So You Don't Have To

I've been doing some taste tests in the past couple of weeks. They haven't been as successful as I, initially, thought they would be. Let's dive in and see what I've eaten lately.

First of all, Oreos. These are not your run of the mill Oreos or even the dipped ones. These are two new, limited edition, flavors. As I've come to see with M&M's, limited edition usually means, "Hey, let's try something". I remember reading a news short about these flavors and set out to find, and consume, them in an effort to see just how they compared to the real Oreos.

And

I couldn't find these at Mariano's. I had to go to Target.

The premise seems reasonable enough. Oreos has a solid seller with chocolate and vanilla cookies. You know you can buy "blonde" Oreos as well as the regular ones. You can even buy Oreos with a chocolate and a vanilla cookie. I remember seeing vanilla cookies with chocoalte middles. They are simply varying the inside creme flavor.

Those are little flecks of crispy rice. The assembly process removes the "crispy" so the mouth feel is akin to creme with chunky bits.

I thought I would be excited by the cookie dough version. Oberweis Cookie Dough ice cream is a favorite of mine. I should have suspected something when the front of the package reads, "Made with chocolatey chips" (emphasis mine), not chocolate chips, mind you, but chocolate-y chips. You might as well say "It's not real chocolate but someone in the factory had a chocolate bar so we're using the neighborhood rule to call these chocolate".

Neither one was very good. The cookie part itself was just what I expect from Oreos, crisp and sturdy, with the vanilla tasting like vanilla and the chocolate tasting like chocolate. The marshmallow was too sweet, way too sweet. I realize they were going for something approximating a Rice Krispy bar but I don't think of those as sweet as these cookies are. I didn't eat the whole package.

The cookie dough cookie bore no resemblance to cookie dough ice cream. I've had Edy's and Dean's cookie dough ice cream and although I prefer Oberweis', those are good quality ice creams. The cookie dough tastes like cookie dough. This was a meager attempt at cashing in on this idea and, as far as I'm concerned, failed. Thankfully, these are limited editions and won't replace the Oreos we know and love. Save your pennies.

On that same Target shopping trip, I was craving pizza so I picked up a frozen one. It was on sale.

This brand tends, in my opinion, to be consistently good in the category of "hand tossed" crusts. I'm usually leery of "new" appended to a long-time favored brand. What was it about the way you'd made your product for decades that you felt you had to "improve"? I sort of shuddered, but I liked DiGiorno and I wanted a sausage pizza.

Oh dear. It was bad. They have added or increased the sugar content of their sauce. Maybe I'm more sensitive to sugar, I don't know, but, to me, pizza sauce should be about tomatoes and herbs, maybe a bit of oil as a binding agent, but not sugar. That's what I tasted, sweet.

So, I look at the ingredient list.

Third line, right after the "tomato paste", there it is, sugar. Because you have to list ingredients in the order of greatest to least, wheat flour is first since a pizza is mostly crust. Then comes the cheese and the sausage and then the sauce. Look on the 4th line. Sugar shows up a second time. No wonder I tasted sweet. I ate 3 pieces and couldn't eat anymore. That also went outside on the deck for the wildlife, a couple days after the Oreos.

I'm still craving pizza but I'm seriously considering ordering Dominos. I haven't had delivery in months. I could order it at the office and then pick it up after work. Then I wouldn't worry about the delivery guy getting stuck in the drive.

In the same trip, I wandered by the T.G.I. Friday's frozen appetizers. Everything was on sale so I bought a package of cheese "sticks". These should be really good. No, they aren't.

These are what I wanted.

These are from Arby's. When I think cheese sticks, this is what I think of. It's a chunk of mozzarella, rolled in a breading and deep fried. Now, I don't do deep frying anymore. As with any kind of food, moderation is the key but I just didn't want to store used oil for long periods of time. It will go rancid and, if you've ever smelled that, you know it's not pleasant. So, I baked the sticks, which were more like blocks than sticks. I don't have a photo of them, but they turned out to be almost like cheese-flavored sticks. The ooey gooey strings of cheese that one associates with sticks like Arby's wasn't there. I had a nearly empty shell of breading instead of cheese. Even on sale, they were a huge disappointment and I won't be getting them again. I'll stick to satisfying the deep fried cheese cravings with Arby's.

