Diet Coke-Babies

Cereal Review: Yummy Mummy and Fruit Brute

Posted by robbposch on September 16, 2013

Posted in: Cereal Reviews, Food, Food Review, Holidays. Tagged: cereal, cereal review, food, food review, halloween, holiday, monsters. 3 Comments

The end of August, AKA “what now apparently is considered the start of Halloween season” took me by surprise this year. I think it is due to the fact that last year, I overestimated my Franken Berry needs, and bought way too many boxes. Since I’d see the extra boxes sitting on my backup cereal shelf all year long, the switch in my mind never flipped to, “Fall better arrive soon, I’m low on Monsters Cereals.”

Instead, all of a sudden, BAM, there they are. In the Target near me, it was the first thing to go up in their Halloween section, because Target has its priorities straight. The seasonal section was still 95% back to school stuff, with a lonely end cap of Monsters Cereals.

Despite the fact that Monsters Cereals are good, they’ve definitely reached an echelon among a lot of us that maybe isn’t quite deserved. Are they awesome? Of course. But are they awesome to the level where people should look forward to fall just to eat them, and reference them haphazardly in an attempt to ingratiate themselves to other people? Maybe not. In the case of Boo Berry, definitely not.

Maybe people just love talking about them because it is a cooler signifier of Fall arriving as opposed to just everything being pumpkin flavored.

I won’t pretend to know the figures, since my subscription to Cereal Sales Monthly has lapsed, but I’ve long wondered why the Monsters didn’t revive either of their retired fruit cereals. With all the good will the Monsters cereals have accumulated, it seemed that bringing back either of the two fruit cereals would be a winner.

This year, General Mills decided to bring back not one, but both of their fruit cereals. Fruit Brute and Yummy Mummy would join the other three. This is the first time these five have ever been on shelves together. Since Yummy Mummy replaced Fruit Brute, they were never around at the same time.

As cool as that is, it seemed like this might be a problem. Fruit Brute was just before my time, and I don’t really remember eating Yummy Mummy. But both cereals are “fruit” flavored – were they different fruits? Given that there are already two other fruit flavored cereals in the assortment, was this a generic “froot”-esque flavor, or did the original releases of Fruit Brute and Yummy Mummy have different flavors?

Upon seeing the new boxes on shelves, I was immediately disappointed. I love the cereals and all, but I hate the box design they’ve been using the past few years. They’re just… terrible. They’re ugly and just have a horrible art design.

Look at this assortment of dreck:

Compare that to the simple, and simply awesome original styles:

I’m not saying the current boxes have to look like they used to, decades ago, but a more natural art progression would have been nice, as opposed to, “overuse one shade to make the box monotone, although that’s good because it might drown out how bad the characters look”.

Even the box art they were using in 2004 was much better than it is now:

I reviewed the core three Monsters Cereals nearly (jeez) ten years ago here – Monsters Cereal Review. So I won’t bore you with a retread of that topic. On to new (well, old) cereals!

The boxes’ backs show how the main three monsters meet Fruite Brute and Yummy Mummy. It seems strange to me that monsters would be so scared of hearing a wolf’s howl, especially since they have the advantage in numbers, but once they all hang out and have cereal, everything is cool. Just like in real life. Except it seems there’s only enough milk for one bowl, which Boo intends on stealing. I told you Boo sucks.

Fruit Brute’s box isn’t an improvement on the design of the other Monsters Cereals. In fact, it’s worse. He looks really stupid. Actually, he looks exactly like Jean Ralphio with longer sideburns.

Thankfully, Target presumably got fed up with the horrible boxes, and decided to do something about it. So at Target, you can get all five of the Monsters Cereals in retro boxes. Are they better?

Absolutely.

One major change between the original and the “retro” box is that the flavor of the cereal has gone from “fruit” to “cherry”. Now, I don’t know if the flavor of Fruit Brute was cherry all along, and was only called fruit, or if they made the new flavor cherry to better distinguish it from Yummy Mummy. I am sorry for my lack of information. Not that I ever really have information, but this time I’m actually sorry about it.

Putting the boxes next to each other just magnifies Wolfman Jean Ralphio’s awfulness.

Trying a few pieces of the cereal dry, I was worried, since the flavor reminded me of cough medicine. In fairness, the flavor erred more on the Luden’s side of cherry than Robitussin. Thankfully, once in milk, the flavor softened a bit. Cherry is usually very hit or miss for me, mostly because of the aforementioned similarities to cough medicine. But Fruit Brute’s cherry-ness wasn’t overwhelming, and felt more like “froot with extra cherry” as opposed to “HERE’S SOME CHERRY FLAVOR IN YOUR MOUTH YEAH!!!”

One downside to the Monsters Cereals is I’ve always thought they did a rather weak job of flavoring the milk. Count Chocula even brags on the back of the box that he “vants to turn the milk chocolatey.” Big talk, but it’s always a mediocre chocolatization. Same with Franken Berry – no confusion with Strawberry Quik to be had.

Fruit Brute gave the milk a bit of a cherry flavor, but really not much. Although honestly, that’s fine with me. I don’t really want cherry milk.

Fruit Brute was better than I expected, since the cherry flavor was more muted than I’d feared. But at the same time, two days after having my first bowl, I’m not itching (get it? fleas? sigh…) to have another bowl.

[insert halfhearted (but spooky!) seal of approval here]

Of the two cereals, I was looking forward to Yummy Mummy more. This is solely based on the fact that Yummy Mummy is so much fun to say. Yummy Mummy. It’s also kind of fun to type. You get to be in that rhythm of typing “M”s a lot. Yummy Mummy.

Unfortunately, Yummy Mummy is not immune to having a terrible box. Instead of a mummy, he looks more like an undead Fruit by the Foot. We will have to avert our eyes from this monstrosity (not the good kind), and steer over to Retroland.

Ahhhh, much better. And this Yummy Mummy has MONSTER-MALLOWS!

I wasn’t particularly excited about an Orange Cream-flavored cereal, either. I think I’d have preferred for them to alternate years that Fruit Brute and Yummy Mummy are released, so they could be the same “fruit” flavor, without having to have differing, weaker flavors.

The cereal is basically orange sherbet-flavored. The orange smell is stronger than the taste, thankfully. The flavor is good, but if the orangetasity in the taste was as strong as the smell, it probably would have been much worse.

Yummy Mummy did a better job of flavoring the milk, giving it a very weak Creamsicle flavor. Like Fruit Brute, I enjoyed it, but I’m not exactly clamoring for a second bowl. It’s good, I would just rather have much more Count Chocula and Franken Berry before more of either of these two.

[insert halfhearted (but spooky!) seal of approval here]

While I didn’t think either of the two new (old) offerings were a home run, both were solid addition to the Monsters lineup. It’s nice that a Halloween-timed cereal gets an entire end cap or display in most stores. Halloween displays are always fun, and having a wall of five different Monsters Cereals is a welcome addition this year.

Food Review: Dole Banana Dippers

Posted by robbposch on July 26, 2013

Posted in: Disney, Food, Food Review. Tagged: disney, food, food review. 10 Comments

To preface this review, I will warn you – this is not a new product. I don’t mean to alarm or depress you. But if you are reading this, and have already seen or tried these, I didn’t want you to have any dizzying confusion or deja vu. (I’m not looking up how to put the little accents on the letters there.)

The packaging still says new, though. So either these are really old, or they just haven’t bothered making a new box. They’re still “Best By” for almost another year, so I’m not worried. (Although I wouldn’t have been worried about eating expired food anyway.)

Dole Banana Dippers take one of the greatest foods in history, chocolate-covered bananas, and slice them up into bite-sized pieces. Although they’re more “bite-sized” if you eat like a savage. Otherwise, you can get a good eight to twelve budgeted bites out of the four pieces.

Banana Dippers became especially important to me, as my heroin withdrawal-like symptoms were rising, from my lack of Disney bananas. As you will no doubt remember, chocolate-covered bananas ranked #2 on my list of Top Snacks at Walt Disney World. I’m just kidding, I’m sure you don’t remember that. But you can refresh your memory here.

It should be noted, since I mentioned Disney World before, that Dole now makes chocolate-covered banana pieces you can eat at home, and also makes Dole Whips, which might literally be the best things in the world. So I guess Dole has now placed itself atop the list of Best Companies Ever.

Any pre-packaged food will bring about cries from people – “You can just make these yourself!” I know I can. I don’t want to.

I watch hours of Good Eats a week, where the inimitable Alton Brown spends the real-world equivalent of hours to prepare the simplest things. I am entertained to no end – it is one of my favorite shows ever. However, the inspiration I am left with is not something books will be written about. I just think, “Oh, okay. I’m just going to buy that, instead.”

