Dragon’s Keep IPA (Morrisons) By @SpectreUK

I've always been into sword and sorcery, Warhammer, Dungeons & Dragons, and castles and sieges, so the front of this Dragon's Keep IPA immediately appealed to me. The Welsh Red Dragon trying to take the keep from the brave Welsh soldiers within. Oh, I would love to read a good fantasy genre novel like that.

At 5% in volume this India Pale Ale from Tomos Watkin, Drop Bear Beer Company, was brewed with a mixture of US hops; Tettnang, Ekuanot, Citra, and El Dorado, for tropical fruits and a good citrus bite, as well as malted barley, wheat and yeast. From the Red Dragon on the front of the bottle, I'd have loved to have seen and tasted a touch of spicy red rye in this beer too. Maybe I'm just too keen on rye beer, but I can't seem to find many on the market these days.

I was pleased to see Dragon's Keep IPA had an rich deep brown almost amber colour on pouring. There was a biscuit barley malt aroma with spices and citrus from the hops. Complex in flavour, the sweet biscuit barley malts shone throughout each mouthful, with crisp citrus hops and spices for the bite, and more malts into the aftertaste. Very flavoursome indeed with my cold meats and cheese platter for dinner.

Lindt Lindor Dark Mint Chocolate Truffles (Ocado) By @Cinabar

My brain was expecting After Eights, and it couldn’t let go of the comparison. I love After Eights; we only have them occasionally, but I’ve eaten so many over the years that I can taste them perfectly in my mind. When Lindt Lindor released their Dark Mint Chocolate Truffles, the first whisper from my subconscious was: giant After Eight in a ball. Naturally, I had to track them down.

I managed to get a box in an online grocery order and immediately tucked in. Unfortunately, all I could do was compare them to After Eights, and yes, I did feel bad about it. The chocolate shell is a proper dark chocolate: slightly bitter with a strong cocoa flavour, and not at all sweet. The filling is minty and creamy, making it much milder. While there’s plenty of peppermint, it doesn’t deliver that intense, sweet, minty blast of fondant I was hoping for. Instead, it’s subtler and less sugary.

If this Lindt Lindor Dark Mint Chocolate Truffles had been the first mint chocolates I’d ever tried, I think I’d have been quite pleased. But years of After Eights have conditioned me to expect more sweetness and a triple hit of peppermint. Because of that, I came away a little disappointed, wishing for a bolder flavour. Oh well, perhaps I’ll add a box of After Eights to my next shop, just for old times’ sake.

Christmas Bits & Bobs (Sainsbury’s) [@NLi10]

 Christmas approaching means lots of new nibbles to try

First up we have tiny pasties - full of turkey!

Look at the cuteness! Unfortunately this isn’t the luxury range so it’s basically turkey sausage meat. Shame as these look ace.

Here we have chicken bravas - from the luxury range.

They don’t look like much...

But they taste amazing - chicken and potatoes were both cool.

McVities Signature Chocolate Cream Swirls (Ocado) By @SpectreUK

I don't think I've ever seen Chocolate Cream Swirls biscuits before. From the packet of these McVities Signature Chocolate Cream Swirls they look like a really complicated biscuit to make, but I guess they have machines for everything these days. A swirl of biscuit and chocolate biscuit sounds complicated enough to me, but they also have a gooey chocolate flavoured cream centre.

I like chocolate tea. It's rare I find a decent hot chocolate that tastes of actual chocolate, rather than water and reminiscence of chocolate, or something a bit milky with a chocolate aroma. Besides, chocolate tea has pretty much zero calories, so with fairly careful eating during the day, I managed to fit in the whole packet of McVities Signature Chocolate Cream Swirls in for my pudding, and with a pot of low calorie ice cream to accompany it.

