ASK pizza via Deliveroo (by @NLi10)

For my birthday I decided to try Deliveroo and chose ASK as they were local but did something that the ordinary delivery guys didn't do.

We got fairly normal pizza boxes...

...and in them we had a kind of flatbread thing!

I had some kind of meat feast with bacon and sausage and pepper. It probably had a much fancier name.  The flat bread was well done and crispier than my oven could have got a store version. It was great! It also came 10 mins faster than expected and the driver was very courteous. 

It's realistically a bit more expensive to do this (£30 for two pizza plus delivery and tip) than just get a regular delivery pizza, but as a one off it was a nice treat. I can see myself getting other styles of dish that you don't find on typical delivery menus this way too. I do miss the ambience and freshness of the restaurant, but for convenience you can't beat it!

New Fruit Pastilles Infusions (WH Smiths) [By @SpectreUK]

I’ve had a love of Fruit Pastilles since I was a small boy, and that’s quite a while ago! So I was rather excited when Cinabar bought me these Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles Infusions, which come in three coloured flavours. The orange colour is Orange and Grapefruit and has a quick taste of orange that gets beaten down by the grapefruit, however the grapefruit’s sourness is dulled somewhat due to a violent exchange with the orange. The pink colour is Raspberry and Pomegranate, which initially tastes of raspberry, but after a quick chew the pomegranate swirled around my mouth like some hippy pink juicy rain dance with the raspberry, making for a very tasty sweet. The green colour is Apple and Elderflower, which was slightly different in flavour sensation than the other two Infusions. Yes, this sweet did start with apple flavour, but this was almost completely replaced by elderflower after a couple of chews. The apple flavour did resurface almost at the end of the sweet, but the elderflower beat this down once more. I would call these Fruit Pastilles ‘Fruit Fights’, as ‘Infusion’ seems a little tame for the tasty fruity battle that was fought in my mouth with every juicy sweet. There’s nothing tame about these Fruit Pastilles, as it’s; “which flavour is stronger? FIGHT!!”

Information on the packet;

140g bag with 74 calories per 7 sweets, having 0g of fat, 0.06g of salt and 11.8g of sugar. See photograph for ingredients.

By Spectre

New Butterkist Yoghurt Coated Popcorn (Asda) [By @Cinabar]

I have to admit when I’ve thought about interesting popcorn flavours, yoghurt hadn’t really been on my wish list. Still if Butterkist makes it, I thought it had to be worth a try.
The Butterkist Yoghurt Coated Popcorn pieces are big and fluffy and have quite a generous coating of yoghurt on them. The texture of it is quite soft, softer than white chocolate, and very easy to eat. The popcorn underneath still has the great fluffy but crunchy texture, which is what I think I like best about popcorn.

Now on to the taste test, I loved the stuff. The flavour was amazing it was sweet and creamy and hit the spot perfectly. Each piece had a lovely rich toffee flavour and this creamy aftertaste.
Now there lies the problem, if I had been given these in a blind taste test I don’t think I would have guessed yoghurt. I would have gone for toffee and cream, I know thats not a thing, but it mostly closely describes what the flavour tasted off. This made them fantastic, but the yoghurty nature of them was a little lost. Sure there was perhaps a slight tangy bitter aftertaste that was supposed to represent the yoghurt, but really it was lost on the sugary goodness.
So in conclusion maybe not yoghurt flavoured exactly, but still a popcorn flavour I’ll be buying again as it was so darn tasty.

Twinkies Key Lime Slime Ghostbuster Edition (B&M) [By @Cinabar]

I picked up these new Ghostbuster Edition Twinkies at a very modest price. I can’t help thinking if I had purchased these from an import store the box would have been around £10, so I’m pleased to say these were an absolute bargain in a discount store.
Twinkies are a cult sponge cake in the States and aren’t easy to find in the UK, so finding the Limited Edition Ghostbusters version was rather exciting. The flavour is Key Lime Slime in honour of Slimer from the film franchise.

Now I know there were some clues on the front of the box, but the greenness of the filling still took me a few seconds to become accustomed to. As I get older I haven’t lost my love of sweet tastes, but I am developing a slight aversion to food colourings that are garish. I know green is the colour of movie slime, and I tried to let it go.