So, there you have it. These things aren't, in my opinion, worth your dollars to purchase. I'm not all that disappointed in the Oreos. Having tried and survived the pumpkin in everything craze at Halloween, I guess my expectations for a "new" and "limited time" flavor are low. But the pizza is a disappointment to me. I could write Nestle's a letter expressing my sadness at the change, but I fear they will send me a coupon for a free pizza and I won't touch DiGiorno's again.

Save your pennies. Once every 3 months, head over to Arby's and get yourself real cheese sticks. Order delivery pizza and bake yourself some cookies. The latter covers two items. There's a lot to be said for home made cookie dough.

Beverage:  Water

Deb

Vacation-What I Ate

One of my friends, half jestingly, asked where the food post was. "You always post about the foods you eat when you go somewhere. It's October and I'm waiting to read about the food you ate on vacation." A wee bit late, here it is.

The way out and back is defined by what's fast, easy to get into and out of to facilitate travel, and what I feel like eating. I have my preferences and I tend to be a creature of habit with regards to those. Therefore, Arby's was my fast food restaurant of choice.

I find that a roast beef or one of their deli sandwiches fills me up and doesn't make me feel like it's same old same old.

A deli sandwich is far messier to eat while moving, unlike the roast beef. Plus, they have Dr Pepper, which puts any restaurant far above the competition.

Once I got to Richmond, we decided to go out on Friday night. Carole's friend, Larry, had never been to a Red Robin Restaurant. We had one in Wheaton for a long time.

Larry was thrilled when he could order a Guinness.

You have no idea. He wasn't going to order a beer in my presence, as he knows I can't have alcohol, but I'm not usually affected anymore by people drinking around me. I really wanted one. Larry did let me sniff it. So many memories.

I ordered a wrapped sandwich.

I believe it contained an Americanize Oriental-sounding mixture. It was good, but that is the sorriest looking fruit salad I have ever seen. It advertised that it had been made, at the very least, at 9 a.m., if not the day before. Diced fruit never keeps well over long hours. I don't pretend to understand how a restaurant can gauge how much of x they need to prepare for a day. Some days, there could be a run on fruit salad. I'm thinking this wasn't one of those days.

Dessert was chocolate, of course.

This is a warm brownie with vanilla ice cream, strawberry compote and hot fudge. It was okay, if not anything new. The strawberries in the compote had a firmer texture than the strawberries in the salad.
 
On Sunday, we stopped at Tortilla Coast-Capitol South.

This restaurant is across the street from the Capitol South metro station. They had brunch going when we got there. We started with their freshly made tortilla chips and salsa. I'm not one for salsa but the chips were good, crunchy, with a hint of something, maybe lime, and just the right amount of saltiness.

I tried their Cap'n Crunch covered French Toast.

The slices were large. I couldn't eat all of slice number three. It was an interesting taste combination. Served with maple syrup, I felt that it was borderline too sweet. The fruit was a very nice addition.

On Monday, we met Jon for dinner at Keagan's Restaurant.

It's located in an area of Glen Allen where the streets are brick, approximating an "old towne", with the "e", feel to it.

There's a very large Whole Foods two blocks from Keagan's. I'm not convinced brick streets do anything more than give a fakeness to an area, but that's just me. If the stores lining the street are places I want to go, then sure, it's nice, but if the street construction is an excuse for higher than usual rents and general snobbery, then you can have the noise and the upkeep.

Given what I know about road construction, a brick lined road requires more intense maintenance than brick inscribed asphalt, which is what downtown Wheaton went with. It looks just like the old brick street that used to be in downtown, but survives Illinois winters much better. I suppose that makes me something of a snob, too, in a reverse manner.

The allure of Keagan's is it's Irish/Scottish/Celtic vibe. I saw Black Watch and Royal Stewart kilts, mini-skirts, actually, on all the servers. I wondered, if you were Scottish and had a specific kilt, would you be allowed to wear it? Thankfully, I didn't see the gals wearing sporrans, even in a modified state. A sporran is the pouch that is worn on the front of a man's kilt. It can be considered the Scottish equivalent of a large pocket or even a purse. I have seen women wearing them, but it's not part of the woman's dress.