So if you would prefer to make your own chocolate-covered bananas, go ahead. For the rest of us cretins, we will continue to go about it the easy way.

Jeez, this review is feeling rather antagonistic. Sorry.

The Dippers are marketed as a cross-section of dessert, fruit, and 100 Calorie Packs. Each packet has four slices – not giant pieces, but maybe bigger than you might expect. They’re about the size of a quarter, although the slices are certainly not evenly-sized. But I suppose that’s to be expected with a product like this. If they were all exactly uniformly-sized, like a bunch of mini Peppermint Patties, that would be a bit off-putting for a “real” fruit product.

Regarding the taste – they are fantastic. Dole was cool, and decided, “We are only doing these with dark chocolate.” Because dark chocolate is awesome. The chocolate is definitely a strong flavor here, and given that the chocolate to banana ratio is higher here than in a chocolate-covered banana, you might expect to taste nothing but chocolate.

Thankfully, the banana flavor definitely comes through almost as strongly as the chocolate. It’s not a perfect balance, I’d say 60/40 chocolate to banana, but the ratio is good enough where you definitely get a hit of both flavors. The banana is a good consistency, as well. Sometimes the bananas are rock hard, and sometimes they’re just mushy. These are perfect – frozen but a little soft.

The other variety of Chocolate Dippers has almonds on them. I was more excited for these, since the nuts on a chocolate-covered banana add a nice flavor to them.

At this point, I’m wishing I just copied “chocolate-covered banana” and pasted it when necessary. Especially because half the time I’m adding an extra “na” to banana.

The almonds don’t really add too much to the flavor, but the definitely don’t take anything away. You can see the uniformity of the almond placement on the box didn’t exactly translate to the real-world counterpart.

When you read that you should have five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, I recommend making one of those servings a packet of Banana Dippers. Or just eat five packets, and you’re covered for that day’s fruits and vegetables. I assume that counts.

Cereal Review: Froot Loops Treasures

Posted by robbposch on July 12, 2013

Posted in: Cereal Reviews, Food, Food Review. Tagged: cereal, cereal review, food, food review. Leave a comment

Two of my favorite foods in the world are cereal and fruit snacks. For some reason, combining the two has never been, as far as I can recall, tried.

Well, tried by a major cereal company. I’m sure some stoner has sat in his dorm and tried to stuff Fruity Pebbles inside a Gusher. Actually, now I’m wondering how that might taste.

Aside from possible homemade attempts, we’ve never seen anything akin to “Frosted Krispies – Now With Fruit Wrinkles!” Kellogg’s saw this void in the market, and, pioneers that they are, tried to see just how well this marriage might work.

I never think to buy Fruit Loops, despite enjoying them every time I do. I have some weird prejudice against ring cereals, it seems. Fruit Loops, Apple Jacks, Honey Nut Cheerios – all part of a persecuted group of cereals that I pass over as mediocre, then on the random times I do get them, they make the most of their opportunity and make me happy.

But, there it is – the big “NEW!” at the top of the box. No way I can resist.

Based on the picture of the “treasure” piece (enlarged to show detail), I thought the pieces would almost be like a a fruit version of Krave cereal. Then I realized why this looked so familiar – Hidden Treasures cereal.

Hidden Treasures were a short-lived cereal, they were corn puffs that were either filled with grape, orange, cherry, or nothing. Apparently, this era was big on the concept of “kids love surprise flavors and colors!” This would explain the existence of Pop Qwiz microwave popcorn, where the whole novelty of it was you didn’t know what neon color the popcorn would be until you poured it out of the bag.

The treasure pieces are significantly bigger than the loops, so given the different shape and size, I thought I was in for one of those uneven cereal-eating experiences.

I tried one of the treasure pieces by itself, and it was… weird. It really does taste like a fruit snack shoved into a piece of cereal. Which isn’t bad, per se, it’s just unusual. The chewiness was certainly unexpected – I thought it would be more of a jelly-like consistency.

However, when eating the cereal altogether, it works very well. The crunch of the cereal blends with the chewiness of the filling. What really helps is all of the loop pieces diluting the treasure pieces’ chewiness, so overall the crunch of the cereal kind of drowns out most of the strange chewiness.

Taste-wise, it’s not too different than normal Froot Loops. Since the treasure pieces make up maybe 10% of the bowl, the strawberry fruit snack flavor doesn’t take over. After finishing the cereal, I was reminded of possibly Froot Loops’s biggest flaw – not coloring the milk.

For such a brightly colored cereal, it does nothing to the milk. The milk taste nice and sugary, but it would also be nice to have some artificial colors seep in there, as well.

[insert seal of approval here]

Cereal Review: Monsters University

Posted by robbposch on June 28, 2013

Posted in: Cereal Reviews, Food, Food Review. Tagged: cereal, cereal review, disney, food, food review. Leave a comment

Pixar is no stranger to the licensed cereal. They’ve made Toy Story 3, The Incredibles, Cars, Cars 2, Buzz Blasts, and probably more (I think knowing those off the top of my head is shameful enough.)

So seeing another Pixar cereal isn’t a surprise, but it is a welcome addition.

Monsters University is Pixar’s newest sequel, allowing fans to chant their mantra of “please be more like the Toy Story 2 and 3, less like Cars 2.”

The packaging for Monsters University cereal looks fantastic. You can see the box’s shade of blue from the end of the aisle. Then, of course, Mike and Sulley jump out. It was kind of a missed opportunity to have Mike at the bottom-right of the box, and not cover his face with something, like the ending of Inc.

But I guess there’s something to the logic of “don’t cover up a well-recognized Pixar character for the sake of a small inside joke.”

Despite the recent victories of vanilla cereals, my reaction to seeing “Vanilla Flavored” is still, “meh”. While vanilla is a good flavor for many things, there’s a reason it’s a synonym for boring.

The marshmallows look pretty good, for cereal marshmallows. They won’t win any prizes for detail, but one is a bright green with a big white center, and one is a bumpy teal with purple ears. I can figure out what they are meant to be. So for a cereal marshmallow, that is a huge feat.

I’m not entirely sure what the cereal pieces are meant to be – paws? In any case, they’re pale and strangely oversized.

The cereal’s taste is… okay. It’s not bad, and I will finish the box instead of pouring it into my dog’s treat bag like I do with some really weak cereals I’ve had.

And while the limited nature of this cereal somewhat takes this decision out of my hands, I wouldn’t get it again. It’s unmemorable and mediocre as a cereal.

But they got me to buy a box, simply by being a licensed cereal. So the magic of licensing lives on!

Cereal Review: Hershey’s Cookies ‘n’ Creme & Vanilla Chex

Posted by robbposch on June 21, 2013

Posted in: Cereal Reviews, Food, Food Review. Tagged: cereal, cereal review, food, food review, review. 1 Comment

After the disappointing previous cereal roundup, my new finds didn’t seem to promise a turnaround in quality. Both cereals involved flavors that are good in many other scenarios, but as a cereal flavor seemed suspicious.

My first reaction to Hershey’s Cookies ‘n’ Cream was that I thought the name was odd. No “Cookies ‘n’ Creme Puffs” or “Krispers” or “Crunch” (actually I guess they’d get in trouble for that) – just simply “Cookies ‘n’ Creme”.

My second reaction was… well, I didn’t really have one. It had a giant “NEW!” on the box, so my Pavlovian response was to grab the box and put it in my cart.

The cereal pieces aren’t coated like Reese’s Puffs, they’re more like flavored Kix pieces. The cereal itself isn’t intensely sweet, like I had feared. It’s sweet, to be sure, but just enough. My other concern was that the “creme” flavor would be super-powered, in order to be tasted over the chocolate.

Instead, the cereal is very well balanced – it actually does a good job of tasting like cookies and cream, instead of the “horrifyingly artificial vanilla flavor” I was anticipating.

Bonus: the milk tastes like Rice Krispies Treats Cereal milk.

[insert seal of approval here]

Despite almost every variety of Chex being awesome, I was wary of trying Vanilla Chex. “Vanilla” flavor in cereal is usually one of my least favorites. The vanilla tends to taste less like actual vanilla (or even vanilla extract) and instead tastes like that weird vanilla flavor you find in protein shakes.

As usual, apologies for the atrocious picture. Almost all of my cereal-eating is done in the middle of the night, so I can never take advantage of natural light. Instead, I take the pictures in artificial light, forcing my camera to admit, “I don’t understand how to process this lighting, so here’s a blurry, pink-tinted picture!” It’s either that or have a gigantic flash spot in the middle of the box.

I guess the third option is, “learn about photography”. But that sounds like effort, so “sort of blurry, inaccurately-colored” pictures it is!

Despite the picture not showing it very well, the box is quite nice looking. Mostly because I’m a sucker for purple. But the other big plus is that, for some reason, “blue” is the default color everyone uses for vanilla-flavored products. So bravo, General Mills, for throwing some purple into the vanilla mix.

