New Greggs Katsu Chicken Curry Lattice (@GreggsOfficial) [By @Cinabar]

We sometimes have a Greggs takeout as a weekend treat, picking up either sandwiches or one of their fab sausage rolls. This weekend I was all ready to pick up a tasty ham roll, when something at the counter caught my eye. Katsu Chicken Curry Lattice, which sounded quite adventurous for Greggs.
I've had Katsu Curry a number of times before, but usually in Japanese restaurants, it normally consists of a piece of breaded chicken with a spicy sauce and rice, so I was curious to see how that translated into a Lattice! I felt this was quite an interesting twist from Greggs, I associate them more with the cheese and onion pasty!

I took a bite in and was met with a very generous spicy chicken filling. The chicken wasn't breaded, but the lattice was sprinkled with a spicy breadcrumb, so they are doing it that way. I always like Greggs pastry and this was light and crispy and did the job perfectly.
The flavour was very tasty, with lots of spices, and a surprising amount of chilli heat. It was quite a hot snack, if I was going to label it I would put it on the side of medium-hot. It wasn't too much but it was punchier than I'd expected, particularly from Greggs. It did have a rather lovely creamy aftertaste, which helped with the heat, and gave each bite a pleasing smooth finish. I was pleasantly surprised with the Japanese twist in this lattice, and look forward to picking up another. Get them while you can though, Greggs have these listed as a Limited Seasonal Edition.

By Cinabar

Malt O Meal - Marshmallow Mateys - Asda (by @NLi10)

Ah America. Land of the big burger, and the home of the sugar. Occasionally we get USA products show up in our supermarkets so don't have to pay the ludicrous import prices.  Asda recently started stocking these Malt O Meal - Marshmallow Mateys.

In the UK we don't have cereals like this, with marshmallows in. We used to get Lucky Charms but the fun police (and poor sales) killed them so they became five pounds a box.

This looks similar enough to me.

Already though the lies and suspicious things are occurring.  Green and purple food, and making them huge on the box isn't a great start.

Let's see what's in them.

Look at all those vitamins - must be good for us right!  Why does nothing in the top section have an RDI? Never mind - look at the colours on the back...

And they are helping families - the box says so!

I thought MOM branded products were made up for Futurama - turns out it was a parody! Who knew!

At least they have a sense of humour about it - anchors and pirates are fun for all.

It's a delicious treat at any time of the day. Only don't have them right before bed like I did.  That was a mistake. Funny colours and lots of sugar don't make for a restful night.  The taste was fine if not a little sweet, and the texture was nicely familiar too.

But about that sugar...

This is normal Kellogs Cornflakes. Note - we don't put the RDI for the top half either - we are just as bad in the UK.

A surprisingly similar number of Kilo calories (113 vs 114), but how does the sugar content compare?

12g vs 2.4g (3% of daily) - so one 30g bowl is 15% of an ADULTs sugar allowance for the day? It also means that the cereal is 40% sugar.

And my portions - closer to 60g - which means that this is 30% of my sugar for the day.

I should note that I saw a lady at the bus stop with three boxes of these in a bag.  Maybe it's one of those products that sells out fast.  Maybe it's just a bit much for a supposedly healthy meal in the morning that they are providing free to poorer families!

Yes - it tastes great, and yes you can moderate portion size (or stick a handful in with a healthy cereal) but this really is a bit much considering the issues people are having with food.  The American packaging doesn't include a guide to how much sugar should be consumed, and the U.K. one is bad enough at suggesting what should and shouldn't be consumed (who knew plain cornflakes had 113 Kcalories in a tiny portion?).

Breakfast is marketed hard as being healthy, and starting the day with nutritious carbs isn't all bad, but this all needs to be a bit more transparent and sugar needs to be more obvious.  

Ed: KJ/KCal confusion fixed!!

Hooper’s Alcoholic Beverages @Hoopersbrews [By @SpectreUK]

I’ve recently blogged about the much-enjoyed Hooper's Alcoholic Dandelion & Burdock before and always fondly remember the Alcohopop fever that was Hooper’s Hooch in the nineties. Of course I was trying to look tough at the time smoking and drinking crates of beer. I haven’t smoked for many a year (over 17 years now), but I still do like my odd beer now and then, as my belly will attest to. Here we have two new flavours from Hooper’s that they very kindly sent to me.

Raspberry & Nettle

This is a curious sounding brew indeed and in good time for a change in the weather. Today has been a little brighter and a little warmer. This 4% volume Raspberry & Nettle is Hooper’s summer brew with real fruit flavours of raspberry infused with British nettle. I’ve tasted nettle tea before and enjoyed it, so I can’t harp on about how much I’d be worried about the added odd ingredient. Besides, when you think about, even though it’s a traditional drink going back beyond time remembered, Dandelion & Burdock should sound pretty weird and it’s just not. Nettle… pah! Bring it on. Besides on opening the bottle the heady aroma of raspberries hit my nose like a runaway mine train. Bam… RASPBERRIES!!! My nose felt a bit sorry for the nettles. Then I remembered my childhood of frequently falling off my bike or tripping playing football or whatever and there always seemed to be nettles there. Even though there didn’t seem to be any nettles there moments before!