The food here was good. We started with warm pretzel appetizers.

Technically, this would be a German food, but we won't dither about that. They were soft and chewy and the mustard at the top, the "brown-style", was a great compliment to the pretzels.

I continued with the pretzel idea with my sandwich.

This is a deli thin-sliced ham, turkey and swiss cheese sandwich on a pretzel roll with warm baked apple compote. We were eating outside on the terrace. It was a delightfully warm evening as the rain from Sunday had passed and this just filled the bill. No, I don't eat onions and only rarely add any kind of sauce to my sandwich.

Dessert was a let-down. It sounded interesting in the menu.

These are balls of deep-fried peanut butter cookie dough. Deep-fried anything is a staple of the Iowa and Texas state fairs. You name it, they have deep-fried it. Perhaps the intent was to create something unique. Perhaps the intent was to ride in on the coattails of the deep-fried bandwagon. Whatever the reason, these were not good. The dough inside was tough and chewy. I suppose that exemplifies the "raw" nature of the interior. I'm not sure if I was to dip the spoonful of dough into the ice cream or eat the ice cream as a chaser. I make better peanut butter cookie dough than that contained in these globs. In the end, I wound up eating 3 of them and the ice cream and claiming I was full. They were just not good.

Beyond that, I had Pizza Hut pizza and cooked a meal for Carole. The route home was marked by a lunch stop at an Arby's in West Virginia and, as a pick-me-up, a McDonald's along the Ohio Turnpike.

That's a plain ol' McDonald's hot fudge sundae. At 4 p.m., that was all that I wanted.

In the grand annals of culinary vacations, this wasn't one of them. I ate familiar. Sometimes, consistency in presentation and taste is what you're looking for.

Beverage:  Dr Pepper

Deb

So You Don't Have To

Kettle-style potato chips are all the rage and have been for some time. I am a bit late to the dance of trying these, I admit. I tried them when they first came out and, perhaps it was the ones we tried first, but I wasn't real excited by them. I think they had a sugar/salt flavor to them.

Well, Arby's has decided to add kettle chips to their offerings. Usually, I get their small 4 pack of mozzarella sticks, but I thought these might be less calories and certainly less fat.

Blarg. Perhaps it's me. I did not like these at all. Usually, I'll finish something I'm not real fond of because I shelled out the money for it, but I couldn't. They were served hot and were still warm by the time I got them back to the office. That was a plus for flavor to start. When they cooled off to room temperature, I thought they were downright nasty. Again, this might be me.

The smaller ones were crisp, but the larger ones were soggy in the middle. There was a very distinctive vinegar taste to them. Vinegar has its place. I don't care for the mayonnaise covered cole slaw but the sugar vinegar kind, yes please. (My mom has a great recipe for that style. It does take 24 hours to make, however.) On my chips, I was not at all sold. I think I would have preferred the chips plain, with no additional flavor adornment than what I felt was the overpowering taste of vinegar.

You do get a lot for the price, much more than a comparably priced container of fries. That is a plus. But I think you really have to like this style of chip to find these attractive. I also do have to commend Arby's for looking at something different on their menu. Choice, in the fast food world, is a good thing.

Beverage:  English Breakfast tea

Deb

Not Too Bad

There's a new sandwich in town and I tried it.

This is an, admittedly, not so great photo of Arby's new Grand Turkey Club. This is hot sliced turkey breast, swiss, pepper bacon and lettuce on a whole wheat bun. The original sandwich comes with tomato and mayo, two things I don't care for. But they will make the sandwich without them.It's yet another entry into the club/sub sandwich market.

How does this rate? It's not bad. I liked the warmth of the sandwich. The turkey is flavorful and I liked the bacon flavor with the swiss cheese. I had this over the weekend and liked it so much I got another for lunch on election day. Arby's can be an acquired taste but I think this sandwich is a good fit with the rest of their anti-burger menu.

