So You Might Want To

With a flurry of excitement, M&Ms announced a new flavor; caramel. /sigh. If you've spent any time here, you know I've been less than enthusiastic about their attempts to broaden their flavor base. It's kind of ridiculous. M&M/Mars holds a commanding lead in market share in the American chocolate market. They don't need to make anything other than M&Ms in plain, peanut, peanut butter, and pretzel, and they would still trounce anyone else. But they seem to always be trying something else.

Chocolate and caramel are a winning combination, however. Milky Way and Snickers bars have delicious gooey caramel. Cadbury has a chocolate caramel bar that is amazing. I should give this a try; that is, if I can find it. Reports were Wal*Mart had them, but I refuse to go to Wal*Mart unless that is the only place to buy something which is life-saving. M&Ms with caramel is not lifesaving.

Then, I found them on a site looking to position itself as an Amazon alternative; jet.com. The bag was cheaper than I anticipated finding it in the store for this size. So, I bought it. I have since found out that Jet.com is owned by Wal*Mart so I'm in a quandary. I refuse to overtly give the Waltons any of my money because I know how much they pay their workers; how a friend of mine had to apply for foodstamps because a supervisor who didn't like her, cut her pay in an attempt to get her to quit. (It was a very nasty story. That supervisor was, eventually, fired from Wal*Mart because she picked on not just my friend, but also others. Yet the corporate culture is such that employees can be subject to the whims of a supervisor who simply doesn't like them, with little recourse unless others speak up.) I will have to consider the use of this service versus the use of Amazon which I'm not fond of because of its world domination perception.

Anyway, the M&Ms came to my door in a padded mailer. Inside was the bag of M&Ms and this.

I should mention the mailer with the M&Ms arrived while I was at work. I suspected, when I saw the "Expected delivery date" on the shipping form, it would arrive when I was not at home. I had a bit of worry I'd pull out a mass of liquified chocolate mixed with caramel. That wasn't the case. It was still cool on the inside of the mailer.

Ta Da.

Although the graphic on the front would suggest the caramel was liquid, that is not so. It is chewy. I found it a delightful soft chew. I feel, if it were the more liquid caramel of, say the Milky Way, there would be little of the caramel taste. It would disappear from your tongue before you had a chance to actively combine chocolate and caramel. They didn't put hard caramel centers because you couldn't eat them one after another, if they were the hard caramels. I'm actually impressed that thought and probably not a little testing went into this design.

I give these two decided thumbs up. If you like M&Ms, I recommend you seek out a package and give them a try. "Sharing Size"? I think not. Get your own.

Beverage:  Earl Grey Tea

Deb

So You Don't Have To

In the great quest to eat things with odd flavors and report back to you, I have consumed two items within the last couple of months. First off, there is a new Pop Tart flavor. Now, I don't go out of my way to eat Pop Tarts. I was actually looking at cereal or breakfast bars to keep in my desk drawer at work. The breakfast toaster pastries are in the same location. Colorful graphics on the box drew my eye, as it's supposed to do.

I like watermelon. I regularly buy it at the store, but, seriously, in a toaster pastry, warmed? Reddish-pink with green swirls of icing. This should be "interesting".

Visually, it looks like these were sat upon before going into the bag. I think we can figure out how Pop Tarts are made. They lay down the bottom crust. The next machine lays down the filling and another machine applies the top crust. They are squished together, probably just like your mom does to the edges of a fruit pie. Perhaps there is some cooking here to make the toaster part of this food simply a warm-up. After the sandwiching of the tart, another machine applies a layer of frosting and, if necessary, yet another machine gets to apply a squiggly something or other. The whole thing is dried and then shoved into bags, sealed and shoved into boxes. Human hands do not meet this pastry until you open the bag and move the tart to the toaster or, in the case of some of them, eat them without toasting. (I'm looking at you, plain blueberry or strawberry flavored.) I'd be interested to know exactly how many Pop Tarts can come off a conveyor per hour.

But how do these taste? I can say, unequivocally, blah. There was a watermelon sense about them, but that was completely lost in the bland flavor of the pastry itself. I was disappointed. I expected these to be weird in a "Whoa. Watermelon" sort of way and they were weird simply because they weren't watermelon. If you have young kids, these might be amusing, but don't expect any watermelon enthusiast to enjoy them.

Next on the "Oh look at that" is a new flavor from Oreos.

