Nestle Snack Erdnuss (B&M) By @Cinabar

These intriguing bars were spotted in B&M, in the confectionary isle. I picked them up because I hadn’t seen them before and the packaging was a pleasing bright yellow. They are from a big make too from Nestle, but not one I’ve seen in the UK before. They also seemed to be a combination of some of my favourite ingredients; chocolate and peanut (which is erdnuss in German). These are a multipack of import bars of chocolate from Germany, which is why the wafer content too shouldn’t have come as a surprise, it is popular in Europe.

Inside the multipack are three individually wrapped bars and they looked rather chunky in proportions. They were light though in weight. Got to love the wafer. The bars look fab out of the wrapper, large and appetising and you can see plenty of nuts under the layer of chocolate. I love texture and the layers of wafer gave these a crispy light feel but the nuts and chocolate gave it a stronger crunch too. The were enjoyable to munch on. There were lots of nuts and the flavour was lovely and rich and worked well with the chocolate. The combination of nuts and chocolate was spot on, and I would have the Nestle Snack Erdnuss bars as a got to bar if it was more widely available. For now I’m just happy that these are around as an import bar proving chocolate peanut goodness.

Work Christmas Food from Waitrose - plus a chocolate teapot (@NLi10)

Oh Heston, you are such a merry japester! There are a lot of really, really cool items in the Waitrose Christmas range but none more brilliantly extravagant than this one.

The chocolate teapot is the proverbial useless item.  I'm personally hoping that there is a special sealant inside so this an actually be used, but with ice-tea I guess it'd be fine.

It looks absolutely exquisite - and the fact that it comes with tea-leaves and sugar is a lovely touch.  At £20 its just too much to justify though and we left it on the shelf.  I'm hoping to get one in the Waitrose online sales (me and everyone else I suspect) - that or the Avocado!

We didn't buy this - but I did get to distribute a massive tower of choc.  Probably more than £20 worth, but may go a little further!

What I did buy for work was these amazing bread loops.  Again, at £2 a little expensive, but my goodness so worth it!  The olives were great too having a little more pepper and a little stronger marinade than your traditional ones.

This little tree of profiteroles was only £5 from Iceland! We even had spare ones left over - you get 60!  If you want something to keep a young teen busy while you sort the plates out then it's also a fun project (please get them to wash their hands!)

As this was all yesterday, today I was firmly on leftovers with these Lidl wraps and Waitrose Pretzels.  I could just eat salty bread for the entire festive period!

Cadbury’s Boost Protein bar (@DegustaboxUK) By @SpectreUK

So I finally went to see the surgeon who fixed my knee yesterday. He patted me on the back (so to speak) for all the hard work I've done in the gym to regain most of the muscles around my knee, and also for losing roughly three and a half stone since January. Then came the bad news. He said that because of the damage to the bones inside my knee I will have to keep my weight down and keep up with the exercises in order to maintain the muscles in my knee, then and only then would the likelihood of a replacement knee in twenty years time be low. That's good as I don't want to have further surgery and a bionic knee or whatever, but the hard work I've put in so far continues for the rest of my life. So rather than a completely fixed knee and back to work and play, it'll be exercise, a good healthy balanced diet, and also work and play. Many or all of us should probably be doing such a balance, but we all know that work generally tries to take over from everything else…

Anyway, the good balanced diet continues with calorie counting as well as exercise. I usually allow myself crisps and a mini malt loaf with my lunch after the gym, both of which I like very much indeed. It's important to like what you're eating even if some of it, like the crisps, aren't so healthy. Though without the naughty snack food and a little booze now and then, I might as well just blow my head off! So you can imagine I'm a little miffed at having to drop both crisps and malt loaf to try and shoulder the calories that come with this Cadbury's Boost Protein bar, especially when the surgeon tells me that maintaining the muscles is key now, rather than growing them. However a high protein diet as well as a mostly balanced diet with it has got me this far. I still need to fix my muscles after I've been to the gym, so the protein yoghurts and other protein packed foods help with that.

