruit in the orange peel that was mixed in, this added a nice sweetness and mixed up the flavour. This is a very rich chocolate treat, and the novelty nature of it would make it an excellent gift. I’m sure it would be fun at the end of a dinner party too, but as much as I loved the flavours I would find it a bit awkward buying another one for myself for snacking on. It is worth it once, just for fun though.
18 May 2017
Taifun Black Forest Tofu (@NLi10)
Mmm Tofu... Specifically Taifun Black Forest Tofu from the lovely vegan shop.
It's essentially meatloaf I guess, but it has a lovely soft texture with a tougher outer. So let's cook it!
Mmm. Looks good! And it smells fantastic. Just enough bite to hold it together, but still soft enough to feel like Tofu. The little bits inside really add to the experience too.
Proper restaurant grade stuff. And something I'll pick up again.
17 May 2017
Ubuntu Cola (Waitrose) By SpectreUK
I'm not much a cola drinker. In fact some years ago I went off it a bit. Not for any real reason, just that I prefer other soft drinks on the market, such as lemonade, limeade, ginger ale or shandy. So when I saw this Ubuntu Cola on the shelf in my local supermarket I thought maybe I should give it a go, especially as it has a Fairtrade mark for farmers and workers in developing countries.
On opening the smartly designed white can there was a decent smell of cola. I don't know what I was expecting, but it really does smell like regular cola. Having said that, it doesn't taste like regular cola and it's certainly not as painfully fizzy on the tongue as some soft drinks can be. Ubuntu Cola has a fine sweetness, a not altogether unpleasant fizz, and a slightly fruitier sweet aftertaste that isn't saccharin or syrupy sweet, but the mark of real sugar. Okay, so it's not 'Lite', but it certainly is Cola!
Information on the can;
The 330ml can contains 42 calories per 100ml, with 0g fat, 10.4g of sugar, and 0g of salt. Ingredients include; fruit and vegetable extracts, carbonated water, sugar, colour; caramel E1500, phosphoric acid, potassium sorbate, caffeine, and natural flavourings.
16 May 2017
Bushido Premium Coffee – 24Karat Gold (By @cinabar)
When the lovely folks from Bushido got in touch and stated that their coffee was like liquid gold I have to admit I assumed they were using a metaphor. This coffee really does contain gold, there is 24karat gold leaf mixed in jar, and you can immediately see it glinting in the light. Bushido is an instant Japanese coffee and very obviously aimed at the premium market made with Arabica beans, and only the best 20% of the crop. I peeled back the lid and got a bit more of a close up of the gold, and couldn’t quite decide whether to add it to the cup or start sifting! I decided to experience the drink as it was intended.
I added a heaped teaspoon to my large mug and added boiling water, first things first – the gold floats! This makes the drink look wonderful, and really shows off the gold to the full. It is best if you don’t add milk though, as the black coffee and gold contrast each other and the drink glitters.
I’m not going to argue that there isn’t some novelty with this coffee, of course there is. It has shiny 24K gold dust mixed in with it! However once you are passed the novelty and have impressed the people you are making drinks for with the posh sparkles in their mug, at that heart of this is an excellent cup of coffee. The flavour is surprisingly smooth and easy to drink, with a lovely easy going taste. Its more of a relaxed afternoon treat, with it velvety flavour. I think people will buy this coffee for its gold element (in both sense of the word), but rest assured it makes a good cup of coffee too. What better way to impress after a dinner party than with 24Karat Gold coffee. If you fancy your own jar the Bushido Premium Coffee is available from Harrods (of course) and some select other stores: www.horsgroup.com
15 May 2017
Degusta Box April 2017 (@DegustaboxUK) By @Cinabar
It is that time again when a fabulous box of interesting foods arrived from Degusta. I love the mystery of these boxes and not knowing what you will find, as a food review blogger I can’t help getting excited by the prospect of new foods.
I was impressed with this months box, it had a good selection of items, my favourite of which was the new muesli from Dorset Cereals, Machu Pichu, which is flavoured with coffee. Yes, now I can have coffee in the cereal bowl and in the mug!
There were a good selection of snacks too, with some lovely salt and pepper lattice crisps from Seabrook and some Hot Chilli VIP Nuts, which I’m hoping aren't too hot!
There are some freeze dried snacks from Nothing But. The fruity version (strawberry and banana) I will take to work to munch on as a healthy snack. The other variety was a bit different and is freeze dried veg, namely peas and sweetcorn! Think that will end up as a review, so watch this space.
There was a nice big bag of whole wheat pasta from Garofalo, that is naturally high in vitamins and fibre. Think that will be tested out with a good old fashioned Bolognese sauce covering it.
For liquid refreshment there is a bottle of Fentimen’s Pink Grapefruit Tonic Water. Fentiments have always been a favourite brand here at Foodstuff Finds, so I’m sure this won’ disappoint. Spectre was quick to pick up the organic Czech lager Celia that was included, and he will be writing about that on one Saturday.
The other goodies included some sugar free Polo mints in a tub, a very curious chocolate bar from Doisy and Dam flavoured with quinoa and smoked tea, macaroons and hemp seed (which you can use as topping on breakfast cereal).
This was another fab box for us with loads of new products for us to try and plenty of interesting snacks for us to test out. Watch this space for further reviews.
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