Honestly, I'm not going out of my way to look for things. If those things happen to cross paths with me when I'm looking for something else, well then, it's my duty to try them. Otherwise, I'm not in the cookie aisle. For the record, none of the breakfast bars I saw was remotely appealing. I have to pass through the cookie section of the store to get to oyster crackers so that's how I happened to spy these. Perhaps this isn't a "new" flavor, in that it was released this month, but it's new to me.

Peel back the top of the package and there are dark and white layers. There was a slight aroma of s'mores, but if you were blindfolded and had this under your nose when the top was opened, you'd have a moment of, "I know that smell, but I can't place it". It was the same with opening the Pop Tarts. Seriously, if you are going to incorporate some flavor we are not expecting, make it obvious when I open the package. This limp attempt at a scent doesn't entice me to want to try the cookies.

In true Oreos fashion, I had to pull them apart.

They are constructed as all Oreos are, excepting there are two layers of filling. You can, if you like, peel the filling layers apart, but it doesn't always separate easily. The fillings remove easily from the cookie so if you like to completely separate your Oreos, you can do that.

Taste. Bland with a side of bland. Oreos chocolate cookies have a good chocolate flavor. When they step out of that box and make vanilla cookies it's akin to vanilla-flavored cardboard. The cookies were mealy and crumbly and just didn't hold up to being dunked in milk, something Oreos takes great pride in trumpeting. The chocolate filling was grainy and the marshmallow filling was barely marshmallow flavored. You'd do better to toast a marshmallow and stick it on the filling. I think the cookies were supposed to be graham cracker flavor but that was nowhere in evidence. I wasn't disappointed, per se. I bought these expecting them to live down to low expectations and they certainly did. If you have access to a microwave, you can make close to campfire s'mores. Stay with that and save your dollars.

So, there you have another installment of "So You Don't Have To". I haven't bought anything strange lately. I'm changing my diet around so the Oreos and the Pop Tarts were kind of a last hurrah for awhile. But, you never know. I'm out of the bags of sugar snap pea pods I've been taking to work for lunch and eating while playing WOW. Plus, I'm out of dish soap. I have to go get more which means walking into the store. You never know what will hop off the shelf and into the cart totally unaided. I swear. I had nothing to do with the 2 boxes of Triscuits in the cart.

Beverage:  LaCroix Berry flavored seltzer

Deb

So You Don't Have To

Members of my World of Warcraft guild mentioned I needed to be on the look-out for these.

I happened to see a small group in the store so I bought a bag. My initial reaction, "Meh". That reaction didn't get any better as I ate through the package.

I don't know if the package I got was stale but the creme centers were crumbly, not at all creamy, as I've come to expect. The chocolate cookies were hard, overly crunchy. Usually, when you dip an Oreo in milk, the milk will soften the cookie. If you leave it in the milk too long, it can disintegrate. I didn't have that issue with the chocolate cookies in this package. The creme filling did disintegrate and turned the milk pink, but left a sugar residue in the bottom of the glass. That was wholly unappetizing.

Last year, I tried Oreos with a lemon center. Of all the flavored centers they have released in the past several years, that is my favorite. The lemon was not overpowering. The problem with the berry flavor was that there wasn't enough of it. The vanilla creme has a flavor. The chocolate creme has a flavor. It felt like they took unflavored creme, added food coloring and then passed some synthetic berries near the vat and called it a day. Make no mistake about this. There may be a nice stock photo of a strawberry and a raspberry on the cover, but those berries are nowhere to be found in this cookie. It's all artificially flavored. The only "natural" flavor was the cocoa in the cookie.

They do look like the package cover, with a glossy sheen to the creme. They separate easily, almost too easily. I'd like to have to work a bit to pull the Oreo apart.

The bottom line is that I won't buy these again, not even on sale. I was very disappointed in the lack of berry flavor and the toughness of the cookie. Perhaps it was my bag, but I'm not inclined to buy another package to see.

Beverage:  Huckleberry tea

Deb

So You Don't Have To

It's time for another post in the long-running series where I eat what looks appealing and report on it, advising you if it's something you'll want to add to your grocery cart or, "Holy, what were they thinking, Batman?", avoid and never look back. 

Today's selection is...

I've seen these around for awhile. I could have sworn I'd tried them and blogged about it, but it appears I have not. 

I'm going to dive right in. These are Oreos, after all, almost a staple of family life. It's peanut butter. Unless you hate pb or can't eat it, what could be wrong with a combination of chocolate cookie and peanut butter. The verdict? Don't waste your money. I was disappointed. 