First off I thought the packaging of these McVities Signature Chocolate Cream Swirls was pretty smart looking. It had a classical indulgent feel to the design. On opening, the dozen swirl patterned biscuits were very pretty indeed and with a gooey filling. The biscuits are smaller than expected. These biscuits do not snap, I tried for the photograph of the biscuit filling, and one half simply exploded and went everywhere. Don't try it at home. They do bite in half perfectly well though if you want to slowly indulge yourself like I did.

These McVities Signature Chocolate Cream Swirls had a soft creamy dark chocolate fondant inside. The outer biscuit and chocolate biscuit swirl was very crunchy indeed. I could taste the chocolate, and also taste the biscuit, and the sweet chocolate filling as everything washed around my palate. Every mouthful had all the chocolaty biscuity creamy flavours. These indulgent biscuits were really really nice, and went perfectly with my chocolate tea and caramel ice cream. Yum.

Information on the packet; There were 12 biscuits in the 142g packet, at 61 calories per biscuit, with 3.2g of fat, 4.2g of sugar, and 0.06g of salt. Please see photograph for the ingredients.

St. Pierre Millionaire’s Waffle (Spa) By @Cinabar

I really enjoy a Stroopwafel with a coffee. These large biscuits are made of two layers of flattened waffle filled with caramel in the middle. The idea is that the biscuit is large enough to sit on the rim of your mug of tea or coffee, allowing the heat from the drink to soften the caramel. It’s a bit of a novelty, but the flavours are always delicious. St. Pierre make Stroopwafels, but I recently spotted their Millionaire’s Waffle while snack hunting and decided to give it a try.

The St. Pierre Millionaire’s Waffle is essentially a Stroopwafel covered in milk chocolate, a tempting upgrade! The only drawback was that I couldn’t warm it over my drink as the chocolate would have melted, making it rather tricky to handle. Instead, I opted to dunk it in my tea, chocolate coating and all.

The flavours were delightful. The bendy yet crunchy biscuit layers were spot-on, the caramel had a rich, buttery sweetness, and the chocolate added a touch of indulgence. It felt like a luxurious treat and paired beautifully with my cuppa. I did miss the ritual of heating the caramel, but as indulgent biscuits go, this one was truly enjoyable.

Praline Dream Latte (Leon) By @Cinabar

On the way back from an event, we stopped for some much-needed caffeine to fuel the drive home. The service station was a bit posher than expected and, instead of the usual Costa or Greggs, it had a branch of Leon. We decided to give it a try.

I ordered their seasonal special, a Praline Dream Latte, while Spectre went for a no-frills black coffee. The cost for these two regular drinks—one of which was the simplest on the menu—came to £8.30, and I was already regretting my decision.

I took a sip of my latte, only to find another annoyance: it was barely at drinking temperature, far from piping hot. For the price they’re charging, the least they could do is ensure the milk is properly reheated between customers, rather than letting it cool. I wasn’t impressed.

That said, the flavour was lovely. The coffee was smooth, with notes of caramel and a rich, nutty taste. It was sweet but not overly so, and the flavours were well-balanced. It turned out to be a good drink overall and provided the boost we needed for the rest of the journey.

However, the steep price and lack of heat would make me think twice about purchasing from Leon again.

Pact Coffee Advent Calendar - Spoiler Free Intro then Day 1-3 [@NLi10] @pactcoffee

 After enjoying the coffee of Costa Rica in all it's forms I decided to treat myself to a luxury coffee for at home - then spotted a way to try 25 different coffees at home before I picked one!

No spoilers for any of the coffee included until after the bold break below.

Pact are one of those coffee companies that show up on all your socials if you mention anything to do with hot drinks on any Google platform, but seemed to have the correct balance of eco-credentials nice varieties and a good deal on.

For £35 delivered you get 25 coffees and a thing to make them (or at least I did due to a code) which is £1.40 a day.  A little more expensive than most of the calendars out there, but so much more exciting.

And I've not tried the blue thing yet - but I suspect that'll be useful for work and similar

Because at home I inherited this beast! We've cleared the old work office and things like this people used for a few months then left behind were either donated or taken home.

