Advent Pile Round-up 9th to 15th Dec 2019 (@NLi10)

Seeing as Part 1 for last week was so popular I thought I'd keep going!

Mon Dec 9th - orange Monty just out of shot - one of the more interesting teas from last year with some fairly standard choc.  The cardboard cats get a nice fire to add to their living room which is good.

Dec 10th - cat on a chair! Oh wait - we already had that - the bauble on the tree was today's number.  We don't have a normal tree as that would just be a cat toy store.  Looks like the same Monty as yesterday but I didn't think we'd had any back to back doubles at this point. Lindt and dairy free both standard.

Day 11 - hazelnut Monty.  More cats on chairs.  Two teas today as for some reason I didn't get the tea off the calendar yesterday.  The peppermint licorice is one I've had a box worth of since so we know that's nice, yesterdays was one of the new trio bags - three licorice - I'll try that later on.  Red Lindt today - those never last long.

Day 12 - three chamomile tea - nice and relaxing - and our first cookie flavoured Monty! I'd not realised we'd not had any of these yet.  Cute little siamese/burman cat to play with the lindt ball. 

I've obscured Day 13s decoration a bit here - it's the table! Tea is one we have a lot of too, and a pink Monty - original flavour?  I'm getting confused at this point. Lots of the little Lindt balls now.

Day 14 sees more cookies, the little lindt bar but with a squirrel (cute) and three ginger which is a new flavour tea.  Cat looks very stern - it's guarding the house.  Quite a lot of cats now...

Day 15 is the first cat food item - no wonder they all look annoyed!  We also get another cookie truffle - 3 in 4 days.  You'd be dissapointed if this wasnt' one of the best texture ones on offer!  Classic bear Lindt reminds us that only two of the prizes are not mini versions.  Guess its a good job with so many calendars.

As for the Nomo dairy free chocolate disks - they just don't excite us at this point.

9 of the 15 remain un-eaten and only one of the others was eaten by my partner.  Now - don't get me wrong - these are edible and credible - but there is a lot of Christmas snacking going on and these are likely to get left until most of the normal things are gone.  All they had to do was have a few more festive touches - maybe a picture on the foil (or just not two colours that are nearly identical so you need one of each to know what flavour you are getting).  There are slogans on all the doors which is cool (Monty didn't bother for some reason - only some days have slogans) and the cube is still a lovely touch.  

The Lindt chocs - while tiny - are only a day or two behind in our eating and won't last til Jan at this rate.  I think it's a lower priced calendar and maybe comparing it to the £10 (and £12 Monty) was a little harsh.

St Peter’s Without Beer (Miller & Carter @StPetersBrewery) By @SpectreUK

On a family Christmas Meal at the Miller & Carter Steakhouse, I was the only person who had a steak meal! I know, it's a Steakhouse, right?! Everyone else had a turkey meal. I had my favourite cut of ribeye. I used to be able to eat a 16oz ribeye and chips, with a couple of side dishes of garlic mushrooms and cheesy mushrooms, plus a salad and garlic bread to start with, and then a cake or whatever pudding to finish. Now my tummy has all but disappeared after months of solid exercise and calorie watching in order to appease my recovering knee and its uncompromising surgeon, I can just about manage a 12oz ribeye with some chips and a salad, and then a cup of Earl Grey and a biscuit to finish!

If I don't go to the gym before my steak meal, then I'm unlikely to have a beer or stout to wash it down with. I usually have a diet lemonade, but unbelievably they only had diet types of Cola or Pepsi, neither of which I'm a fan of. Cinabar found this St. Peter's Without amber beer on the menu. It's low in calories and has no alcohol in it, which helped with driving after the meal.

There was a heavy smell of amber malt from the open bottle which was delivered by the cheerful waitress. This deep amber coloured nonalcoholic beer has a strong sweet amber malt flavour to start with that is mixed with possibly crystal malt behind it, and then a smooth delicate bitterness from the hops into the aftertaste. Although this St. Peter's Without went exceptionally well with my steak meal, I believe it would also make a delicious pudding beer. St. Peter's Without has a lip-smacking dominant rich and sweet amber malt flavour followed by a gentle bitterness. I couldn't tell that St. Peter's Without didn't have any alcohol in it, and I enjoyed drinking it too much to care. I was very impressed indeed with this flavourful amber nonalcoholic beer, and would definitely have it again. It'll be good for those designated drivers over Christmas who miss their beer too!