Maybe it's me. Maybe it's a reconfiguring of the formula to make the cookie, but I found the chocolate cookie portion of this bag to be bland. Maybe it's selective memory and I'm remembering a time when chocolate flavor was important. It just seemed as if I was eating chocolate-infused cardboard, which an emphasis on the cardboard. The cookies were hard and overly crunchy. Maybe this bag had been sitting longer than it should have and so the cookie part had grown stale. I'm not sure. I had a tough time getting the "Lift flap" to actually lift. 

And the peanut butter part? Well, I can be blamed for thinking it would be peanut butter in between the chocolate cookie. It is the familiar texture of the white Oreo with a hint of peanut butter flavor. Again, it's just a hint. It was bland and the innards were slightly mealy, almost sandy, in texture. The center crumbled much easier than I think it's supposed to. 

I tried dunking them in milk, which is how you can justify eating a whole row. You're getting your calcium with each cookie. There was no appreciable change to the cookie. The chocolate wafer stayed hard, whereas I remember in the past you had to watch the length of time the cookie was in milk, lest it dissolve. I took them apart and dunked just the cookie. Three minutes on and I still had a crunchy cookie with no sign of softening. When dunked in milk, the peanut butter flavor all but disappeared. It was a wholly unsatisfactory experience. 

There's a berry center Oreo that I have not tried. I liked their lemon center from last summer. I won't eat the mint center as I don't like mint, unless it's wintergreen, so there won't be an appraisal of that version. I'm kind of on the fence about trying the berry flavor. I should but I have concerns there's been a change with the cookie. I think that's kind of why one buys Oreos; the cookie texture and flavor can make or break them. I'm remembering the chocolate wafer cookies Nabisco used to make. I'd buy them and crumble them to use for cheesecake crusts. If I really wanted a chocolate peanut butter cookie, I could find a package of those and get a jar of peanut butter. I'd have way more of each flavor than is contained in this mash-up. Keep your money. They aren't worth it. 

Beverage:  Scottish Breakfast Tea

Deb

The Various Items of Christmas

It was an eclectic Christmas. I think I like those the best. It can be hard, in October, to assemble a Christmas list. I'm very aware of the amount of stuff I have. Paring down to what is essential is a goal and I do it in spurts, but it's important to provide ideas for things that bring me pleasure and happiness. The friendship of those who want to be in my company is the best gift I could receive, but, let's face it, it feels spectacularly wonderful to find some token of that friendship and present it. As much heartfelt, "Your friendship is the gift I treasure" that I say, I know how much joy I get when wrapping something I think the recipient will love as much as I loved picking it out for them. So, there is the list.

I used to save lists, year to year. I don't anymore. I don't know when I had an epiphany about that but I discarded several years worth of lists. It strikes me as hugely consumer-centric and if I'm going to consume, it will be with an eye toward quality, not quantity. When you're 10, the idea that you have a box bigger than your sister's is important. When you're 58, not so much. 

How about a blanket? 

This is so warm. I have it in the recliner in the living room. When I watch TV, I wrap my legs and feet in it. Plus, Mija loves it.

Also keeping me warm is this ruana. This is a Scottish shawl. 

Carole and Larry got this for me at the Celtic fest in Richmond. It's a light-weight wool and it's wonderfully warm. I wear it when I'm playing World of Warcraft and then wrap myself up as I trot around the house. I love the tartan, too. I haven't allowed either cat to sit on it. This gets folded and draped across the back of the office chair when I go to bed. 

What can I say about insulting bandages? I have 4 Minion bandages left to use up before I can get to these. What I really like is the notation "15 Large Assorted Plasters", "plasters" being the British term for bandages. I have not opened the container to be better surprised by the insult when I do need a band-aid. 

If you are not washing your hands religiously during the current flu epidemic, you are dumb. Seriously. Look at the scents I have to choose from to keep my hands clear of germs. Granted, it's just me in the house, but the peppermint scent went to the office where it's seen a lot of use. You don't have to smell like iodine to be healthy. Just wash your hands. 

Raiding snacks for the nights spent in front of the computer. The caramel corn is gone and the green M&Ms are nearly gone. I need to get a container of chocolate frosting to "properly" eat the shortbread cookies. What? That's not how you eat them? You must try it. Slather frosting between two cookies. The cherry M&Ms I love so well are out now. I bought a bag. I will be saving them along with the candy apple ones and attempting to ration my M&M intake. I'm sure I can do this. 