Arby's is on the high end of price when compared to the menus of other fast food locations. They also tend to have the least amount of staffing and a very utilitarian decor. It's almost like walking into a fast food place of the 1980's. But, if you are looking for a different sandwich than a burger, give this a try, assuming you can find an Arby's near you.

Beverage: Rooibos tea

Deb

Concert Tickets

I stopped by Arby's yesterday. I had to go to the hardware store to get garbage/yard waste stickers and to inquire if I can get a second free quart of paint from the upcoming promotion. I took advantage of a free quart to get a color I want to use in the back bedroom, assuming I ever get that far in household chores. But I was looking around my living room, which is painted in colors I really like and I could use a quart of the custom color on the walls for touch ups. I wasn't sure if it's a one-shot deal. The gal at the counter said it wasn't so the next free coupon that comes my way means I'll hie thee to the store for touch up paint. Arby's is one door down from Ace Hardware.

They are doing this promotion where you sent them a photo of special concert cups turned to the artist you'd like to see. You could win VIP tickets to see that artist in concert. The choices are: Trace Atkins, All-American Rejects and Taio Cruz. I've at least HEARD of Trace Atkins.

See, this semi-irritates me. I realize that Arby's has to go with whomever they can find to be a part of a promotion like this. Plus, they have to look at their demographic; where are they most popular and then, by extension, what kind of music does that demographic listen to? And factor in which age group is most likely to actually photograph their drink container and email it. I'm not inclined to photograph and submit the drink container to an online contest. I'm not their target audience.

But what if they gave away tickets to the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra? What about the Dallas Symphony Orchestra? Or say the Lyric Opera of Chicago? It's hard to imagine, in this day and age of corporate sponsors being pretty much anywhere, that they couldn't find someone other than these three to go along with the whole VIP idea.

A promotion like this doesn't affect, one way or another, the amount of times I go to Arby's. I do think, however, that companies limit themselves when they don't think beyond country, pop and rap. There's a huge audience for other music and just once I'd like to see a company akin to Arby's acknowledge this. Who knows. By offering VIP tickets to something like the Dallas Symphony, they could entice someone who never would consider classical music, exposing them to that vast repertoire and enriching their life.

Yes, I am tempted to send in the above photo, even though it's half-way between Trace Atkins and All-American Rejects. "Well, I couldn't decide," I'd say. But that's not true. I have decided. I decided I'd just drink my soda and chuck the container. I'll take Old Blind Dogs over any of these any day.

Beverage:  Edinburgh's Finest tea

Deb

Makes my mouth happy.

These turnovers are really good. You get them at Arby's and they have been gone for over a year. They were a limited time offering when they first appeared but I'd go to Arby's just to get one. I had to get garbage stickers today and Arby's is next to the hardware store. I didn't realize the turnovers were back until I walked in. (sigh) I really cannot afford to eat there even once a week but...but...chocolate turnovers.

No, I don't care about the nutritional information, thank you very much.

Beverage: Dr Pepper

Deb

New Game Show!

How could this idea fail?

It's July 1st. Half of the year is over and another half is set to begin. It's a good marker for taking stock of what you've accomplished and what needs to be done.

Like cleaning out the fridge.

I started over the weekend. How many of those containers of marinara sauce from Arby's do I really need? Zero actually because, when I order the mozzarella sticks, I never use the marinara sauce. So, I brought all the sauce tubs home thinking the sauce would be good over pasta. Well, 15 tubs later, which spans the whole first half of the year, they are just taking up space, like the Alfredo sauce that's now yellow with small greenish spots. Yup, time to be ruthless.

But in the course of being ruthless, things "accumulate" in the garbage can until tonight, when I will haul them to the curb with the recycling. And that spawns the game show idea.

"What's that smell?"

I'm sorry. I should have warned you. There are monitor cleaning cloths you can buy.

After tonight, I won't have to play that game for awhile. I have the last shelf and the compost drawers, I mean fruit and vegetable drawers to empty. If there is anything in those drawers, it can go into the composter. I have wonderful compost in the back yard that I never use. But I'm being green.

I don't really take out a lot of garbage. Tonight, however, it's going fast to the curb. I'm not interested in playing "What's that smell" any longer.

Beverage: Free Coke from Chipolte because Mike won lunch there.

Deb