Ritter Sport - Merry Christmas Tree (Waitrose) By @Cinabar

I used to love chocolate Neapolitans as a kid. We would get a box at Christmas time and it would be full of what looked like miniature chocolate bars and have a mix of flavours. It would make me happy. I noticed these disappeared some time ago, I know some makes like Marks and Spencer do something similar but I haven’t seen the blue box which I think was Nestle for a long time now. These Ritter Sport Merry Christmas Tree Chocolates made me think of them and I was hoping for something similar.

The packaging is lovely, a smart looking tree with a tantalising set of chocolates inside. The base of the packaging says “assorted filled milk chocolate” which isn’t a lot of information about what the contents may or may not contain. Once the Ritter Sport - Merry Christmas Tree was opened it was clear there were only two “assorted” flavours and the variety descriptions weren’t even written in English on the chocolates. We had:

Red Pack - “A La Mousee au Chocolate” - This was a soft silky milk chocolate truffle. It was rich in flavour and was sweet and enjoyable.
Yellow Pack - “Schoko Crisp” - This was a darker chocolate with a nice rice crispy crunch. There was lots of rich chocolate flavour, and this was my favourite out of the two because of the interesting texture.

I think the packaging here is lovely, but would have liked more information about the contents and more selection too as the two varieties were quite basic. I did enjoy the chocolates and thought these were a nice stocking filler gift, they just weren’t the Neapolitan “miniature Ritter Sport” bars I had been hoping for.

Pieminister Xmas Pies in Nellie Dean pub in Soho (@NLi10)

While in London for a visit to the Apollo for the Christmas Compendium of Reason we popped into a small unassuming pub which promised to sell us PieMinister Pies

The Christmas menu looked exciting so I deliberately chose one that Cinabar hadn't written about (The Cracker is here) and went for the vegan option of 'turkey' in The Good Elf.  Naturally I went for the option that added crackling and a pig in blanket (singular - booo).

The Nellie Dean is a nice little pub with actual window views.  You can imagine that this location was a pub during the Ghost Map era of London - maybe John Snow (not those ones) drank here!

Bare bricks are somehow comforting in a pub.

And here is the pie! The crackling was a good size and not scary so I ate it.  The tiny pig in blanket was less impressive, but the swede mash was great so all is forgiven.  The normal mash was fine but a little rock hard in places!

The pie was naturally demolished.  It went really well with the random IPA that I had - with the port flavour mixing well.  The vegan turkey had a good texture and would pass for low quality meat, but I'd have not guessed it was turkey and could easily tell it wasn't the usual thick chunks of chicken or beef that Pieminister usually brings.

Absolutely loved it though and will happily grab one or two to eat at home as it's seasonally appropriate to do so.

Merry Christmas indeed.

Mini Pop White Truffle (Popcorn Shed) By @SpectreUK

Popcorn Shed very kindly sent us a box of different flavours of their Mini Popcorn a while back. I should have written about these Mini Pop White Truffle flavoured mini popcorn around about then, but the box got sucked into the void of other boxes and bits and bobs in different places that we often have lying around. Fortunately all the different flavours have huge long best before dates on them, but I thought it was about time to blog, so here goes…

I have a confession to make to start with; I'm not a big fan of popcorn. I know, I know… some people prefer them to crisps, but I get a little irritable picking my teeth afterwards. The packet of these Mini Pops states "no floss required". I should have noticed that before!

On opening the packet there was quite an oily smell. I noticed in the ingredients that there are lots of different oils and there did seem to be a battle between them all going on inside the packet. The little white fluffy popcorns filling the packet didn't feel oily to the touch, but had an slight oily and very mildly spiced flavour. They had a subtle taste to them. Like they had walked past a pepper seller on the way to market. There was also a lightly salted flavour towards the aftertaste that gave my tastebuds a little tingle.

There was nothing to dislike about these popcorn and I can't say they didn't taste of anything either. I could almost hear spa music whilst I was eating these Mini Pop White Truffle popcorn. I could imagine myself just walking out of a sauna in a spa somewhere. An attractive woman in a spa uniform hands me a towel and says; "Your back massage and facial will be in a few moments time, Mr. Spectre. Please take a seat and have some nibbles and mineral water while you wait. Don't worry, you won't have to floss!"

Information on the packet;
The 22g packet has 118 calories, with 7.5g of fat, 0.6g of sugar, and o.3g of salt. Vegan friendly and gluten free, the ingredients included; popped corn, rapeseed oil, truffle oil (contains; white truffle (0.1%), extra virgin olive oil, olive oil, white truffle flavour), sea salt.