How could I not have one of these on my tree? Next year, I need the one that looks like a DD styrofoam cup. 

File this under "I laughed so hard". I used up most of my cards this past Christmas. If I could find a whole box of these, you'd get these in 2015. Maybe I should look at replacing the printer that broke and printing my own. 

Finally, I don't know where Carole found these, but they evoked the biggest memory. I can't have real Christmas trees off a lot anymore. The amount of chemicals used to keep a tree alive during the year and "fresh" after cutting are not good for anyone, to begin with. But I seem to have a huge allergic reaction to the sniffs of the scents on a tree lot. It makes me very sad. I don't have the problem when I wander in the woods so perhaps cutting my own would be a way to go. That's not going to happen without assistance so I'm content with my fake greenery. 

However, I miss the raw pine scent that trees provide. I can get that from some candles and this coming Christmas, from these. Yes, they are chemical reproductions and I'll have to watch how long I'm exposed to the scent, but you should smell them. WOW. 

I was riding on the back of a wagon in the cold of a December Saturday afternoon as we headed into the rows of trees on the tree farm. I didn't know there was any other way to get a Christmas tree other than freeze your feet off tromping through the snow to watch Dad and Mom argue about whether the one they were looking at would fit in the corner of the living room. I spent 15 years with a fresh cut tree and assumed the ones on the lots were cut right before Thanksgiving. Nah, not so much. I'm several layers removed from fresh now so these ornaments are going to bring back all the wonder and joy of Christmas in my youth. Best part, I don't have to remember to water them and clean up all the dropped needles when the tree was taken to the curb after New Year. 

So that's the round up of Christmas in my house. If you will excuse me, I have some M&Ms to eat and a cat to move off a blanket. 

Beverage:  English Teatime Tea

Deb

So You Don't Have To

You know that time when you MUST eat something not at all healthy? I had one of those times recently. Here was my purchase.

And you know what? They weren't bad.

The vanilla cookie was typical Oreo quality, crunchy and solid. The inner filling was the usual texture of the vanilla filling in a typical Oreo, only it was lemon flavored. It was not overpoweringly lemon, either. It wasn't like taking a bite out of a lemon. It was light, just enough, I feel. The overall taste of the cookie was very good.

I like lemon cookies. You can buy "generic" brand lemon cookies in this style. Is there a benefit to buying Oreo brand? Not really. Still, they were on sale and, if I found them on sale again, I would consider buying them. I divided the package into smaller bags of 5 cookies each, after I'd eaten one side of the bag during a WOW raid. I grabbed a package with my lunch and 5 cookies was just enough to make a long afternoon at work feel not so long.

So, unlike other foods under this headline, I think these are okay and can recommend them, if you like lemon cookies. These aren't dunking cookies. I don't think I would eat them with milk, but they are a fun flavor in the seemingly endless versions companies are churning out in the drive to increase market share.

Beverage:  Huckleberry tea

Deb

This Vexes Me #19

"Don't get fancy. Have you cooked an apple pie? You don't know what you did wrong? Do this:  take two or three apples. Put them on a table. Study them."  --Paul Prudhomme, chef

I love apples. My favorite is Gala, but Fuji, shown here, and a Golden Delicious are good too. I haven't made a pie in years. I think about making homemade applesauce in the fall. With a good mix of apples, all you need is a dollop of cinnamon and no sugar. Drop it in a freezer container and then, come February, when all is frozen and there is the prospect of 10 inches of snow over the weekend, you can have warm applesauce instead of fake maple syrup on your pancakes.

So why does this vex me? See that little tag? Oh lordy do I hate those. When I buy fruit, I just want to rip all the tags off, march over to the guy in the produce department and slap all of them on him. They seem to meld with the skin of pears, particularly if the pears are getting ripe. I tend to buy pears under ripe so they will not rot in the fruit drawer before I eat them. Apple stickers are sort of easy to remove, but I can't tell you how many times I have pulled an apple out of the bin and begun slicing it only to see a sliver of a sticker on the peel of one of the slices. It vexes me to no end to have to then try to pry the small sliver off the piece and find the rest of it.

I realize that there isn't a better way to mark things like apples. You don't put them in plastic clamshell boxes like you do with berries and people want to pick their own apples off the pile. I can spend a good 10 minutes looking at the mountain of fruit and making my choices on which ones look best. And you can't expect your cashiers to be able to identify the 8 different varieties of apples you have, particularly when Gala and Fuji can look very similar but be much different in price.

