Let's check it out and see if I should take the plunge.
Elotes, aka "Mexican Street Corn," has been popping up all over American grocery shelves. We had corn chips, crunchy Cheetos, various dips, and now a Pringle.
If you've never had Elotes, I highly recommend it. They're a bit messy to eat, but they activate all your taste buds. We have sweet, salty, cheesy, creamy, buttery, tangy, zesty, and spicy. All at once. While I've had nothing but positive experiences with Elote-themed items, I find that no snack food can truly capture this dish. They have gotten close, but it's not quite the same thing.
That said, I am excited to try these Pringles but I am keeping my expectations grounded.
"Lay's Layers" aren't as new as they claim to be. If you've ever walked down the Korean snack aisle, you'd know that Turtle Chips are a light, 4-layered, snack food that has been around for years. Looking at the two products side-by-side, they're exactly the same in texture and execution, but available flavors is the one place they seem to differ. Lay's offered sour cream and onion, as well as a cheesy version for the American market, but Orion opts for flavors like vanilla, sweet bean, chocolate churro, seaweed, flaming lime, and sweet corn. If I were going to pick one based on available flavors alone, Orion's Turtle Chips are far more intriguing. So I grabbed a bag of sweet corn, and a bag of sweet bean (review coming next week) to try.
Mexican Street Corn Flavored Corn Chips - AldiWhat a week, and it's only Monday. My bathroom gremlins are getting spayed/neutered today, one step closer to finding forever homes, and my dog, Pepper, had to go to the emergency vet because he somehow damaged his junk. That's right, his junk. I was making panicked emergency vet calls to talk about my dogs genitals to not one, not two, but four different animal hospitals. Thankfully the last one had an availability and we were able to be seen.
His bits are now on the mend. How did it happen? Absolutely no idea. Best guess the vet had is he lifted his leg to pee on something during our current heatwave and somehow burned himself. Which I don't entirely buy because I have no idea what in my grassy backyard could have ever gotten that hot or only harmed him in such a specific place, but it's not like Pepper can tell us what he did to himself, so it shall remain a mystery. Thankfully he is okay now. If there was ever a time to binge on some junk-food, it's now.
Mexican Street Corn Cheetos - 7-Eleven
When I heard Cheetos was coming out with this particular flavor, I was pretty excited, but still cautious. If you've been reading the blog for a while, you might remember that flavored Cheetos don't have the best track record. To be fair, most of the Cheeto flavors I have tried came from overseas, more specifically, Korea, and every flavor has been far sweeter than I prefer. (It's a toss-up between a savory snack food seasonings and a sugary cereal. I was not a fan.)
Black Bean Paste, Honey Cheese, Smoky BBQ and White Corn Soup, all flavors I was happy to try once, but never wanted to buy again. And they all came in full-size bags. So given the option this time around to choose a snacking size or a full size, I opted for the small single serving bag before committing to anything larger.
Happy HALLO-WEEK! It's my favorite time of the year, so I worked extra hard to make sure I have content scheduled for every day this week! (Just like the old days!)
Tuesday and Thursday have normal written reviews of Halloween candies, and on Monday, Wednesday and Friday you get written posts AND YouTube videos!
A while back I received a comment saying that videos were difficult for those with hearing loss, and captioning services are a bit too expensive for my non-monetized-self to afford, so the video-reviewed products will also be getting fully written up posts that same day, like today's corn gummies!
You can watch the video above, and check out the written post below! Let's jump right in a review some pudding filled corn gummies!
Planter's Original Cheez Balls - CVS
Historically I'm very picky when it comes to cheese-based snacks. I like crunchy-style Cheetos, but only the Cheeto's brand version. (Love you Aldi, but your "Cheetos" are sad.) I don't like Cheese Curls, or Cheddar Fries, or Nacho Cheese Doritos. (I'm a Cool-Ranch girl through-and-through with a side of Spicy Sweet Chili.) So I only really like Crunchy Cheetos and White Cheddar Smartfood Popcorn. And yet, I just couldn't ignore this tiny can of retro Cheez Balls at CVS.
