Chocolarder 72% Ashaninka Peruvian Rainforest chocolate [@Nli10]

 We first found this brand because of the insanely dark 100% variety we found on holiday once, but now it's showing up in a few more places it's worth dipping back in - especially as this version is likely to be a bigger hit with the masses.

This is purest chocolate, treating the raw product like an art form or an expensive wine.  At nearly £5 for a 70g bar you'll instantly know if this is something that's for you.  

The packaging is as considered as the journey it's take to get to you

and every step is like unboxing an expensive gadget - but necessary for the plastic-free safety of the bar inside. And oh what a bar!

This is certainly giftable chocolate if you know someone who appreciates the stronger and more sensual side of the snack.

The tasting notes are indeed spot on - this has a fruity richness that suggests hints of sweet treats that are not one of the two ingredients (cocoa, sugar).  The red fruit is the main flavour, tasting almost like a winter fruits pudding, with the sharp aftertaste of the cocoa providing the rest.  

Where as the 100% dark was the perfect accompaniment to a sweeter treat this is perfectly snackable as it is - but I rarely have more than a couple of bites at a time - enough to savour the flavour but not so much that you loose track of all the sensations.

I'll definitely return to the brand just to see how they've taken on other styles of chocolate.  A big hit for me.

Kezie Foods: Kangaroo Rump Steak [Review by @CaptainKindling]

We got offered a large selection of exotic meats that none of our regular reviewers were brave enough to try so I invited a good friend of mine, and fellow blogger CaptainKindling to give them a try.  If you want to read more of his stuff then head on over to his regular home of Games & Tea and see what you find...

Kezie Foods: Kangaroo Rump Steak

Following on from the rather nice Crocodile burgers, my next dinner choice from exotic meat supplier Kezie Foods was Kangaroo Rump Steak.  I mentioned previously that I've had Kangaroo once before but didn't really do justice to it, so this time around I was determined to do things properly and make a decent meal out of it!  Fortunately the cooking guide on Kezie's website tells you everything you need to know about making the most out of your exotic meats, and so I was only to happy to put the fate of my dinner in their hands.

After three days of defrosting the steak in the fridge, I removed it from the vacuum packaging, patted it dry with some kitchen roll, and then left it on the chopping board for 20 minutes to reach room temperature.  The product page, cooking guide and how-to video all suggest that exotic steaks are best cooked medium-rare.  Having chosen to pan fry the 'Roo I followed the guide, heated a little olive oil in the frying pan, and seared the meat all over before cooking it for 1 1/2 minutes on each side.  Afterwards I placed it on a wire rack to keep it from sitting in its juices, covered it with some foil to keep the heat in, and plated up the rest of the meal ready for the big taste test!  The Kezie guides suggested serving the steak with a little side-salad, but I decided to follow the traditional pub-grub approach of having it with chips and peas.

Initial thoughts?  Well Kangaroo definitely tastes much better having been lightly fried than it did having been half-cremated on a barbeque!  The gamey flavour comes through strongly, but it isn't overpowering.  I refrained from seasoning the steak as I didn't want to risk losing the 'Roo's flavour, but it's definitely a meat which could be lightly seasoned without losing its identity.  There was a small amount of gristle in the steak, but not nearly as much as you'll find in beef, so cutting around it requires only minimal effort.

One thing I would suggest is that if you like your steak medium-rare then it's probably better to cook it for slightly longer than the 1 1/2 minutes on each side suggested.  Using those guidelines mine came out rare which is actually my usual steak preference, but may not have been to my liking if I'd preferred my meat a little less red.  Having said that, even cooked rare it did come out pretty tough, so overcooking with Kangaroo is definitely something to be avoided!  I've spoken to a few friends who have tried 'Roo steaks, and they all agree that it's a meat that needs strong jaw muscles!  But tough or not, it was nicely juicy, and the flavour was a definite winner with me.  I'd thoroughly recommend them to any steak eater!

Kangaroo rump steaks from Kezie will set you back £4.95 for a 225g steak (as shown here), or £5.50 for a pack of 2 smaller steaks (250g combined), which means there's not a great deal of price difference between these and good-quality beef steaks.