So this Cadbury's Boost Protein bar has layers of Cadbury's Milk Chocolate, which is my favourite chocolate, as well as Cadbury's Caramel, which is my favourite caramel and also protein crisps within it. I don't know whether I like protein crisps, but I guess I'm just about to find out… On unwrapping I found the bar is also covered with Cadbury's Milk Chocolate, so this just gets better and better. However you may need good teeth to eat this bar as biting into it was pretty tough. The protein crisps seem to be wrapped in a gooey Cadbury's Caramel underneath the covering of Cadbury's Milk Chocolate. Both the Cadbury's Milk Chocolate and Cadbury's Caramel in the bar are two of my favourite things - did I already mention that? These in my opinion are two of the greatest flavours on Earth. However and most unfortunately neither flavour could seem to mask the slightly weird taste of the protein crisps, which tasted slightly chemically orientated. Try as they might and they almost succeeded they didn't mask the chemical flavour. Both Cadbury's Milk Chocolate and Cadbury's Caramel flavours were there to start with, unfortunately the chemical flavour was dominant into the aftertaste. This made for a slightly unpleasant after-flavour in my mouth, which convinced me to stick with my potato crisps and malt loaf with my usual protein packed yoghurt to finish!

Information on the wrapper;
There are 249 calories in the 49g bar, with 13g of fat, 17g of sugars and 0.11g of salt. Please see photograph for ingredients.

McVities Digestives Twists - Chocolate Chip and Coconut (Lidl) By @Cinabar

This is a new range of biscuits from McVities which are a “twist” on their usual flavours. This particular packet of biscuits are Digestives with a twist of Coconut and Chocolate Chips.
I really like coconut but I have discovered that it is a bit of a Marmite flavour, some people really hate it. Almost to comical levels. I think coconut is a very mild and remarkably inoffensive flavour but it turns out the dislike is from the texture not the taste so much. That crispiness from desiccated coconut seems to upset people to such an extend that a supermarket own brand tin of chocolates had a rogue coconut chocolate in an unexpected colour wrapper and one of my work colleagues behaved like she has been poisoned.
This is relevant to these biscuits because there texture is lovely and light but has that crispy texture of desiccated coconut mixed in. I enjoyed the texture, I liked the crunchy feel that was mixed in but I’m aware this can upset some people. I don’t get it, I love texture so found these extra nice.
The flavour was good too, there was the wholesome flavour of the digestive biscuits, which went well with the sweetness from the chocolate chips and the creaminess off the coconut. They were very much subtle on the flavour and easy eating and I loved them. I felt the laid back flavours meant these were still digestive through and through, and were just enhanced by a little chocolate and coconut.
What are your feelings in coconut? Would the texture of it put you off these biscuits?

Festive Turkey Dinner Pizza (Papa Johns) By @Cinabar

Nothing quite says Christmas like Brussels sprouts on a pizza. Ok this may not be my first choice for a meal on the big day, but as seasonal takeaway treat I couldn’t wait to try it out. It is a nice idea for a pizza with its roast dinner topping.
The Festive Pizza from Papa Johns consist of a pizza base topped with a gravy base topped with turkey meatballs, veggies (including Brussels sprouts), mozzarella and a cranberry drizzle. Once you’ve accepted this is a roast dinner on a pizza the ingredient that doesn’t really fit is the mozzarella, but this is a pizza after all and to me that means it needs cheese.
So I guess the question is, did it work? It actually did, even with the mozzarella. The pizza is very meaty and the turkey meatballs were soft, tasty and rich in flavour. The gravy base was lovely and meaty and the cranberry drizzle added a lovely sweetness. The Brussels sprouts were not really noticeable as they were chopped small, which is a shame. They could have made more of a feature out of it. The carrots however were genius, they added a nice bit of firm texture and really added to the Christmas dinner feel to the meal. They sent through the usual garlic pizza dip, which normally I love to eat on the crusts, but this time I had them plain as it didn’t really fit with the pizza. The mozzarella did work though as a pizza topping and I felt it gave it the feel pizza a more ordinal feel given the very untraditional topping.