Each day you get a card with facts and the coffee to drink.  By the end of it you'll either be an enlightened coffee drinker or aware of the fact that you might as well buy the cheap ones as you can't tell the difference.

The ground coffee you get makes 500ml of coffee according to the company which means if you switch to smaller coffee style cups you get two per day - which is actually decent value.

It goes in the filter paper in both the blue thing, and the big black dripper.

And day 1 looks like this in my squirrel mug

Spoilers from this point if you are getting the calendar!! 

(Days 1-3 anyway)

all gone?

OK.

Day 1 was pretty cool - very much a novelty and was fun to try a new variety after the couple of years old coffee I'd been drinking that was abandoned with the machine.

I decided that old coffee was 2/5 and that I'd rate any I liked more higher, and less lower - simple!

The stories are quite funny, and the hints and mouthfeel are definitely aimed at someone more sophisticated than I.

I enjoyed this one - but wanted a little scope before I started having to invent new ratings.  I settled on a 3/5 as it was really nice but didn't make me go wow.

Day 2 filled the house with an amazing scent.  The first one was good - but this was what you want to draw people into your café like cartoon characters floating on the aroma.

The flavours were great too, smooth and satisfying, and it even had an aftertaste I enjoyed.

Best so far - and if this was the peak of the calendar I'd be fine with that but I gave it a 4/5 as surely one of the remaining 23 can go even further.  As I'm putting all the little cards (great feature) in order this goes at the front for now and if it ended today would be the one I buy a bag of.

Day 3 was coffee coffee.  A little bitter, a little too lingering.  Nothing to complain about - just good, solid filter coffee.

I put this at a 2.5 as it's the least appealing of the three so far - but still one I'd happily pick up and drink should it appear again.

I'm not sure that I'll make a regular feature of this, but come January I'll have a list of what I like and don't like in a coffee and a cool xmas themed box to store the flavours I do eventually end up ordering from them (or Waitrose it seems) to pick up.

So far though - it's been enjoyable and even my tea drinker self has noticed differences (phew) so it's possibly a fun gift for a hard to buy for person who has a drippy coffee thing or other coffee device sitting gathering dust.

Schöfferhofer Grapefruit Beer (Morrisons) By @SpectreUK

I am looking forward to a fry-up tonight. I have sausages, bacon, eggs and beans. I found myself gazing into my cavernous almost empty beer fridge searching for something sort of breakfasty to wash down my fry-up. I came across this Schöfferhofer Grapefruit beer.

I love grapefruit juice with my breakfast, especially at a hotel. It's that sour pick-me-up and slap me around the face waker-upper to get me going. So a breakfast grapefruit wheat beer sounds like a dream with a fry-up, or a Full English if I was having it in a hotel.

Produced in Germany, Schöfferhofer Grapefruit beer is a low ABV at 2.5%. It has a wheat body and with added grapefruit juice, lemon juice, orange juice, barley malt and hops. This beer sounds mouthwatering. I better get the frying pans.

On opening the 500ml can there was a grapefruit aroma to the beer inside. Pouring pink and frothy, Schöfferhofer Grapefruit had a sweet grapefruit flavour to begin with, followed by fruity zesty hops, and wheatiness into the aftertaste. This grapefruit beer went lovely with my fry up.

Bebeto Freeze-Dried Crunchy Marshmallows (Spa) By @Cinabar

These aren’t your regular marshmallows—they’re crunchy marshmallows. That concept alone sounds a little odd, but with the growing trend of freeze-dried sweets, I couldn’t resist picking up a bag of these Bebeto Freeze-Dried Crunchy Marshmallows from a local shop.

 

Upon opening the bag, I discovered that while they were light and solid, they felt almost hollow—as if tapping them might produce an echo! They were larger than I expected, which made biting into them feel strange at first. However, they soon gave way and crumbled, an unusual experience for a marshmallow.