Still it vexes me. I sliced this apple for my lunch today. I happened also to find the caramel apple dipping sauce on a recent trip. Oh my. While I'll happily sit down and eat two apples, sliced, add a dash of caramel to the slices and it's heaven...(cue the music) I'm in heaven/and my heart beats so that I can hardly speak/and I seem to find the happiness I seek/when it's caramel apples that I have to eat.

My apologies to Irving Berlin.

Beverage:  Rooibos tea

Deb

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

Potato Crisps? Seriously?

My friend Doo works at Neiman Marcus, often referred to as "Needless Markup". For Christmas, he sent a box with three containers of chocolate covered items. "Let me know what you think of these," he said.

The box arrived on a very snowy day so that's why you see water on the cover. (A side note: the stretchy cord is a wonderful item to use for playing with the girls. You can see my post about that at House Panthers.)

I have consumed all the snacks. It took me awhile. These containers are simply repurposed Pringles containers. Oh I knew NM wouldn't reuse Pringles cans but, for all intents and purposes, that's what these are. And the snacks inside them, well, left to right:

milk chocolate covered Pringles.

Oh excuse me. The can says, "Milk chocolate coated potato crisps". Outside the rarefied air of NM, we call them Pringles.

Next we have white fudge covered corn snacks.

That's what it says on the container. This container was a bear to open. It had a plastic tube insert that was devoid of any lip to grab to open.

I finally resorted to using a knife to cut through the tube right below the plug and opening it that way.

The other two containers had a plastic top which, when removed, revealed a pop top, just like a Pringles can. All I could think was, "These better be good", after it took me 15 minutes to get into the container.

Chocolate covered Bugles. Yup, that's what these are, chocolate covered Bugles.

The red tube was the same as the first one except it was dark chocolate.

What are my impressions? I haven't finished the dark chocolate Pringles. The chocolate is very rich so I nosh on a couple while cooking dinner or as a late night snack. That's probably a good thing, that I'm not eating them on after another. While they are good, I don't like them as much as the others.

The white fudge Bugles took me three days to consume mainly because the white fudge was very sweet and rich and not something I wanted to eat the whole container of in one sitting. Don't get me wrong. This is a good thing. Being forced to not eat everything in one sitting is good for my health.

I really liked the milk chocolate covered Pringles. I don't remember if I've had chocolate covered potato chips, which is what this is a direct take off of. I like milk chocolate probably the best and the Pringles were crispy and a bit salty. The flavor combination was good. With the dark chocolate Pringles, the chips are kind of stale, which might be because these would have been produced in mass quantities in October and I'm just now getting around to them in January. The salt is also missing from the dark chocolate Pringles and I do think that makes the flavor of the milk chocolate ones. For the Bugles, it's as if they bought seconds, the misshapen or otherwise unfix for bags of Bugles snacks and covered them with fudge. There's nothing wrong with that, but they were missing Bugles' saltiness.

I won't tell you what the price sticker said on the underside of the box. I know Doo didn't pay nearly what the sticker said. It was a very interesting diversion and I enjoyed the vicarious thrill of eating Nieman Marcus branded snacks.

Beverage:  hot cocoa

Deb

So Easy, My Brother Could Make It

Right after the new year, during the first heavy snow when I didn't go to work because there was 8 inches of white stuff to be moved about, I tried a new chocolate cake recipe. This was fished out of one of the ancient mailing envelopes that contain my recipes. I'm pretty sure it dates from the 1980's but it was quick and didn't take many ingredients.

Yup, that's the full extent of ingredients, other than oil and an egg. The morsels I'd had in the back of the cupboard. You can see the chocolate has "bloomed". This was a good way to use up half the bag.

The recipe said to mix the whole mess in the 9 x 13 pan in which it's baked but I couldn't find a compelling reason, other than not dirtying a bowl, for doing that. That is probably why it was suggested. You just dump everything in the pan, including one egg and half cup of vegetable oil, and mix with a fork.

The batter is quite thick. You stir until everything is 'moistened'. I found that not everything got incorporated at the bottom of the bowl and had to do a bit more stirring to make sure all the dry ingredients were mixed together. Then, it goes into a 350 oven for 45 minutes or until the top springs back when touched.

It's a lovely chocolatey color and made the house smell so nice. I cut the cake while warm and topped it with Oberweis' Banana Fudge Walnut ice cream. This is the best ice cream. Oh my.