Not literally, though. While a purple Chex cereal would have been awesome, they didn’t actually put the color into the cereal itself.

Ah, there’s my old friend, the flash spot.

The Chex pieces come in two varieties – standard Chex, and the completely covered Chex pieces that you see in their Muddy Buddies Chex Mix.

Despite the coated pieces looking like they will make the cereal insanely sweet, the sugar levels stay reasonable. Like Cookies ‘n’ Creme, in no way could Vanilla Chex be considered “lightly sweetened”. But it doesn’t come close to sweetness levels of many other cereals, where the prize inside should be a little bottle of ACT rinse.

I’m very happy with the cereal scientists who are pushing this new version of “vanilla”. Both cereals have a Rice Krispies Treats Cereal-esque flavor. That cereal’s flavor always seemed to err more on the vanilla side than the marshmallow side, so maybe that’s the key for a good vanilla cereal.

As individual flavors, I’m usually not big on marshmallow or vanilla. But when the two of them get together and have a baby, that baby is, well not appetizing, I guess. It’s harder than I thought to get that metaphor from its beginning to its end without entering all sorts of awful territories.

Point being, if all vanilla-flavored cereals are as good as these two, I will be very happy with more of them.

[insert seal of approval here]

Coke-Babies Classics: The Gourmet Chocolate Taste Test Bonanza

Posted by robbposch on June 12, 2013

Posted in: Candy, Food Review. Tagged: chocolate, food, food review, review, zug. 1 Comment

Since Zug.com died a rather abrupt death, I figured I should mirror my work here. Also, this way I can pretend they’re new updates. Excuse the terrible formatting, I felt like putting in effort to fix it would be an insult to the original work. Also, I didn’t want to put in effort.

I’m a big fan of gourmet foods. Wait, no I’m not. I’m a big fan of watching TV shows about gourmet foods. I love watching Top Chef, but if those plates were placed before me, my reaction would be:

Some of these gourmet and outside-the-box foods seem a little arbitrary. Gourmet wines, cheeses, and meats? Sure. Gourmet salts? Uhhh. There might be a difference between a $20 bottle of soy sauce and a $2 bottle, but guess what: it’s going to make your food salty either way.

So when I recently noticed how many gourmet chocolates were crowding the shelves, I had to try every one of these strangely-flavored chocolates, no matter how frightening or disturbing, and report back with what they taste like. I wanted to know if gourmet = gimmick, or if gourmet = good.

Safeway Select Dark Chocolate with Lemon & Pepper

This immediately seemed like a creepy idea, since I first thought of “Lemon Pepper,” the seasoning you add to foods that is usually just 95% salt.

This is just my poor photo-taking skill … you don’t actually have to squint to eat this bar.

The chocolate is a mild dark, with pieces of crystallized lemon and black pepper. I was expecting a much more acidic flavor, but the crystallized lemon added a mild sweetness that went well with the dark chocolate, like Tony Orlando and Dawn.

I didn’t get any pepper at first, but it showed up after letting the chocolate sit in my mouth for a while. Some of these chocolates really do benefit from those pretentious food snob methods, like letting it melt in your mouth. This technique doesn’t work as well for Skittles.

Weirdness (Out of 10): 3 – Pepper is an odd ingredient, but is actually rather common in the Bizarro gourmet chocolate world.

Deliciousness (Out of 10): 7 – The chocolate is good, and the ingredients work well, even if they did just fall off a spice rack.

Chuao Spicy Maya

Another poor photo, but let’s pretend like it’s in 3D.

Speaking of peppers, we come to our first entry that utilizes the element of spiciness. I say “first entry,” which implies I have others that are also spicy, but I don’t actually remember. Most of these chocolates were purchased in an order that must have made the chocolatier think I was drunk out of my mind. Orders as strange and haphazard as this one are usually only seen on eBay at 3:00 a.m. when people spend $2,000 on Masters of the Universe figures to replace the ones their parents gave away.

The “Spicy Maya” bar, which sounds more like a stripper’s name, is a dark chocolate bar with pasilla chile, cayenne pepper, and cinnamon. I assume that based on the name, they are paying tribute to the Mayans’ first chocolate creations, which were often spicy chocolate concoctions. I assume this because it says so on the back of the wrapper.

Do not be alarmed that this bar is covered with pupil-less eyes, staring at you.

The bar itself looks interesting, with a cocoa bean design stamped on the chocolate. The uneven stamping means it breaks into uneven pieces, allowing you to give bigger or smaller pieces to people, depending on how much or how little you like them, or how greedy/gluttonous you are.

For a bar named “Spicy Maya,” however, it isn’t very spicy. Neither did it contain bits of ancient Mayans. False advertising!

Weirdness (Out of 10): 4 – It wasn’t very spicy, so it wasn’t very strange. Though it would be a fun bar to give to a little child who can’t handle the heat.

Deliciousness (Out of 10): 7 – All the flavors worked well together, though I think the claims that it would “arouse my senses” fell a bit short. The only thing it aroused was my temper.

Chuao Panko

If you’ve been waiting for weird, here’s what you’ve been waiting for. What food is more shocking, more polarizing, and more scandalous than breadcrumbs?

I take it from your silence that breadcrumbs aren’t the controversial item they used to be.

Like the other Chuao offering, the bar’s design is a nice assortment of cocoa beans. Or possibly the pods where the hatchlings grow in the movie Aliens. Which would imply that the breadcrumbs will burst forth from your chest in a gory spectacle.

The bar itself is a dark chocolate, with breadcrumbs and sea salt. Sea salt is one of the hot chocolate add-ins du jour, since adding salt to a sweet dish amplifies the sweetness. Also, adding salt to a salty dish makes it saltier. FYI.

Weirdness (Out of 10): 6 – Sure, chocolate and bread go together well (ask a cupcake). But if you’re going to make a “wacky” chocolate bar, the fact that breadcrumbs are so, well, boring, makes it even weirder.

Deliciousness (Out of 10): 8 – The chocolate was good, and the breadcrumbs acted as wimpy (but tasty) versions of nuts.

Komfort Chocolate Ramen Noodle

For true authenticity, this bar contains 350% of your daily recommended sodium intake.

There seems something inherently wrong with using ramen noodles, a staple of people who can’t afford better food or just enjoy eating garbage (I’m in the latter category), in gourmet chocolate. This bar of chocolate costs as much as thirty packs of Oodles of Noodles.

My first question was, “Did they use a flavor packet?” Thankfully (or sadly, depending on how violently salty and/or rancid-fish-tasting you like your food), they didn’t use any seasoning bags. Even though it was only plain ramen, the ingredients list wasn’t void of questionable and scary ingredients. Sodium or salt makes an appearance in various ways six times!

One thing I appreciate about the bar is its simplicity. Simple label, simple description. All they say is: dark chocolate with ramen noodles. They don’t bother wasting words on things such as, you know, why? Why ramen noodles? Why didn’t you include the dehydrated peas and pieces of beef?

For maximum consumer appeal, have the ingredients in your chocolate resemble escaping maggots.

Weirdness (Out of 10): 8 – It’s ramen noodles. In chocolate.

Deliciousness (Out of 10): 8 – Good quality chocolate with a mild crunch and a ramen aftertaste that’s actually quite appealing, even if you’re not living in a van.

Vosges Black Pearl Bar

The bar got slightly less weird when I realized those weren’t fleas.

Are they making these flavors because they think they’ll taste good, or just throwing things together so comedy writers will try them?

The Black Pearl Bar consists of dark chocolate, black sesame seeds, ginger, and wasabi. And, to its credit, that’s all it contains … no weird fillers. Aside from the sesame seeds, ginger, and wasabi.

A picture of a woman shopping on a bar of chocolate: we have reached the zenith of female stereotypes.

I’ll get right to the point: this bar was really good. The sesame seeds are nice, giving a crunchy contrast to the bar; the ginger goes well also. My disappointment was the wasabi.

I don’t think I’ve ever had real wasabi — most restaurant “wasabi” is just horseradish, mustard, corn starch, and green dye. Unfortunately, I was expecting that familiar kick of horseradish. Instead, the milder wasabi was used here, and served to compliment the chocolate, rather than assailing my sinuses with a four-alarm wasabi fire.

The nerve of this company!

I noticed that wasabi, sesame seeds, and ginger are all sushi accoutrements, so I made this bar into sushi. I had no rice or vegetables, so I’ll call my sushi “deconstructed,” which is a word they use a lot on cooking shows.

(Image source: US Airways in-flight dining promotional brochure)

I despise all forms of seafood, so it was a miracle I even had canned sardines on hand.

Surprisingly, this did not taste as good as it looked.