Kezie Foods - Crocodile Burgers [Review by @CaptainKindling]

Kezie Foods - Crocodile Burgers

A few short years ago, if you told someone you'd had a nice juicy llama steak for last night's dinner you'd be given a strange look at best, and considered an inhuman monster at worst.  More recently, however, there seems to be a growing trend of weird and wonderful meats making their way to our dinner tables and onto our barbeques.  In fact it's not uncommon for Christmas markets to offer up a reindeer burger for those who think Rudolph just looks too tasty to pass up.

I have, in the past, had the pleasure of sampling zebra and kangaroo steaks (which I probably didn't particularly do justice to, by dicing them up into kebabs and throwing them on the barbeque), as well as ostrich burgers, and these early experiences of exotic meats have certainly gone down well.  I am a self-described "enthusiastic carnivore", so when Kezie Foods offered to send Foodstuff Finds a selection of their wares, I was more than happy to step up to the plate (literally) and see how they stacked up.

Whilst Kezie do have a wide range of more traditional meats on offer, it's their substantial exotic section which turns heads, featuring steaks, sausages, burgers and ready meals from sources most of us wouldn't normally consider at mealtimes.  The generous selection provided for the review consisted of the following:

• Crocodile Burgers
• Zebra Meatballs
• Game Hot Pot
• Rosé Veal Vindaloo
• Thai Green Seafood Soup
• Mahi Mahi Portions
• Marlin Loin Portions
• Kangarooo Rump Steak
• Octopus Tentacles
• Horse Striploin Fillet Steaks
• Ostrich Fan Fillet

If I want to do justice to these tantalising offerings then there's no way then can be squeezed into a single review, so I'll be splitting them across a few articles as I slowly empty my freezer over the coming weeks!

Crocodile Burgers

After an afternoon of indecisiveness and torment, I finally settled on Crocodile Burgers to be the first on the plate!  Crocodile may be new, but burgers on the whole are comfortable and familiar, so they seemed like one of the safer options to ease myself in.  And crocodile is something I've been wanting to try for a long time, as Hollywood has made it abundantly clear that alligator barbeques very well, so I'm taking a leap of faith that their toothier cousin is just as delicious.

With a couple of exceptions, most of Kezie's products are covered by their cooking guides and videos on their website and Youtube channel.  I have to confess I'm not usually the most patient of cooks in the world - I don't rush cooking times, but I'll run roughshod over the preparation stage to get my dinner in the oven or on the hob asap!  To justice to this selection, however, I'm going to exercise some rare self-restraint, and follow Kezie's instructions to the letter - I have to assume they know what they're talking about!

So with this in mind I took the unheard of step of removing the burgers from the fridge and allowing them to reach room temperature for 20 minutes before putting them under the grill.  In an ideal world I'd have liked to try barbequeing them, but given the weather and my lack of garden this seemed like an impractical option to say the least, so the grill became my fallback option.  Kezie also recommended brushing the burgers with oil to help them sear - again this isn't something I usually do with my burgers, but I wanted to do this properly and so stuck with their guidance.  Normally I'm a big fan of olive oil, but I didn't want to overpower the taste of a new meat with such a distinctive flavour, so I opted for simple sunflower oil.

The first thing which I couldn't help but notice after cooking is just how lean crocodile meat is!  I'm a man who enjoys his burgers, but I can always guarantee that when I remove them from the grill after cooking there'll be a veritable lake of grease in the bottom of the grill pan.  With the crocodile there was barely a drop, setting the burgers off to a very promising start!
Whilst I know it's typical to garnish burgers with relish, salad and so on, I served these up just on plain and simple rolls so that nothing would interfere with the croc's flavour.  With dinner plated up, it was time to see if they were worth the anticipation...