I have decided I can't keep this in the house. It's so good, I'll eat half a quart as a meal and that's so not good, good tasting yes but good health, no.

The cake freezes very well. I had a couple of pieces the day I made it and then froze the rest in individual sandwich bags. I grab a piece and toss it in my lunch bag. It's not crumbly. It's very dense so it holds up well to the thawing process which can cause a deterioration in texture and cohesion.

If you are interested in the actual recipe, let me know and I'll give you the exact ingredient amounts. This turned out to be a good recipe, fast to put together and good to freeze for lunches.

Beverage:  British Breakfast tea

Deb

Noshing News

When I'm playing World of Warcraft, that's when I want to nosh. I don't do it when I sit in front of the TV. My hands are usually otherwise occupied. I'm cross-stitching, crocheting or petting a cat. Something about sitting down at the front of my computer with a beverage brings out the nosh monster. For one's health, however, this is not the best thing. That's why I tend not to have a lot of noshing foods in the house. I will eat them, all of them, in a couple sittings. Not good.

I sent a friend some candy goodies for her birthday. She should be receiving the parcel today. I filled a rather silly container with her favorite and some other silly things, but I overestimated just how big the container was. The Runts I bought wouldn't fit.

They have turned up next to the computer. Added to them were the rest of the Reese's Pieces that didn't fit in the container. The nice thing about Runts is that I can't eat a lot of them in a sitting. The Reese's Pieces look a lot like the Runts so I'm not eating them by the handfuls. This is a satisfying mix to nosh on while playing the game.

I saw these on the ThinkGeek.com web site, some time ago.

I can get lost in those pages for hours. This probably doesn't look like anything spectacular but here these are out of the foil liners.

If you know gaming, you will recognize these shapes as being the dice commonly used in Dungeons and Dragons or other tabletop pen and paper fantasy games. I got Carole a set and, well, had to have one for myself, naturally. They are made out of dark chocolate, 60% dark Ghirardelli Chocolate, no less. This is the ultimate in noshing.

The problem is that, as much of a chocoholic as I am, 60% dark chocolate, while good for me, is rich and I don't sit down and consume that wantonly. I've eaten the 4 sided die and it took me a couple sittings to do it. It's good, oh it's good, but these really aren't the "pop in your mouth" kind of dark chocolate one consumes when one is playing a game.

I discovered something else I would nosh a whole bag of, which also isn't a good thing.

Oh my gosh are these good. They are expensive; notice the package contains only 8 rolls. But fresh from the oven with a teaspoon of butter, they are heavenly. I can't keep these in the house. I'd make the whole package and that's all I'd eat some weekend. If you have more restraint than I, they get a huge thumbs up. I need to try them hot from the oven with jam, although that's not something I can eat in front of the computer. I did eat the last 3 rolls in the package while playing the game. I'm also willing to bet that they will be in scarce supply on Wednesday night next week.

Yesterday, noshers of the world rejoiced, just a little. There was a report, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which stated that people eating a handful of nuts daily had a 20% reduction in heart disease, cancer and type 2 diabetes. That's a significant reduction. It didn't matter the kind of nuts, either. One handful, once a day, was enough to lower risk. Nuts are almost the perfect noshing food, but they are high in calories so must be consumed in a small amount. A "handful" translates into an ounce or 1/4 cup. If you actually measure 1/4 cup of peanuts, it looks like a lot and if you eat them one at a time, you can make them last a long time.

My friends know me quite well. Several of them sent me a link to the news reports of the study along with the comment, "The nuts you eat should be plain, not contained in the middle of M&M's."

Dang. There's always a catch, isn't there?

Beverage:  Huckleberry tea

Deb

So You Don't Have To

Wikipedia says Pillsbury introduced this brand in 1985. We started buying them when they first came out. They were billed as an alternative to Pop-Tarts. I've enjoyed their convenience ever since. There is a store brand at the grocery but I've never been tempted to try it, even though it is priced about fifty cents less. I don't buy these unless they are on sale. I don't think they are a good value otherwise. I eat them not just for breakfast, but also as a snack or even dinner when I'm took tired to cook.

This flavor has been in the store since early August. With a coupon and on sale, it was a great deal so I thought I'd give it a try. Pop-Tarts has a s'mores version that, even heated, just doesn't taste right. I didn't hold out much hope that these would be any better than those. 