The flavour was exactly what you’d expect: that sweet, vanilla-like taste typical of marshmallows. The texture, though, was a mix of crunchy and soft, which I found enjoyable as a novelty. Still, let’s be honest—the best thing about marshmallows is their soft, squidgy texture.

I’ll happily finish this bag of Bebeto Freeze-Dried Crunchy Marshmallows (freeze-dried space food, anyone?), but my next marshmallow purchase will probably be the classic variety.

Christmas Sandwiches 2024 - leftovers & vegan [@NLi10]

 It's that time of year again - discount Christmas sandwiches!

To reduce waste I've been lucky enough to be able to pick up yesterday's sandwiches for a while at work - and the Christmas ones have already started to appear.

First up is the multi-meat feast - Boxingday Leftovers sandwich

And it's stacked! You need to enjoy coleslaw, and mad mix of flavours - and the meat isn't as chunky as I'd maybe have liked - but this one is a hit and I'll be picking more up.  Odd that the chicken isn't turkey - but that's fine.

This one has no turkey too - because it's vegan!

It does have the turkey vibe though and loads of great flavours.  I did enjoy this one although it's never going to pass for meat it does certainly pass the taste test and I hope to get a few of these before they disappear in Jan.

Walkers Sensations Crushed Sea Salt & Black Peppercorn Crisps (Tesco) By @SpectreUK

Sea salt and black pepper crisps are one of my favourite crisps flavours. They pretty much go with anything from a beef or ham sandwich to tuna sandwich and anything in between. They usually come in huge sharing bags, and it's fairly rare to find the flavour in individual bags.

These Walkers Sensations Crushed Sea Salt & Black Peppercorn Crisps should be quite a treat with my tuna and red pepper sandwich for lunch. I like my salt and black pepper crisps to be a little fiery. So here is some hope.

On opening the packet there was a mild salt and black pepper aroma from the lightly flecked crisps inside. On first crunchy taste, these Walkers Sensations Crushed Sea Salt & Black Peppercorn Crisps are definitely more sea salt than black peppercorn. Mild in flavour, they complemented my flavoursome sandwich, but there was no real pepper fire.

Although I do rather like this flavour, I would be inclined to buy sea salt and black pepper crisps with a bit more umph than these.

Information on the packet; The 40g bag had 194 calories, with 10g of fat, 0.4g of sugar and 0.26g of salt. Please see photograph for the ingredients.

M&Ms Crispy Santa Bar (Tesco) By @Cinabar

With Halloween behind us and the first snow of the season dusting the ground, it feels like the perfect time to dive into some festive treats. While I’m not quite ready to put up the Christmas tree, I’m more than happy to unwrap and taste test this adorable M&Ms Crispy Santa Bar. I picked up this little delight from Tesco, where it was proudly displayed on a seasonal stand, clearly signalling the shift into Christmas mode. Back home, it made the perfect mid-afternoon snack.

The bar itself is a compact, mini treat, ideal for a quick festive indulgence. It’s shaped like one of the M&Ms characters sporting a Santa hat, which adds to its charm. Beneath the smooth milk chocolate shell lies a sweet, vanilla-flavoured truffle filling. Hidden within that are crunchy, brightly coloured mini M&Ms Crispy pieces, adding a delightful texture and festive flair.

The combination works wonderfully, the creamy truffle, crunchy M&Ms, and rich milk chocolate all coming together in a satisfyingly festive bite. Cute, delicious, and just the right size, this treat is a definite win in my book.

I’m already excited to hunt down more Christmas snacks to review. It feels like the festive season is officially here!

Steakhouse Angus Gourmet Meal (Burger King) By @Cinabar

On our way back from a road trip, we stopped at a service station to grab dinner. The options included a Burger King, and we both realised it had been years since we’d last visited one. So, we decided to treat ourselves to a burger.

As we browsed the menu, the new Steakhouse Angus Gourmet Burger caught our eye. It sounded delightful, so we each ordered the meal. Fortunately, our order was served quickly—just before a large dance troupe from a coach queued up!