If there is a smell of summer that springs to mind it’s got to be raspberries and there was oodles of it coming from the fizzy red liquid that was filling my beer glass. However, the sheer explosion of raspberries that my tastebuds were expecting on first gulp didn’t knock me off my feet… and thankfully so. Sometimes the problem with a brew such as this is that it can dangerously taste like a child’s fizzy pop drink. This was not the case here. This was a much more complex blend of flavours. Yes, there was a strong hit of raspberry to start with, but that blended very quickly indeed with an almost earthy taste of nettles. The raspberry flavour came back moving into the aftertaste, but the nettles insisted on following and would not be overshadowed. Good on those pesky nettles I say, even though my palms, elbows and knees still haven’t forgiven them!


Plum & Sloe

Okay I have to rather embarrassingly admit that I hadn’t heard of sloe. It is a fruit that apparently tastes a little dry and fragrant, which should probably calm down the blast from the plum. So the label hasn’t been spelt wrongly and I don’t have to drink this 4% alcoholic plum drink in slow motion. I would look sloe up to see what one looks like, but my broadband isn’t exactly quick at the moment. I’m sure it’s not a coincidence and the label is spelt correctly! There was the pleasant pop and fizz on opening the bottle that I’d experienced with the Raspberry & Nettle. This deep red brew smelt of plum mixed with something… I just couldn’t put my finger on what it was… Okay, okay… so it was probably the sloe, whatever the heck that is! On first fizzy taste it was like pinball wizard on my tastebuds as the iron ball bounced off every flavour. Pull head back… Ping! Plum… what was that…? Plum… what was that…? You get the picture. In the aftertaste I got the prize I just don’t know what happened on the bouncing journey, but be prepared for this autumnal drink, because it’s certainly not boring. It was a joyride of flavours and no mistake. Fizz… Ping… Plum… what was…?

By Spectre

New McVities Dark Chocolate Nibbles (Sainsburys) [By @Cinabar]

A new biscuit product from McVities is always exciting, and these are quite a change of format for the biscuit brand. McVities Dark Chocolate Nibbles are small balls of McVities biscuits wrapped in chocolate, there are various varieties too, from milk chocolate, caramel, double chocolate and dark chocolate which are the ones I went for first. The biscuits nibbles are in the form of a handy sharing grab bag. If you don't want to share there is re-seal sticker on the back too!

The first thing I noticed once the pack was opened was just how shiny they were, they are so very glossy, but more on that later. The other thing was the chocolate scent, they smelt lovely, lots of dark chocolate tones.
I had a munch on these and found that as someone who chooses chocolate over biscuit, they had the best ratio of these ingredients on a biscuit for me. These is a fair bit of chocolate for every biscuit bite. The chocolate was nice too, it was dark and had 54% cocoa. The biscuit was perfectly crunchy and the flavour was that lovely baked wholesome taste. I was enjoying munching through my portion. It was then that I casually glanced at the ingredients, and noticed "shellac". As a manicure addict, my immediate thought was did they mean like the long lasting nail varnish? They sort of did. I mentioned how glossy these chocolate biscuit balls were, and it turns out shellac has many purposes including being used as a confectioners glaze. My first Google search they told me what Shellac is, it is an excretion by Lac Insects to help stick their eggs to trees. Being a sensitive sort this did make me judge them, although it's use in the food industry is common apparently. It's like when I discovered what the red food colouring cochineal was... (again insect based).
Anyway that aside I enjoyed the biscuits, if I can just stop myself from thinking about how shiny they are, I'll be okay.

By Cinabar

Bami Goreng - frozen dinner in a bag! (Lidl) [by @NLi10]

As many of you know I love sophisticated and subtle flavours like Fentimans and Monty Bojangles. I also love bachelor chow - food that you just heat and eat. This bag of frozen Bami Goreng is the later.

Here Lidl has provided a huge bag of frozen stuff. Meat, veg, sauce and even noodles have been cryogenically stashed away to fuel me at a later date. I've no idea whether it's authentically Chinese, but it's here as part of the Chinese New Year promotion so let's fry it up!

Here we se it as it hits the frying pan. At this point I'm not convinced. At best it's catering grade.

As it heats up it looks like school dinners but the smell is getting there. It's also clearer that there are more foods in here than I thought. The meat looks decent chunks too.

And here is the finished product, it's not going to win any beauty contests but it's pretty good. If a take away threw a sauce on this and sold it I'm sure no one would notice of complain. 

A victory for the modern man - it probably even has nutrients. If this wasn't just a Chinese New Year thing then I'm picking up more. It's great for a small quick meal when it's just you and the TV.