Absolutely!  As you can see above, crocodile is a white meat, and its flavour was far more delicate than the tastebud-assault of your typical dark-meat beefburger.  The consistency was just what a burger should be - it didn't disintegrate at the merest hint of contact with a bread roll, and it wasn't like trying to tear chunks out of a steak.  I had tried sticking to the barbeque guideline of cooking for 4 minutes on each side under a medium grill, but after that period they still didn't quite seem cooked, so I gave them an extra 2 minutes on each side and this seemed to have them cooked to perfection.  Being so lean, there was no issue with grease leaking out from all sides with every bite, but this by no means left them dry - "juicy" is perhaps not a word I'd use to describe them, but certainly not dry.
And as for the flavour?  Well that's a tough one to put into words!  The term 'unique' gets used far too often, as in "It's got quite a unique taste, a bit like venison", but for crocodile it's the only word I can use!  It's unlike anything else I've ever tried by a long shot, and it's definitely something I'd be happy to eat again (insert obligatory "and make it snappy!" joke here).  At around £4.50 for a pack of two they're a shade pricier than good quality butchers' burgers, but are a nice alternative to the typical humdrum of cow or lamb.

ExperienceDays.co.uk - Helicopter Buzz Flight For 2 [by @NLi10]

We get offered all kinds of unusual products here at Food Stuff Finds headquarters.  A lot of the events that we get invited to are London based which would be a nightmare to get to from the Midlands in time. Sometimes though we get a crazy offer where we get to choose the location, like this one today.

The website ExperienceDays sent us an e-mail inviting us to try one of their snack related events such as Chocolate Making Workshops, High Tea at posh hotels, Wine tasting and other really quite FSF friendly activities to blog about.  Thing is... I've done those before really (with the exception of chocolate making which I think is much more suitable for people who really love their chocolate).  The list they sent us however was regionally based and the food things were just highlighted - so I did what anyone who gets an experience voucher does and looked on the list for the one I actually had thought about doing for myself.

When I woke up this morning I'd never been in a helicopter...

I don't think I'd even been that close to them! When I spotted the "Buzz Flight for 2" on the list I knew we had a winner.  I asked Ms. NLi10 if she'd like to come too (she'd apparently taken a helicopter trip to a glacier in New Zealand many years ago and said it was certainly something to do again).  We sorted out the date with the organisers and in a few weeks I was sitting next to the Pilot at Wolverhampton's Halfpenny Green Airport, being advised that I really shouldn't touch the pedals.

(even though I really, really wanted to touch the pedals...)

I got to sit next to the pilot for a £10 upgrade, but I guess that if no one pays then you have a 1 in 4 chance of it being you anyway!  Everyone gets a headset with a microphone built in so it's just like playing on the Xbox only with better graphics and no loading times.

This is what the area around the site looks like from 1,000 feet up at 120 MPH.

The flight lasted around 5 minutes.  I didn't time it but it seemed both longer and a lot shorter than that.  I had enough opportunities to take a few short film clips and take some pictures.  I'm guessing it would be a lot more breathtaking if you were flying over the coast or somewhere with visibly stark terrain, but I really enjoyed both the sensation and the view.

Then we were back on the ground. Goodbye metallic pink helicopter!

I really enjoyed my morning at the airport and being able to walk around freely and look at all the other things taking off (including a Microlight which is something that I quite like the look of too) was a nice bonus.  The temptation to fill teh review with pictures of people's small planes is strong but resistible.  

Like most of these taster experiences I could have happily had a longer flight, or another flight in a different type of craft, but I guess those are the bigger experience options.  Otherwise it was fantastic and smoothly run and something I'd certainly consider doing again.

A bonus review! I tried to think of something suitable to review alongside this so that it wasn't totally non-snack related (although if you are looking for presents for Snack-Heads then the whole chocolate making day thing went down really well with the ladies at work when they went last year and they even brought some in for me to try). After Cinabar told me that Flyte bars were now hard to find and I decided Aero's were a bit plain I raided snack mountain and found this odd snack my sister brought back from Japan. It had flown back, and now been in a helicopter so I think it's fair game.

As an aside if you can think of flying related snacks then please do pop them in the comments!

This has the added advantage of the fact that I don't have to try and name this.  It has a Doraemon on the packet being summoned by a crazy scientist so it must be fantastic, but what sweet treats lie inside?

It's a giant hollow crisp! Yup - one single crisp. I guess that you would call it's flavour slightly spicy meaty corn-snack flavour.  As I'd presumed it was either mallow or biscuit this was a shock.  Actually tasted pretty good though - and the corn texture was less chewy than a Wotsit so I think it was probably slightly better quality than tuk shop crisps.  A nice surprise find, and one that probably won't make it over here.

Take Off Film
In Flight Movie