Essential Waitrose Onion Rings [By @SpectreUK]

Some would say onions rings are the essential snack for sharing amongst friends whilst watching a good long movie. It seems both Waitrose and I agree on that, although having said that, I sat down to a documentary about hurricanes whilst eating these Essential Waitrose Onion Rings. I’d just been to a job interview and filled my car with petrol at the garage next to the local Waitrose supermarket. I always fill up there, as my aging car loves the best of fuels. Something else we have in common, as I’m not only aging, but I also love the best of foods. Especially snack food. On this particular occasion, I’d been to a job interview that seemed to have gone rather well for a change, as they are usually a complete disaster, and it was coming up to lunchtime and I suddenly had a craving for onion rings. I went to pay for the fuel in the store and the first thing I clapped eyes on was this bag of onion rings sitting prettily on a shelf. The 100g bag with 506 calories, 5.7g of sugar and 28.3g of fat was begging for me to buy them to munch on. The ingredients were vegetarian friendly including no artificial colours or flavourings, with maize, rapeseed oil, fried onion flavour, semolina, leek extract, garlic powder and paprika for colour. The texture of the rings was light, fluffy and deliciously crunchy, with a strong onion and leek taste, polished off with garlic and rapeseed. The only mistake I made was to think that these were just another bag of onion rings. These are the Essential Onion Rings and will be forever on my shopping list from now on. I also got the job and start in a month or so. Bonus! ;-)

By Spectre

Mars Dessert (Tesco) [By @Cinabar]

My sweet tooth tends to kick in at the end of a meal, and I always fancy something ideally chocolaty to finish on. As a fan of Mars bars when I saw these new desserts in Tesco it was pretty much given that pick them up.
I’ve seen quite a few of the chocolate bar themed desserts recently, so I am obviously not in a minority. They do then to be part of the Cadbury branding, so it is nice to Mars branching out in to this market too.
This is a split pot dessert, one section containing teeny chunks of Mars nougat coated in milk chocolate. The other section is the liquid section, which is chocolate and caramel flavour. The chocolate pieces are small, but there are plenty of them in the pot, certainly enough for each mouthful. Despite the size, the nougat texture shines through, but the flavour is a little hidden by all the chocolate goodness. I couldn’t pick up on much caramel either, again this was disguised within the sauce section.
The fact that the dessert provided a chocolate overload is by no means a bad thing!! I thoroughly enjoyed it, but it did mean that it didn’t fully recreate the whole Mars bar concept as well as it could.
By Cinabar

Roast Beef and Spitfire Ale Flavour Crisps (@KentCrisps) [By @SpectreUK]

Produced by Kent Crisps, these Roast Beef and Spitfire Ale Flavour Crisps were flavoured with the Kentish Spitfire Ale, which was named after the famous aircraft that was designed by R. J. Mitchell to fight in the Second World War. With no artificial flavours or colours, these crisps were served in a 40g packet that had 189 calories, 8.8g of fat and 2.1g of sugar. There was a lovely Roast Beef smell upon opening the packet. There was a good strong flavour of roast beef to start with and then a bitter hoppy taste of ale. At that moment in a blind taste test I wouldn’t have liked to have staked my life on it being Spitfire Ale, but once I’d opened the bottle and poured the 4.5% volume dark amber ale into my beer mug and taken a good whiff and swig, it became pretty obvious. The crisps didn’t have the full ale taste, as the roast beef was their predominant flavour masking some of the spicy fruity tones in the ale, but there was definitely the bitter ale twang on the back of the roast beef. As I munched hungrily I actually found myself sucking these crisps to savour their full succulent and may I say ingenious flavour. I only wished I had a few more bags, but I reckon I would have scoffed the lot in one go, which probably wouldn’t have been healthy for my already oversized tummy. I really enjoyed washing these crisps down with the Spitfire Ale. I’ve drunk this ale on a few occasions in the past and always relished each bottle. I usually would prefer Ready Salted crisps with a good ale, so these Roast Beef and Spitfire Ale Flavour Crisps made a refreshing change. No wonder these crisps won a Taste of Kent Award 2012. I shall definitely be seeking these crisps out again, and next time I reckon I may have to scoff more than one packet with a pint or two of Spitfire Ale!

By Spectre

Choka-Blok Gold Digger Dynamite (Tesco) [By @Cinabar]

Several people have emailed me and recommended these new Choka-Blok bars, so I thought I would search them out. I managed to find them on the shelves in Tesco, and I almost overlooked them as they weren’t taking up much shelf space. There were a couple of flavours, but the yellow packet with its promise of gold honeycomb took my fancy.
These bars all have the same concept, a chunky square bar of chocolate, where one side is flat and the other is packed with topping. The Gold Digger Dynamite bar is milk chocolate decorated with white chocolate, caramel filled milk chocolate cups and honeycomb style crunchie pieces. Oh my, what a combination!

I unwrapped the bar and was rather impressed by the amount of topping that was packed into the one side of the bar, it was super impressive to look at. The other side was more simple, with some groves for squares to be broken off.
I have to say the chocolate was quite something. It was a thick bar so it came across as being rather chunky, but it was still fairly soft and had a silky texture when you bit in. The base flavour of the chocolate was rich in cocoa with lots of milky tones, offset by the sweet topping. The white chocolate decoration is a little bit lost in the bar, because the caramel chocolate cups and the honeycomb pieces just add wonderful sugary tones through and through. I loved the crazy texture from all the goodies packed on the bar; it made it a pleasure to eat.
This really was a wow bar, and if you have a sweet tooth I can’t recommend it enough. It was totally indulgent and ticked all the boxes for me, beautifully decorated, full flavoured cocoa, good complex texture, chunky, sweet and heaven!

By Cinabar

Pot Noodle – Jamaican Jerk! Flavour [By @SpectreUK]

I’ve always been wary of Pot Noodles since I was a kid and was passed one on a Cub Scout camping trip. I didn’t like it back then and must admit I hadn’t tried one up until Cinabar coxed me into writing for this blog. I have tried and enjoyed many Pot Noodles since and many many others from around the world. This Jamaican Jerk Flavour came with a Mango Sauce sachet. The 90g pot had 430 calories, with 15g of fat and 9g of sugar. There were no artificial colours or preservatives, and it included the usual stringy Pot Noodle noodles. The ingredients in the sauce included tomato, chives, basil, thyme, spices, garlic, and barley malt, with added vegetables of red peppers, onions and lots of green peas. On adding freshly boiled water and stirring, the brown coloured sauce smelt wholesome and spicy. After a few minutes of cooling I braved a taste. This Pot Noodle had a lovely Caribbean medium spicy tang to it. My tastebuds were smacked with a high quality flavour, which was really very tasty, and I certainly didn’t get sick of the sauce whilst eating it. In fact I wanted more. This was definitely one of the best Pot Noodles I’ve tried and will certainly have one of these in the cupboard for a decent hot snack or sandwich accompaniment for lunch and a movie. Nice one Pot Noodle, keep them coming! ;-)

By Spectre