The cakes themselves are lovely, they are soft spongey and slightly moist and sticky. The filling is thick, creamy and well shipped. Although there is still plenty of vanilla, the Key Lime Slime element adds a nice citrus twist. The added flavour isn’t very strong, it is just enough to give them a fruity taste, which is acidic and has a nice hint of lime. I liked the taste far more than the colour! Really looking forward to see the movie though, hope its as good the original.

By Cinabar

TRIBE - a postal snack box for outdoorsy people (@NLi10) @thetribeway

I'm a very cynical guy, so when an advert for yet another one of those annoying "snacks by post" thing pops up on my FB feed with the first box for £1 I think "sure, that'll be an easy rant".  Bonus points because it's themed around the exercise community and with two festivals in 1 month I'll be stocking up on good snacks to take with me.

The box in question is TRIBE and it arrived about a week before Glastonbury - perfect

Those of you who hang around here regularly will have seen some of the contents in those Glastonbury round-ups I did (1 & 2) but for everyone else here's the details.

You get a lovely Graze-like flat box that fits through the door.  You get a lot of branding that convinces you that you made a good choice (unless you are my boss who has at least 6 of the Graze boxes unopened on her desk on any given day).  The blurb is fairly reassuring though, I don't want processed snacks but I also don't want a box full of stuff I can buy on the highstreet for a lot less.

And here is what we did get. Two pick me up bars, two bags of nuts/seeds and one protein bar.  While I'm paying £1 this is amazing - you only need one hit to get your money back. With the full price of £8 a box per month (dropping to £6.50 a box if you are needing one a week) you are going to need to realistically average £1.50 per item with 50p for postage.  For simplicity I'll ask the question - "was this worth £2" of each of the bits as I go.

Here we have the Other Stage at Glastonbury and I presume New Order, and the first of the pick me up energy bars.  Cherry isn't a flavour I'd put at the top of my list but this was good.  It had great texture, a rich strong flavour and was more filling than it's size suggested. It kept the energy levels up and despite being in my bag for a couple of days was fine.  Worth £2.

I'm always skeptical about 'protein' bars.  Here we see the Banana flavour with the long drop toilets by the acoustic tent in the background. Not the best place to eat...

Further in to the site (just below the stone circle at the post office) I cracked it open.  It's not as banana rich or as proteiny as I'd expected.  It doesn't have that papery soy texture and instead is a welcome sweet sticky bar, but with a lot of texture too.  The added grains and such really make this a pleasure.  I ate it over two snack sessions and it's also worth £2.

Hadrian's trail mix was less impressive.  It's some dried fruit and some cashews.  The mix is great and it's filling as it goes, but I'd usually pay a lot less for a lot more.  This is probably a £1 snack in fairness, but as in theory it could have been replaced by something better it was a disappointment (so much so that I forgot to get a pic). I've unchecked it from my preferences so I'll never be sent this one again.

Also in the box was some adverts for other postal boxes, some inspirational leaflets and a quote about marathons that was confusing as it suggests running in circles for no reason is human nature. Maybe its a metaphor.

I returned home with a seed mix and another energy bar which I'll use to survive next weekend's festival work.  Having already got £5 worth out of my £1 purchase , and assuming the other pick me up bar is just as good, I'm letting this one ride on and I'll get another box (probably just after the Latitude festival unfortunately).  There are 19 snack options on the site at the moment in four categories (the seeds and trail mix are separate) so hopefully I won't get too many duplicates and can review the rest in the field at some point and let you know whether I kept the boxes going.

If you also want a £1 box you can use my referral code TRIBERICH4 and sign up here.  You can cancel after the first box and also pause the subscription whenever you like so they don't fill your desk with nuts.  

When we get things like this as PR e-mails there is always the temptation to be a little kinder than you otherwise would.  I'm really fed up of the terrible postal boxes (just go to the highstreet and buy some nuts there!!) so was ready to go for the throat, but this one surprised me with the quality of the produce.  Sure, it's probably a bit too expensive for what it is if you go for the weekly option, but as a summer treat or a reward for specific outdoor activities it seems fine.  If you are buying similar things for regular exercise and outdoors activities then this may just be what you need.