The idea that you could close your eyes and let the flavors combine into what could be called “sushi” didn’t quite pan out. It was more a case of letting the flavors combine into what could be called “microwaved garbage.”

Weirdness (Out of 10): 6 – The usage of real wasabi took away the spicy novelty this could have had.

Deliciousness (Out of 10): 9 – Very good stuff. I miss the days when the only way I ate this was plain, without canned fish.

Chocolove XOXOX Chilies & Cherries

Going with the “less is more” approach to wrapper design, I see

I would normally assume that a company named “Chocolove” that also had three X’s in its name would manufacture body paint or edible underwear. Instead, they manufacture high-end chocolate. They still keep the sexual overtones by describing the chocolate as “exciting,” “stimulating,” and having “chili flavors.” It even has a love poem inside the wrapper entitled “The Kiss”. I started to read it, but there were too many words with “e” replaced by an apostrophe, so I couldn’t be bother’d.

That’s either a heart, a cherry, or an ass.

The chocolate itself was very good: the dried cherries gave it some chewiness, and the peppers provided an overall heat rather than an intense spike. Still, I couldn’t help feeling I would see this bar on an episode of Law & Order: SVU sometime soon.

Weirdness (Out of 10): 4 – While spicy chocolate might not be the norm, it’s not too unusual anymore.

Deliciousness (Out of 10): 7 – It tast’d quite good, although I don’t think their claims of being stimulat’d by the peppers were to be perceiv’d.

Theo 3400 Phinney Coconut Curry

Chocolate companies have finally heard our cries of “More turmeric!”

Right off the bat, I’ll give this bar credit for specifying a serving size of ONE BAR. Most “gourmet” bars list a bar as about eight servings. As if you’re going to bite off one square of chocolate, then yell, “Wow, I’m stuffed!”

It’s either really good or really bad, depending on which taste wave you’re currently riding. At first, it’s an initial reaction of shock, laced with mild disgust. I love curry, but my mind could not process curry chocolate. Then you sort of get it, and start to really like the taste. Shortly thereafter, you realize you have a mouthful of New Delhi, and you spit it out.

Weirdness (Out of 10): 8 – I’d seen a lot of chocolates with peppers, salt, and other odd ingredients, but never curry. Also, my fingertips seem to be stained yellow from the turmeric. I hope people believe that explanation.

Deliciousness (Out of 10): 6 – This bar is the food equivalent of trying to hang out with your real friends and your work friends at the same time. The chocolate was good, the curry was good. The chocolate and curry together is just an uncomfortable night for everyone.

Komfort Chocolate French Toast

Unfortunately, their budget for pictures on the wrapper ran dry.

Since French toast is sugary, I was expecting this bar to be ridiculously sweet, and it did not disappoint. Actually, it did disappoint, but sweet Lord was it sugary.

Not pictured: sassy waitress refilling your coffee while dropping this in front of you.

Instead of using breadcrumbs, the hottest trend of this decade, Komfort used bagel chips. Which sounds awesome, but the bar was just way too sweet to handle much at one time. Some might argue that not being able to eat an entire bar of chocolate is a good thing, but I think those people are underachievers.

The inclusion of bagel chips made me realize that a dark chocolate bar with pieces of pumpernickel bagel chips would probably be off the charts amazing. But instead, we have an oddly soft bar with the sweetness of shotgunning three packets of Sweet’N Low.

Also, it didn’t taste like French toast.

Weirdness (Out of 10): 5 – A pretty straightforward concept that could have worked, if only they had drenched it in maple syrup.

Deliciousness (Out of 10): 3 – Just way too freaking sweet. Have the insulin ready!

Chuao Firecracker

Warning: Do not eat this while consuming Coca-Cola.

Good news: if you have a desire to have your “throat warmed” by an “explosion” of the “wild side of chocolate” that “playfully tingles and pops,” you are in luck! Or suicidal.

The Firecracker bar is dark chocolate, chipotle, salt, and Pop Rocks. They call it “popping candy,” but we know what that is … and who it killed.

I don’t think I’ve ever eaten Pop Rocks by themselves — do you chew them or just let them sit there? This is why I avoid certain foods; I just don’t know how to eat them. I never eat Nerds because they confuse me. They’re too small to chew, and too painful to swallow whole. Plus, they’re named after my friends.

I’d give this bar a round of applause, but it makes the noise for you.

This is probably my favorite bar in the whole experiment. The chocolate, peppers, and salt go together perfectly, the best sweet/savory balance of all my test bars. But the Pop Rocks are the real star, perfect for annoying people. While my wife is trying to use the computer or watch TV, it is endless fun to sit there with my mouth hanging open, emitting a constant stream of loud snaps and pops. It’s never been easier to passively enrage those around you.

Weirdness (Out of 10): 8 – The Pop Rocks didn’t make the bar “weird” as it did “unique.” Also, “annoying”!

Deliciousness (Out of 10): 10 – Everything tasted good, and my stomach didn’t explode.

Komfort Chocolate Tortilla Lime & Salt

I know what you’re thinking: “With Cinco de Mayo only nine months away, what chocolates should I be stocking up on?” Here is your answer.

Komfort’s Tortilla Lime & Salt takes all the ingredients no one ever requested, and turned it into a bar. Is this one of those instances where it sounds so odd it just might work? No.

The first problem is it’s the same semi-mushy milk chocolate from their French Toast bar. Next, the whole thing tastes like lime zest. I love limes, but usually because I associate them with ingesting gin.

The tortilla pieces are way too small, though on the bright side, at least the tortillas were plain and not nacho cheese flavored. I probably could have tolerated Cool Ranch.

Weirdness (Out of 10): 7 – An interesting and bizarre concept that fails to get executed. Someone should get executed for this disaster, though.

Deliciousness (Out of 10): 3 – Lime-y mushy chocolate.

Vosges Mo’s Dark Bacon Bar

I’m glad to see Mo from Nickelodeon’s GUTS is finding work.

Well, it’s the last bar, so I might as well go out with a bang.

Upon unwrapping the bar, the bacon smell is clearly evident. It might not be kitchen-at-IHOP levels of bacon aroma, but there is definitely more bacon smell that you want in your chocolate.

I had high hopes for this bar due to the story on the packaging. Katrina, the founder of the company, tells a story of her childhood breakfast. Apparently at six years old, her breakfast consisted of chocolate chip pancakes and bacon.

If you are bitterly jealous of her childhood, you are not alone.

Then she mentions how some of the maple syrup would get on the bacon, voila, sweet plus salty, the rest is history. Or, rather the present. The present in which I am confronted with a chocolate bar with bacon in it.

Okay, no more procrastinating, time to eat the chocolate covered pig rind.

I guess technically you could put this on a salad.

I placed a big piece in my mouth, letting it melt as I braced for impact. You can imagine my surprise when I discovered it was … good(?)(!). Really good, as a matter of fact.

The little bacon pieces are crisp, which alleviated some of my fear that there would be fat globules suspended in the bar. They’re also spaced well so you get enough bacon flavor to notice it’s there, but not too much where it turns into Baconettes.

Well, I’m confused. I was hoping for a big, disgusting finish, but instead I got a really good bar. How disappointing. Not for Katrina, however, who will now have more money for pancakes and bacon thanks to this stellar review.

Weirdness (Out of 10): 10 – If there comes a time where bacon and chocolate is a widely accepted combination, it will prove we have taken our national bacon obsession a bit too far.

Deliciousness (Out of 10): 10 – Absolutely fantastic. Now they just need to introduce a chocolate covered Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwich.

How Popsicle Keeps Screwing Up

Posted by robbposch on May 16, 2013

Posted in: Food, Food Review, Miscellaneous Reviews. Tagged: food, food review, review, scandal. 2 Comments

With summer approaching, it is time to focus on one of summer’s best friends – the Popsicle. Or, for this article’s purpose, Popsicle the company. There is one significant point that needs to be addressed. This point is that Popsicle is screwing everything up.

Originally, I had planned on reviewing their new yogurt line of pops. This was almost a year ago. I couldn’t even muster the energy, it was just so bad. Not bad in a way that’s interesting to write about, something that really gets the vitriol flowing. It was just bad in an “ugh, that’s enough” kind of way.

It’s berry, watermelon, and vanilla flavored – how does that get screwed up? But it does, and I would probably be fine with that, if it didn’t seem like this line got an extreme push from Popsicle. These were in all the side freezers – the ones you can see from the main aisles without actually going into the freezer aisle. Then, once in the freezer aisle, they often had their own little section of the freezer where they were prominently displayed.

Instead of promoting this line of dreck, Popsicle should be putting their time, energy, and money into promoting their products that are actually very good. Popsicle has a lot of great offerings – regular Popsicles, Airhead Popsicles, Firecrackers, lots of stuff. But some of their best stuff is either being hidden away, discontinued, or just screwed up.