The food arrived promptly and looked great. I started with the chips and was pleasantly surprised. Who knew Burger King chips were this good? They’re far superior to those from KFC and McDonald’s, with their crispy exterior and fluffy interior. I absolutely loved them.

The burger itself looked appealing when unwrapped. The tangy rocket lettuce and smoky cheese packed a flavourful punch, complementing the rich, beefy taste of the Angus patty. It was a satisfying meal—far more indulgent than one from McDonald’s.

This pit stop was just what we needed, and it reminded me how much I’ve been missing out by not visiting Burger King more often. I won’t let that much time pass before my next visit!

M&S Plant Kitchen Marshmallows - Vegan & good! [@NLi10]

 Propper marshmallows are a thing of joy.  Very few companies actually make the real soft pink & white ones now - and none use the right colours and flavours for the pink ones.  This said, there are opportunities for this to be improved upon, without going into the American territory of hard crystalised sugar and staying in the gooey fluffy realm.

M&S got these in ready for Christmas as part of the Halloween snack haul, and they are pretty good!

They don't really look perfect - the outsides aren't as smooth as the gelatine ones, but the insides are soft and the flavours are good.  And they are so light and morish that I don't feel bad keep popping them in.

I've not tried these on an open fire yet, or had them floating in a lovely dark hot chocolate - but as the weather worsens I'm sure both of those will happen soon!

Enville Ginger Real Ale (Cost Cutter) By @SpectreUK

I rather enjoyed my real ale with ginger last week, so I'm hoping this Enville Ginger Real Ale will wash down my Chicken Kiev with Smiley faces tonight. This a blonde ale infused with root ginger, brewed with Maris Otter Pale, floor malted barley, and English Hops. The bottle suggests spicy food, so I'll dig out my favourite Cholula Hot Sauce from the fridge to amply douse my Chicken Kiev. At 4.6% Enville Ginger was brewed at the Enville Brewery just down the road in South Staffordshire. They have been brewing ales since 1993, and I've been drinking them from around then myself.

On opening the bottle there was a sweet pale malt aroma with a touch of herbal hops and ginger spice. Pale blonde in colour and pouring with a fluffy head, Enville Ginger had an immediate ginger fire to it that went a little up my nose. Very flavoursome indeed, the ginger burnt throughout the bite of the herbal hops, and touched the sweet pale malts fizzling out into the aftertaste. It went perfectly with my Chicken Kiev and spicy hot sauce. Cheers!

Marathon Retro Edition Snickers (Morrisons) By @Cinabar

We’ve been re-watching some classic comedy shows from the 1980s and 1990s, most recently Friends. So, as you can imagine, I’m fully in the right headspace for this delightful blast from the past: Marathon Retro Edition Snickers. Like Opal Fruits, there will always be a part of my brain that refers to classic confectionery by its original name, no matter what the packaging says now.

The retro packaging made me smile and transported me straight back to my childhood. Yes, it’s essentially a Snickers, but trust me, it tastes better (even if only in my head) when it’s called Marathon. Just look at that cute packaging:

I gave it a try, and okay, it’s a Snickers; chocolate, nougat, and nuts, a winning combination as always. But I bought these for the nostalgia, and on that front, they absolutely delivered.

They’ve re-released these before, and I know I’ll pick up another pack when they return in a year or so. I can’t help it, they just make me smile.

One final note: I bought this multipack from Morrisons for £1.95. Please don’t spend a fortune on them through eBay or similar sites, they’re in the shops right now at a reasonable price!

Covent Garden soup co - Pumpkin Spice [@NLi10]

 Spooky season is over - but autumn is still in vogue. Harvests have been harvested and pumpkins carved and discarded. But wait - what if we actually ate some?

The Covent Garden soup company seem to agree and have these lovely long dated special edition pumpkin soups - and they have lots of lovely bits in them.

Lightly spiced with warming chilli - perfect

Well with a dash of balsamic and a handful of chilli pumpkin seeds to add some more crunch.

More please! 🎃