I was rather surprised when they turned out to be decent. There's never enough icing for these and in the s'mores version, that's noticeable. The packets could be half again as much and I can't see that it would change the price any. The filling was creamy and didn't have an overpowering marshmallow flavor. It wasn't sticky or gooey. As with any of their other flavors, fresh out of the toaster, you taste heat, not flavor, so let them cool a bit before eating. 

My favorite strudel is the strawberry flavor, but for a change of pace, these were nice. "Limited Edition" usually means, "We're going to give this a try and if it takes off, then we'll continue to make it." If you can get it on sale, give it a try. 

Beverage:  English Breakfast tea

Deb

So You Don't Have To

On Labor Day weekend, I made a trip to the grocery. I really wanted some M&Ms for munching. I hadn't had any in a couple months. Next to the peanut ones, my second favorite, were these. Ooooh! Raspberry. I don't remember hearing about these. Sold.

Now, my favorite M&M's are the dark chocolate cherry ones which are available around Valentine's Day. Wanna be friends for life? Buy several bags when they go on sale on February 15th and send them to me, one bag a month. I never thought any other kind of M&M would supplant peanut M&M's as my favorite, but those have. Thankfully, they are only available from January 1st until stock runs out after Valentine's Day.

I thought these would be an interesting change of pace. "Interesting" is probably the right word. There was no definitive raspberry flavor about these.  The 'raspberry' is a mix of artificial and natural flavors, I would say leaning heavily on the 'artificial' rather than the natural flavorings. They could have slapped blueberry, blackberry or, heaven forbid, cherry on the package and you would not have been able to tell them apart. It was a berry something flavor totally overwhelmed by the dark chocolate. I love dark chocolate, but these needed to be in something of a 50/50 ratio and they were more chocolate than berry.

I was terribly disappointed. Thankfully, this was a small bag. Had this been peanut, peanut butter, plain or cherry, I'd have eaten this in a couple hours. As it was, it lasted me a week because they were terribly uninspired.

So, the bottom line is don't waste your money on this flavor. If you want a berry flavored M&M, save your money. Start a Cherry M&M's fund and then, in January, buy as many bags of those as you can afford. You will thank me.

Beverage:  Dr Pepper

Deb

Binge Worthy

Let's talk about color. I can hear you, yes I can. But Deb, there's no black licorice in there. You are absolutely correct. There is no black licorice here. Sorry, but I loathe black licorice. When I was a wee one (Missed the dinos by a few years.), whenever we had a cough, dad would give us Smith Bros cough medicine. It was black. It was the consistency of hot tar, meaning fluid but not like water. And it tasted of licorice, strong licorice, like they took every anise plant they could find in a 12 county radius of the plant and soaked it to wring out every molecule of flavor. Dad loved this stuff, swore by it.

It                  was                  awful.

My mother, reading this post, is going to be laughing right now. She knows. She knows. 

I remember trying to keep a cough quiet from dad and only letting it out into my pillow or my elbow. I'd go into the bathroom and turn the water on full stream in the hopes it would make enough noise to drown out the sound of my cough. I did all of this and more because I did not want to be given the black goo. Dad said if it didn't taste bad, it didn't work, and he was dead serious with that comment.

The thing is, the stuff worked. It stopped a cough like Jersey barriers stop a cyclist. Bam. Done. Over. Yet choking down that syrup, which, incidentally, burned as you swallowed it, took everything you could muster. I can remember dad taking some for a cough and then licking the spoon. I love my father but sometimes, he was nuts. 

When Smith Bros introduced a cherry flavor, we rejoiced. It was good and, I thought, did the same thing as the black stuff. We could take a teaspoon of the cherry flavor and sleep all night with no coughing. It wasn't as viscous as the black stuff, but it sure did taste better. It was in the house for all of one bottle's worth and dad refused to buy it again because he felt it wasn't "real" cough syrup. 

So, while I know the term "licorice" generally refers to the black version, I can't stand it. Thankfully Twizzlers understands there are a lot of us who don't care for the anise flavor. The flavors of Twizzlers are more than a handful and, at the grocery to get cereal, dish soap and apples, I found this bag. Be still my heart. Cherry, orange, lemon, lime, grape and blue raspberry; on sale, too. 

I should have purchased a second bag. Be proud of me. I made this bag last for 3 servings. 

Beverage:  Dr Pepper

Deb

That is Totally Unacceptable

Meredith likes Skittles. Periodically, we ask in guild chat what everyone is eating as we head into a raid or an event or just to make conversation, like last night when I took a long flight so I could finish eating a piece of chocolate cake. Meredith eats Skittles.