Making the yogurt line more insulting is the fact that on the back of every box is a picture of a Cyclone.

Cyclones are amazing. They are fantastic, and are being promoted on the back of every box of Popsicles, so why are they not in stores? I’m not even talking about my local supermarket. They’re not in any of the stores I’ve checked, which were in multiple states!

I guess I get if they are a limited distribution, but if that is the case, why waste valuable box space with a picture of an item not in full distribution?

Popsicle Improvement Step 1: Get Cyclones in all stores.

Speaking of awesome Popsicle products, one of the best things they ever made is no longer produced: Lick-A-Colors.

I’m not talking about those giant ones from the ice cream man. Their proportions were all wrong. Besides, I think now they only make the “sour” version, which is blech.

Their Jolly Rancher pop looks like it was inspired by Lick-A-Color, with it’s different layers. Except they’re not very good, and one of the flavors is green apple. So, no.

Popsicle Improvement Step 2 (and this is probably the most important step): Bring Lick-A-Colors back in the multi-pack box.

One thing I’ve never understood was how you were supposed to save the gumballs for last when you got a character bar from the ice cream man. Yeah, Tweety has two gumballs eyes, but what do I do with them – put them in my pocket? I usually tried eating around them until the end, but even then there was enough bar left where you had to store one of the gumballs in your cheek like a squirrel.

Or I would sometimes just eat them. They were barely gum, more of a Razzles mutation.

Point being, gum that comes with the sherbet things from the ice cream man is usually bad. So why did they take the Screwball, which is awesome, remove the good stuff (the sherbet) and add more of the crap (the gum, in case you weren’t paying attention)?

Popsicle Improvement Step 3: Get rid of the extraneous gumball in Screwballs.

For kids of the 80s, probably the two most iconic ice cream man treats were Fat Frog and Bubble O’Bill (which is NOT Buffalo Bill). Bubble O’Bill has somehow managed to survive, and is actually quite popular in Australia.

For a long time, it seemed like Fat Frog was to be left in the past, an ice cream bar to be looked back on with fond nostalgic memories. Unfortunately, Popsicle exhumed the frog’s corpse, and continues to desecrate its body to this very day.

A Fat Frog bar was an ice cream bar with M&M eyes, and it was awesome. Now, it looks like this:

Oh, no M&M eyes anymore – that stinks. But at least it’s the good old reliable ice cream flavor we used to know and love, right?

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

APPLE MELON? I’m assuming it’s sherbet, which wouldn’t be bad, except apple? UGH.

If they released an apple melon sherbet bar called Adam Apple or something, that would be perfectly fine. But to not only bring back the beloved Frog, but also sully it with a disastrous flavor? Heresy.

Popsicle Improvement Step 4: Kill off Fat Frog before his reputation gets further tarnished.

I actually just now went to the Popsicle site, and can not find the Fat Frog bar anywhere. So it’s possible that Popsicle already knows they made a grievous error, and are doing their best to cover up their mistake. That, or it just sold terrible and was discontinued. Which isn’t surprising, since it’s apple flavored. But I’m going to give Popsicle the benefit of the doubt on this one.

Coke-Babies Classics: The Miracle Berry Experiment

Posted by robbposch on May 15, 2013

Posted in: Food, Food Review, Miscellaneous Reviews. Tagged: food, food review, review, zug. Leave a comment

After taking a sabbatical lasting a couple millennia, miracles are making a big comeback. Miracles seemed poised to re-take the world by storm in 1980, after the Soviet Olympic hockey team was defeated by the United States. Unfortunately, it appeared that miracles just weren’t able to keep the momentum going.

However, we appear to be on the cusp of a true miracle renaissance. Possibly the most important evidence for this claim is that miracles were recently the subject of an in-depth dissection by noted philosophers the Insane Clown Posse. In this mind-blowing treatise, the very concept of what truly makes a “miracle” was rocked to its very core.

No longer are we able to offer simple scientific reasons to explain the phenomena of the existence of giraffes, why a son resembles his father, or the mystical properties of magnetic attraction. As it turns out, these, along with a multitude of other examples in our everyday lives, are actually miracles.

If the miracles already mentioned aren’t enough to, as they say, “shock ya eyelids,” then perhaps you are one of the many who prefer their miracles to be a bit more mind-blowing.

Enter the Miracle Berry.

These little wonders are also often referred to as Miracle Fruit. But I don’t, so therefore we will ignore that name from here on out.

Yeah, I’m not too impressed either.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, or don’t pay attention to potentially interesting yet not that interesting oddities, you have already heard of the Miracle Berry. It has the power to potentially alter the tastes of certain foods, making sour and bitter foods taste sweet. I already have three italicized words in this paragraph and don’t want another simply for the aesthetics, but pretend “potentially” in that last sentence was also in italics.

These wondrous little berries are from the plant of some, uh, plant and have interesting properties as a result of their, uh … hold on.

Jeez, even Wikipedia is stumped. Apparently the best scientific guess is that they are, in fact, a miracle.

One popular thing to do with Miracle Berries is to have “Flavor Tripping Parties.” These parties, which I’m genuinely surprised isn’t mentioned on Stuff White People Like, involve getting together and eating lemons.

Now, I know nothing about these parties from experience, but that does not sound like the makings of a wild time. Instead, I prefer my way: sitting by myself eating a large quantity of questionable foods while my brother takes pictures. That seems a lot more … hmm, “normal” doesn’t seem to fit there. I’ll probably come back and edit that last sentence with a more appropriate term.

There is way too much sexual innuendo going on for a package of compressed fruit powder.

I wound up splitting my “party” into two nights. With some of the bizarre, spicy, and conflicting foods I was about to eat, I thought it best to give my digestive system a short break. Unfortunately, I wound up eating all the bizarre, spicy, and conflicting foods on the first night.

But let us not waste any more time, I know what you’re here for: the miracles! So now, on to the main event.

It’s a good thing Miracle Berries have interesting properties, because the taste would not be a good selling point. They have a vaguely fruity taste, but lean much more to the “natural” side of a “natural fruit snack” flavor.

Yo man, I got what you NEED!

You’re supposed to let the berry tablet sit on your tongue, dissolving and coating your taste buds. It’s like the world’s lamest tab of acid.

Serve this to guests to ensure they will never return.

Once the berry was absorbed, it was time to dig in. I had bought a ton of food, in an attempt to experience as many miracles as possible.

Salt and Vinegar Chips:

What appears to be a blank, dumb stare is actually preparation for a mind-blowing experience.

I went with Popchips, because they have a much stronger vinegar flavor than other chips. The fact that the berry even put a dent in the vinegar was impressive; instead of an intense vinegar taste, it was instead a mildly sweet flavor. Which immediately raises the question: is that a good thing? In this case, let’s just say it’s an interesting thing.

Plain Yogurt

After the cow-like stare of the previous picture, I am going out of my way to look like I have a thought in my head.

My acidophilus levels were feeling a bit low, so I moved onto yogurt. This transformation was great, the weird tang of yogurt replaced by an incredibly smooth sweetness. I thought it tasted like vanilla yogurt, but that could just be my lazy way of saying it was sweet and didn’t taste like fruit.

Lemon Juice

“In here, we pour lemon juice.”

I’ll drink straight lemon juice from time to time, to teach my canker sores a lesson in responsibility. However, this was flat out amazing, literally the best lemonade I’ve ever had in my life.

Beef Broth

The perfect post-workout beverage.

To find out if the Miracle Berry works on salty like it does on sour, beef broth seemed like the ideal candidate. In short: no, it does not. I like drinking the broth from Cup O’ Noodles as much as the next guy (as long as the next guy really likes it), but seeing as this can came out of the refrigerator, it made for a very un-refreshing beverage.

Broccoli

The taste wasn’t changed at all, but on the bright side it did help me get 15% of a serving of fruits and vegetables.

Chicken Broth

After the disgusting beef broth failure, I don’t know why I bothered. But the can was on the table, and since I went to that incredible amount of effort, I figured I had to. There was no change, and frankly I was glad. I have no desire to drink sweetened chicken broth.

Sauerkraut

I love sauerkraut; it’s a great food to eat by itself, especially in social situations. There’s just something off-putting about it. The brine was changed significantly, which turned it into a creepy sweetened cabbage salad.

Minced Garlic

I would have preferred fresh garlic — as horrifying as it might be to eat the stuff raw, it’d be better than this jarred slop. The berry did seem to take some of the edge off, but it was still no match for the grotesque taste.

Red Onion

I went with the George Costanza method, eating it like an apple. Like the garlic, it took off a bit of the harsh edge, but still … it’s a raw onion. What can you do?

Sour Cream

I hate sour cream. The friendly folks at every Taco Bell ever know this, which is why they find it so hilarious when I ask for no sour cream. They know my timid request will not stop them from piling it on my food by the ladleful. However, the Miracle Berry did improve the taste significantly; the sour cream was closer to a tangy, sweet yogurt.

String Cheese

Nothing happened. Except the inherent joy of eating string cheese.

Muenster Cheese

Like sour cream, I hate Muenster cheese. I was hoping the Miracle Berry would change my perception, and turn it into a cheese I could enjoy. It didn’t, and I still hate Muenster cheese.

Cheddar Cheese

As exciting as the string cheese. It still tasted good, at least.

Swiss Cheese

This was the one cheese where I could taste a big difference. Even though I actually like Swiss cheese, a good description of its smell and taste is “feet-esque.” The berry completely removed the feety quality, giving the cheese an extremely smooth taste.

Goat Cheese

Even though I like it, every time I see the phrase “goat cheese,” I get mildly nauseated. I don’t even know if “goat milk cheese” is much better, as surely my issue is with the word “goat.” That said, this was amazing. The cheese tasted like cream cheese frosting. I would have devoured the entire package if I didn’t have more food to move on to.

Green Olives

I’d like an extra dirty virgin martini, please.

If you’ve ever thought “I’d like a dirty martini, but I could also go for an after-dinner dessert cocktail,” the solution is here. The olives had a balance of sweet and bitter, but it was an awful balance where neither flavor tasted good. The olive juice was no better, tasting like simple syrup stirred into seawater.

Dill Pickles

The only time in my life that I’ve ever liked sweet pickles was when I was five and got the card set that came in the green plastic bus. The actual food is disgusting. Unfortunately, the berry did its job, turning delicious dill pickles into their mutated cousin.

Balsamic Vinegar

I committed a major faux pas, by failing to let the tannins breathe.

Words won’t come close to doing this justice. The berry turned balsamic into a beverage that you could sip more smoothly than red wine. I might just start taking Miracle Berries so I can drink this from the bottle in public. It would do a great job of finally cementing my status as “weird guy in the corner that no one wants to talk to.”

Soy Sauce

Facial expression: “Bracing for impact”

This was one of the few things that was made worse by the Miracle Berry. It tasted like something you’d see on an Anthony Bourdain show, like when he’s eating some animal corpse that’s been fermenting in a barrel for a decade. Simply awful.

Horseradish Deli Mustard

I wouldn’t want to use the post-berry mustard on a sandwich, since it was steered into insanely sweet territory. It would be like putting marmalade on a ham and Swiss. Although at least it wouldn’t have those creepy orange rind pieces.

Chinese Mustard

This might have been the most sinister of all the foods I tried. The initial taste was overwhelming sweetness, so I thought it was fine to squeeze an entire packet into my mouth. Then my sinuses were assaulted with the hydrogen bomb-like effects of wasabi. On the plus side, I won’t get a stuffy nose for the next decade.

Banana Peppers

Named after The Banana Splits, which was the favorite show of the food anthropologist who discovered the peppers, banana peppers are the friendly cousin of the jalapeno. These were actually really good, since the hotness still cut though the mildly sweet pepper flavor.

Tabasco

I always think Tabasco is less spicy than it really is, since I usually have four eggs diluting the spiciness. You might not be aware of this, but when you pour a shot of hot sauce directly into your mouth, it is actually spicier than when you have a little bit on your breakfast.

I’m one oversized frilly fan away from exclaiming, “I do declare!”

This fact was fully reinforced when the wave of bizarrely sweet fire rushed over my tongue, and eventually my digestive system. Which was really angry with me after tonight.

White Vinegar

My tongue is about to become a human Paas tablet.

The only use I have ever known for white vinegar is making Easter egg dye. I still have no idea what it’s used for, since the label only suggests using it as a metal cleaner. Yum!

As you can see, it was delicious!

The berry had NO effect, and this was without a doubt the worst thing in this entire experiment. I had to call it a night.

Lemons

No scurvy for me!

On the morning after the Vinegar Incident, I did that thing where you yawn and it splits a little where your upper and lower lips meet. Why am I telling you this disgusting fact? So you can understand why it was just a tad uncomfortable to fit an entire wedge of acidic fruit in my mouth. It was worth it though, because like the lemon juice, this was simply amazing. It was like a melted Great White ice pop.

Limes

The only time I’ve ever really liked fresh limes is in gin. So while the Miracle Berry’s effect on the lime was significant, it just tasted like a very sweet lime, not a flavor I was in love with. I loved it, I just wasn’t in love with it.

Grapefruit

One of my favorite fruits. Mostly because I’m too lazy to cut them up, so the infrequency of my eating them increases their desirability. They’re also great for you, since they are very high in lycopene. And who doesn’t love the taste of lycopene? The Miracle Berry did its job well on grapefruits, turning a sour but pleasant-tasting fruit into a sweet and awesome-tasting fruit.

Oranges

You know how when you slice up oranges for a snack, you always like to sprinkle the slices with brown sugar and dip them in maple syrup? Oh, you don’t do that … because it’s disgusting, you say? I agree, which is why the ridiculously sweet orange wound up being kind of gross.

Pineapple

Remember way back when I was talking about how the oranges tasted, and implied that the Miracle Berry made an already sweet fruit even more sweet, resulting in an undesirable taste? Pineapples, being a vastly superior fruit to oranges, avoided this fate. Granted, they too were super-sweet, but somehow it worked better for the pineapple.

Granny Smith Apples

I actually know people who eat these as a snack, and to me that’s just as weird as eating a raw turnip. To be fair, I’ve never found sour things enjoyable; as a kid, for instance, I never liked sour Warheads. (Hot Warheads, on the other hand, were awesome.) The Granny Smith benefited greatly from the Miracle Berry … while it wasn’t apple pie sweet, it was like a slightly sweeter Golden Delicious.

Bananas

No change whatsoever. Move along.

Kumquats

Until I first tried them a few months back, the only thing I knew about kumquats was their vaguely obscene name, and that there was a kumquat tree in Day of the Tentacle. They’re a little citrus fruit that you eat whole (except the seed), and taste sort of like an orange-lemon hybrid. The Miracle Berry worked very well on them, taking off the bitter edge. It didn’t improve the name.

Dark Chocolate

I used one of the darkest chocolates I could find without it being unsweetened. Usually, anything over 70% dark is like biting into a piece of tree bark, though with less fiber. The berry didn’t offer any sweetness to the chocolate, but it did remove most of the bitterness.

Unsweetened Dark Cocoa Powder

If I was single, this would be my match.com profile picture.

Despite my brilliant hypothesis, this did not taste like a spoonful of Quik. It just tasted like dirt. Well, to be fair, unsweetened chocolate dirt.

Unsweetened Dark Chocolate Milk

I learned two things here. One, the addition of milk did not help matters. Two, cocoa powder, unlike chocolate milk mix, does not dissolve in milk. It turned into a “Homestyle” version of chocolate milk.

Essential Greens

Surprisingly, this didn’t taste as good as it looked.

This is a green powder filled with all sorts of nutrients, that you can mix with other beverages to make a healthy yet disgusting beverage. I thought the Miracle Berry might remove the bitterness and overall noxious taste. Nope. It looked like a lemonade made by throwing a lemon in some sludge water. A lemon, actually, would have helped.

Honey

One interesting thing about the Miracle Berry is not just its power to flip sourness backwards, but also to amplify sweetness. Also interesting was that the honey’s sweetness level reached a bracket of sweetness that might actually require a new word to be created, since “sweet” just doesn’t quite cut it anymore. Maybe “swirt” or “swooty.”

Cocoa Porter Beer

I should have done this from the start.

I figured a porter would work best, since they’re bitter. This could also be completely inaccurate, since most beers are unappealing to me. However, after the Miracle Berry, this was diabolically good. The cocoa highlights of the beer turned this into a chocolate soda. So for all you parents who gripe that your children don’t appreciate good beer, here’s a good way to get them started.

After trying the Miracle Berry, my feelings on the fruit boil down to a single fact: it is definitely an experience worth trying. No, it won’t alter your mind and open your brainbox to new flavors. Grapes won’t taste like snozzberies, and carrots won’t taste like Skittles.

It is tough to describe in words how weird it can be when a food’s taste you’ve known your entire life is suddenly, drastically altered. There is a huge connection between expectations and the actual taste. If any of the steps in the expectation-to-taste process are changed, it’s a bizarre experience.

Brightly colored foods always taste better.

I get upset when people expect me to think white mint chocolate chip ice cream will taste as good as green. Fun fact: it doesn’t. So when I drink a shot of straight lemon juice that tastes sweeter and better than most beverages in the supermarket, it’s definitely a weird and worthwhile experience. Maybe Insane Clown Posse was right: it is a miracle.