She had a conversation on Facebook about needing a proper bowl in which to hold the Skittles. Just having them in the bag wasn't really acceptable. The bag can rip and spill your snack all over the floor, not that I've ever had that happen to me. She found something that looked, from her photo, to be brushed aluminum or steel. It was a sleek design but, at least as far as I was concerned, didn't have much life to it. If you're going to sit at the computer and eat Skittles, the least you can do is eat them out of a unique container. And with that phrase, an idea was born. I would set out to find Meredith a unique bowl in which to hold her Skittles.

Thankfully, this is the start of fair season. Every weekend, one can find some sort of arts and crafts fair in the Chicagoland area. The first weekend of the month was Wheaton's Cream of Wheaton festival which featured arts and crafts. I figured I'd start there and see what I could find. The first tent I walked into was a potter. She had exactly what I wanted at the price I wanted to pay for something unique.

Now, I didn't set out to match the Skittles bag to the inside of the bowl. That was a happy accident. I didn't want anything too big. It had to hold at least a half a bag and if it held the whole bag, that was a huge plus. I saw several bowls that were cheaper than this but they were also much lighter in weight. As I turned them over in my hands, I realized that they had the potential to be knocked off the desk top.

So, I spend $5 to get a hand made bowl, but it lasts all of two weeks because it's so lightweight, the cord from the mouse knocks it onto the floor. Well, there is no value in that.

This bowl, as you see, has a "foot". That extra edge and its thickness, combined to give this weight. Even if Meredith's mouse cord gets caught on the "other" side of the bowl, it's not going to cause it to go flying. I had to send it with a couple bags of Skittles and, it appeared to me, that the bowl would hold almost a whole bag. I made the creator's day too by being her first sale. I can't find the business card I took so I can link to her site. She had some unique pieces, including handmade buttons. If I ever get around to making that new fall coat I keep thinking I want, I'll seriously consider getting handmade buttons for it.

This was a hit with Meredith. She's sent so many wonderful boxes of awesome to me that something like this is the least I could do to repay her kindness. While her other bowl was okay, it really wasn't acceptable for someone as unique as her. Now, she has a one-of-a kind treasure for her Skittles.

Beverage:  Yorkshire Gold Tea

Deb

Well, This Is New

Found at Target.

Plus, they were on sale.

I'm usually up on my M&M's flavors, but this was new to me. These were located right above the coconut filled ones and some people had intermingled them. I don't care for coconut so I spent a few minutes sorting the bins and getting the coconut flavors back to their section. Both have white bags although the coconut ones have blue lettering, not brown.

You'll be wanting to know how I feel about these. Did I eat all the bags? Well, they are interesting.

White chocolate is a bit of a different animal than milk, semi-sweet, or dark chocolate. The chocolate solids that give chocolate its brown color are removed to make white chocolate. It's pretty much cocoa butter, milk solids, salt and sugar. I've found, in my years of eating chocolate, that the flavor of white chocolate can vary quite a bit. The quality of the chocolate the manufacturer starts with affects the taste of the end result. M&M/Mars should know a bit about chocolate but this is also mass produced and, therefore, the taste is affected.

I found the flavor to be a bit "off". The mouth 'feel', and, for a chocoholic like myself, how the chocolate feels in your mouth is a big factor in the overall experience, was a bit waxy. I don't usually chew my M&M's. I suck on them to remove the outer shell and then get the full taste of the interior flavor. With the peanut butter ones, for instance, I'm left with an explosion of peanut butter taste. The white chocolate here, didn't dissolve as well as say Lindt white chocolate does. These are not super sweet. In fact, I think they are similar in sweetness to M&M's dark chocolate filled. But I felt there was a waxy-ness to the chocolate itself. It's not grainy, I've had grainy white chocolate, it just wasn't as good as it could be, at least for me.

So, I have eaten about a third of a bag so far. I eat a handful and that's all I care to have in a sitting. I'm a notorious snacker but I won't reach for these every time I think I have a snack craving. Also, I don't think I'll be buying these again. My all-time favorite is the chocolate cherry ones they have at Valentine's Day. When those are gone, I'm very happy with M&M's with peanuts. I wouldn't be sad if these didn't make their selection long term.

Beverage:  Dr Pepper

Deb

It Is An Option

Last night's supper.

I had two of them with copious amounts of tea. After the week I've had, this is an option for mental health.

Plus, they are really good.

Beverage:  Irish Breakfast tea

Deb