If you have already forgotten everything I’ve said, probably the most important thing to remember if you do try Miracle Berries: try the white vinegar. It’s fantastic.

Coke-Babies Classics: The Aloe Vera Juice Experiment

Posted by robbposch on May 10, 2013

Posted in: Food, Food Review. Tagged: food, food review, review, zug. Leave a comment

As an extremely pale person, I have often required the healing properties of aloe. It has always been there for me at the end of a long day involving an “It’s not that sunny out” misadventure. Although to be honest, I don’t even know if aloe actually works. All I know is that when I get burned, I rub some green slime on me, and a few days later I’m a little better.

Of course, a few days later without aloe would probably also result in me getting a little better, but then I wouldn’t get to experience the feeling of my calves lightly sticking to the sheets.

However, in all my experiences with aloe use, I have always chosen to apply it to the outside of my body. But with most medicines, there’s a big difference between using them on the outside and the inside. Pepto Bismol doesn’t work very well when rubbed on the stomach, and eating Icy Hot rarely comforts a sore leg muscle. Although it might help soothe canker sores, but I’m afraid to do that research.

So imagine my surprise when I discovered that people were drinking aloe vera juice. Now, drinking “enhanced” beverages is nothing new; VitaminWater’s annual earnings could probably feed a medium-sized continent for a year. And once the American public latches onto the smallest scrap of health advice, no matter how incorrectly used, they can’t get enough.

Just over five years ago, Pom Wonderful was a niche product. It was familiar mostly to those who really displayed an interest in nutrition, or at least looked at the ads in Men’s Health that don’t inexplicably have guys just lounging in their underwear together. Now everything is pomegranate flavored, from ice pops to Smirnoff vodka.

After contemplating this, the idea of drinking aloe vera didn’t really shock me. But the concept still disgusted me. I imagined it to have a creepy, “slick” texture. Like an awkward medium between the silkiness of Fiji water and a glass of warm pan drippings.

As a bit of a health nut myself, I figured it was a good experiment to try. If I wound up hating it, I would at least have a story to tell. If it turned out to be delicious, I could use its nutrients to balance out the Taco Bell I had for lunch. The only way to find out whether a liquidized aloe concoction would land on the delicious or disgusting side of the fence would be to find out for myself.

As a benefit to my finances, my local supermarket had recently experimented with selling these products. That experiment appeared to be a massive failure, so I was able to buy a can for twenty two cents.

The can sat in my cabinet, then eventually my fridge … taunting me. I feared what it would taste like, but I had to know. Eventually, I was able to gather up my courage, and attempt to dig in. Oh God, I hope I wouldn’t actually be digging in. I hadn’t even contemplated the possibility of solids floating in it. It would be some bastard spawn of “homestyle” orange juice and Orbitz.

Upon taking a closer look at the can, I realized there would indeed be solids. The can says “Bits of Real Aloe,” like that’s a selling point. I’m drinking this to be healthy; I just want to get it over with and don’t want to chew my beverage. If I drank wheatgrass to be healthy (I don’t), I just want to drink it. I don’t want “Real Wheatgrass Clippings” floating about.

I didn’t think it would be carbonated, but with a drink this bizarre, who knows? At the same time, I didn’t want all the “Real Bits of Aloe” staying in a gelatinous clump. So I used my years of Yoo-Hoo training, and gently shook the can … then poured.

The first thing that struck me was that it smelled pretty good. The appearance, on the other hand, was an off-putting, translucent, mucous-esque slime.

There they are: the “Real Bits of Aloe.” (I wonder if imitation aloe bits are more aesthetically pleasing than real bits.) When looking straight down into the glass, it had an alarming similarity to a petri dish filled with bacteria.

Possibly more upsetting than the top-down perspective was looking at it from the side. The liquid and solids had clearly separated, and it bore a close resemblance to Jell-O 1-2-3.

The visuals were as creepy as I was expecting. All that was left now was to see if the taste was more or somehow less appealing. Upon first sip, I was extremely disappointed. It was actually kind of … good! Well, small parts were. And by small parts I don’t mean “Real Bits of Aloe.”

If you manage to get a sip with no solids in it, it was similar to a thinned-out pear nectar. But a bigger sip opened the floodgates for the bits of aloe (real bits, by the way) to come rushing in. Bouncing off my teeth and touching my tongue in a most unsettling way. In that instant the aloe juice went from mildly enjoyable to incredibly horrifying.

If you’re a fan of the aforementioned Orbitz, or bubble tea, you might be able to get into aloe vera juice. For me, liquid and phlegm blobs don’t go well together. Separately, they’re great.

By this point, I’m sure you’re thinking, “This sounds delicious and all, but are there any benefits to aloe vera juice that might make a good sidebar for an article in Prevention magazine?”

I’m glad I made up that you asked, because we are about to find out how well aloe vera juice compares to aloe vera gel when it comes to soothing a burn inside your mouth.

Now I was going to step it up, comparing the results of aloe vera juice with aloe vera gel in treating burns inside your mouth.

Chances are you have a bottle of aloe gel left over from the last time you got sunburned. Sure, aloe soothes burns on the exterior of your body — but is it effective if the burn is inside you?

Before beginning this process, I should point out that ingesting aloe vera gel can be poisonous. The label reads that if you accidentally ingest any, you should call a poison control center. They don’t say what you should do if you intentionally ingest it, but we can assume they would still advise calling a poison control center.

I don’t know if the poison levels are on par with cyanide, or if this is just standard text used as legal protection, like when they tell you to call poison control if you swallow a Band-Aid. In either case, I don’t feel like finding out. So the aloe gel used in this test will be spit out and rinsed.

If I’m going to intentionally burn my mouth, I’m going to do it safely.

Test #1: Scalding Water

We will be testing burn relief in two ways: literal and metaphorical heat. The literal heat comes from a cup of near-boiling water. Hot enough to be painful, not hot enough to actually require a trip to the hospital.

One big sip and five painful seconds of waiting later, it was time to test the relief. The aloe vera juice did a terrible job — it was about as soothing as any cold water or juice.

After waiting a little while to allow my mouth to calm down, I re-heated the water and took swig number two. This time, we will test the effectiveness of the aloe vera gel. One teaspoon of the green slime was used to coat my mouth and tongue (being careful to avoid ingesting, be it accidentally or on purpose).

My initial reaction was one of surprise -– after about a minute or so, it actually was doing a pretty good job of relieving the pain. However, when I looked at the gel’s bottle, I figured out why. The aloe vera gel wasn’t 100% aloe vera, it also contained Lidocaine, a numbing agent.

So while I will give the edge to the gel in this instance, it did have some big help from its chemical partner.

After rinsing with Listerine, I discovered that my mouth was still a bit numb, and would continue to be like this for about fifteen minutes. Once my pain receptors regained consciousness, it was time for the next heat test.

Test #2: Hot Sauce

This isn’t the hottest sauce out there by any means, but since a little goes a long way, I figured four huge tablespoons would go a very long way.

I tried to do the sauce in one shot, but since it had a creepy, thick consistency, it required the use of fingers the get it all out. It certainly wasn’t the hot sauce-swigging tough guy image I was hoping for.

For the aloe vera juice, you will know how its healing effectiveness felt. The last time you reached for some water, thinking it would help with something spicy (it won’t), this was the same feeling. I’m beginning to think burn relief wasn’t one of their main priorities when creating this beverage.

After refilling the glass with hot sauce and re-emptying it (with fingers, again) into my mouth it was time to test the aloe vera gel.

The positive is that the gel did indeed help soothe the burn, although again I assume that’s the Lidocaine talking. The downside was that the taste of aloe vera gel, Lidocaine, peach, and hot peppers mixes as well as you would imagine.

As I contemplated whether this research should be submitted to various medical journals, I prepared for my final test. Let’s wash that horrifying taste out with some booze!

Since I have been referring to aloe vera juice as a health drink, it might actually be a good idea to mention what those health benefits are. According to the company who makes the juice, aloe “helps increase the immune system” and “cleanses the colon.” So that’s pretty exciting. According to their Web site:

“It is also said that Aloe Juice could benefit a person with intestinal or stomach problems. It should aid in the healing of ulcers and help the digestive tract to work smoothly. It is also said that this health drink can improve circulation.”

And since each of those claims is prefaced by “It is also said” or “It should,” we can assume those claims are entirely false, or just guesses.

Anyway, health benefits are great and all, but it would be far more interesting to dilute those health benefits with alcohol!

The next time you have friends over for drinks, and they are talking your ear off about drinking red wine for the heart or beer for the prostate, feel free to ignore them (like you probably already do). Instead, offer them some party-starting cocktails that get their digestive systems running more smoothly than ever.

No one will want to try them. Let’s be honest, it’s a pretty disgusting concept. So in order to up the interest level, you need to resort to one of the tricks of the trade used in more upscale restaurants, like Applebee’s: themes!

Like most people, I associate aloe primarily with being burned. And since I had just burned my mouth with hot sauce, I thought, “What a great combination!”

Combining my porphyria-like results from sun exposure, the cooling effects of aloe, and some traditional beach alcohol, we have:

“Man With Dominant Irish Genes Goes to Mexico”
2 parts Aloe Vera Juice
2 parts Tequila
1 part Hot Sauce

Surprisingly, this turned out pretty well. Its biggest fault is the presence of those pesky bits of real aloe. Besides their unwelcome intrusion, the sweet and spicy combination balanced fairly well. And as an added bit of authenticity, if you drink too many of these, the hot sauce is sure to give you a terrible stomachache, similar to drinking Mexican water.

Of course, spicy drinks aren’t for everyone. Some people prefer the sweet beverages. The following drink isn’t my cup of alcoholic tea, but as any good bartender knows, you’ve got to make what the people want.

“Generic Drink Loud Girls Order When They’re Not Yelling WHOOO!”
2 parts Aloe Vera Juice
1 part Jagermeister
1 part Caramel Sauce
7 Maraschino Cherries

Unfortunately, I did not have sour mix available, which is the mixer of choice for these types of drinks. So I substituted caramel sauce, since I figured it brought a similar amount of horrifying sweetness to the party. It has the inexplicably popular Jagermeister because that’s a popular alcohol for these types of drinks. Finally, copious amounts of maraschino cherries … of course.

And as an added bit of authenticity for this drink, the beverage itself looks like what happens if you drink Mexican water.

For the final drink, we steer it over to the healthy aspects of aloe vera. As I mentioned, pomegranate enjoyed a huge rush of popularity when people figured out that even if something is 100% sugar but is flavored vaguely similar to pomegranate, it would sell like crazy.

Lately, pomegranate has had a lot of its thunder stolen by the acai berry. This is another “superfruit” that legitimately does have a lot of benefits, which are mostly lost when “Acai Flavored” food and beverages are made.

The logic here is that if you combined the acai berry with aloe vera juice, you could possibly make the most healthy beverage ever created. Also, it could get you drunk! Most importantly, it has what casual restaurants consider to be the most important part of a cocktail: a terrible pun in the name that doesn’t really make any sense and is only there to sound clever.

“Last Night I Dreamt That Someberry Loved Me”
2 parts Aloe Vera Juice
2 parts Acai Berry Juice (or something flavored with it)
2 parts Vodka

I’m not going to lie and say it was “too sweet” in an attempt to sound manly or like a true connoisseur of alcohol … this was good. What would make this even better would be to use some cheesecloth to filter out the aloe pieces. If those horrifying little sea monkeys were to be removed, this drink would be downright awesome.

Now that I have dealt with globs of slime, a scalded mouth, and plant-related inebriation, it can be officially declared: aloe vera juice is stupid. If you want a cleansed colon that badly, use some Pledge. And if you’re that intent on having a great immune system, just increase your Vitamin C intake the way most Americans get their daily recommended amount: Fruit Roll Ups.

Cereal Review: Cinnamon Jacks & Cap’n Crunch’s Cinnamon Roll Crunch

Posted by robbposch on April 18, 2013

Posted in: Cereal Reviews, Food, Food Review. Tagged: cereal, cereal review, food, food review, review. 1 Comment

These two releases are stretching the definition of “new”, but my apathy for them caused less excitement than I’d hoped when it came to reviewing them. Aren’t you excited to read about these cereals now?

Although in my defense, the boxes currently on store shelves still say “NEW!”, so that’s good enough for me.

The new additions both share a promising theme: cinnamon. In case you are unaware, cinnamon is awesome. It also has a fairly successful track record as a main cereal ingredient – Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Cinnamon Life, Cinnamon Burst Cheerios, Cinnamon Chex, and some others. Apple Cinnamon Cheerios is not on that list, however. They are terrible.

Speaking of apples (and cinnamon) – Cinnamon Jacks are the new offshoot of the Apple Jacks brand. Apple Jacks are a reliable cereal that, if you are like me, you almost never buy. I do this with some cereals – on the shelf, they are just not appealing. Not unappealing, I look at them and know I enjoy them, I just have no desire to buy them.

The biggest victim of this logic is Honey Nut Cheerios. If I happen to buy a box, I’m almost sad – like I’m giving up on picking a superior choice. When it’s in the cabinet at home, I’m sad when I look at it. But then when it’s in the bowl and I’m eating it – happiness. Despite the fact that I know I really like them, this pattern repeats ad nauseum.

Apple Jacks are halfway between that status and “oh yeah, that cereal exists” status. It’s not a heavy hitter in the cereal world anymore, but it’s a reliable choice. Also, its resulting milk is great. I had high hopes that the Jacks family had good cereal genes.

I was a bit worried when I saw it was “brown sugar and cinnamon” flavored. Brown sugar-flavored things can go awry, quickly. But what was more concerning was their mascot. I don’t know where cinnamon is primarily grown, so maybe this ties in, but I don’t get why the mascot looks like a uni-browed drug dealer. I am almost positive I saw this guy at the 311 concert at Red Rocks.

OH MY GOD HE HAS AN EYEBROW RING!

This cereal is less and less promising.

And yup, I was right – he’s a drug dealer. The back of the box even talks about how the cereal is “dusted”. Also, look at his Apple Jack relative – the guy is tweaking hard.

The cereal shape is sad, but appropriate. It almost looks like jacks, in a lazy way. It looks like a licensed cereal that couldn’t be bothered to think of a shape.

More alarming than the shape is the taste. It has that weird “packaged food cinnamon” taste that has been popping up lately. While Cinnamon Toast Crunch probably isn’t the most natural food in the world, it actually does taste like cinnamon. Cinnamon Jacks tastes like “cinnamon” – as in, in quotation marks.

Unlike Apple Jacks, which tastes like sugar and cinnamon and apple, all this has is brown sugar and “cinnamon”. The novelty of that flavor wears off very quickly. It’s not a bad bowlful of cereal, it’s just very mediocre and by the bottom of the bowl, you’re sort of glad it’s over. The milk, however, was pretty good.

[no seal of approval]

I was very conflicted going into Cap’n Crunch’s Cinnamon Roll Crunch. Cinnamon Roll as a flavor seems like an excuse to just load up on sweetness. On the plus side, I usually like the Cap’n spinoffs better than the original cereal. Crunch Berries, Chocolatey Crunch, even Oops! All Berries are all preferable to the original.

The only one I rank below is Peanut Butter Crunch. This has nothing to do with the flavor, which is actually really good. I just have to penalize it for hurting my teeth with every bite of the impenetrable little cannon balls.

The box design goes with the thrilling “shades of beige” theme. Although for some reason I genuinely love the steam effect at the top. Unless that’s just left over from Cinnamon Jack’s stash.

The back of the box is boring. Moving on…

Dammit, more “cinnamon” flavor. Like Cinnamon Jacks, it’s not bad, it’s just tiring. It’s not even very sweet, which I was shocked by. But the fake cinnamon is off-putting in large quantities, so by the end, I felt like accomplished some impressive feat. On the plus side, the texture is more like Crunch Berries, and less like the peanut butter cannon balls.

Like Cinnamon Jacks, despite the mediocrity of the cereal itself, the milk wound up being good. It diluted a lot of the fakeness of the cinnamon, which helped a lot. If they release Cap’n Crunch’s Milk From Cinnamon Roll Crunch-Flavored Crunch, I’d definitely buy a box.

Speaking of artificial, I wouldn’t have minded a small boost in the artificial coloring department. The cereal is this really sad, pale beige. In the white bowl, it just looks depressing, like something Oliver would get to eat on a special occasion.

Fun Fact: Every single time I had to write the word Cap’n, despite knowing where the apostrophe goes, it came out of my fingers as Capn’ and I had to go back and fix it. Including that time.

[no seal of approval]

Diet Coke-Babies

cereal, soda, and other important topics

Cereal Review: Yummy Mummy and Fruit Brute

Food Review: Dole Banana Dippers

Cereal Review: Froot Loops Treasures

Cereal Review: Monsters University

Cereal Review: Hershey’s Cookies ‘n’ Creme & Vanilla Chex

Coke-Babies Classics: The Gourmet Chocolate Taste Test Bonanza

How Popsicle Keeps Screwing Up

Coke-Babies Classics: The Miracle Berry Experiment

Coke-Babies Classics: The Aloe Vera Juice Experiment

Cereal Review: Cinnamon Jacks & Cap’n Crunch’s Cinnamon Roll Crunch

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