I remember eating cheese balls out of a similar container as a little kid, like single-digit-age-young, and I think it was this brand? I'm not entirely sure because it was so long ago, but something about the retro feel and the pseudo-nostalgia just won me over. (It didn't hurt they they were tiny, cute, and cheap either.) Into my cart they went!
I'm aware that the majority of reviews this year have been negative, and I don't know if it's because after all these years my palette has become more discerning, or if food companies are totally phoning it in. If it's the latter, is it an American-exclusive issue, or a worldwide epidemic?
To test that theory, here we have two flavors of Korean Cheetos: White Corn Soup and Smoky BBQ.
I have no idea how "BBA" is meant to be pronounced, it could be "bee bee ey," or it could be "BUH-BAH!" Since the characters are in all caps on the bag I imagine it being yelled in exclamation. Although I am 99% sure my pronunciation of it is incorrect, I am going to stick with it because it makes me nonsensically happy. CORN BUH-BAH!
Not only do these have a fun name, but they are also banana flavored! (If you're new here, spoiler alert, I freaking love banana.) I tried looking these up online to learn a little more about it, and not much turned up. Just a MunchPak page where this was once a featured item. Oh, and this page where it says the item was recalled. And this page. No big deal. Totally fine.
If I hadn't Googled this for nonsensical reasons, I never would have known about the recall, which is scary to think about. Thankfully, it seems the recall was due to an undeclared dairy ingredient which some people with dairy allergies reacted to. With my history of buying interesting foreign foods that usually have stickers with translated nutritional information, I can see how the slip up occurred. There have been a lot of labels I have seen over the years with incorrect or mislabeled translations. Whatever software they use to create those seems to have the same accuracy as Google translate. Being the non-dairy-allergy risk taker I am...I'm going to eat these anyway.
Not the most appetizing name...
I was immediately skeptical about this product, but it was so cheap that I figured it was worth the risk. Plus, it's blue!
I woke up this morning, looked outside my window, and everything was covered in snow. We only got two inches, and I know many of you get a LOT more snow in your area and my piddly little amount is nothing to complain about, but I just hate winter. I'm a total Scrooge about the holidays and I hate being cold. Snow is fun when you're a little kid. You sometimes get out of school, you have snowball fights, build forts, it's magical and whimsical and fun. Once you have your own car, and your college or job won't close unless it's the end of times, and even then you're lucky if you get a 2-hour delay, snow looses a lot of it's appeal.
Since it's cold and snowy, what better way to warm up than with a bowl of soup?
I love Panera’s Summer Corn Chowder soup. When I worked there, I could easily feed my corn chowder cravings. Now a days my career has evolved and I moved on to teaching, so I have been looking for a recipe to make my own supply, and I may have finally found one! It isn’t 100% perfect, but this is REALLY close to Panera’s seasonal soup!
Like always…I made a few modifications:
That’s right! Toasted corn ice cream! Sorry there wasn’t much of an update yesterday, but here is something really unique to make up for it. My friends Brian and Kevin told me about a place they had been to in Philadelphia called the Franklin Fountain. It’s an old fashioned soda fountain where the employees dress retro, the menu has classic malt-shop recipes, there are retro candies and soda…but they have some crazy out-there stuff. (Like this flavor!)
The shop is adorable! It is really small and the decor is vintage. They can only take cask too because the cash registers are vintage! They have wooden drawers and a bell rings when they open! It was so cool!
The flavor of the day was toasted corn and I had to try it. When was I ever going to see corn ice cream again?
There were corn kernels speckled throughout the vanilla-bean-based ice cream. It smelled kind of like movie theater popcorn, when I took a taste..it was a LOT like popcorn actually! The corn kernels had a freeze-dried texture to them. The mouth feel made me think of the little bits of corn inside instant ramen cups. The salty corn mixed well with the sweet vanilla ice cream, and I thought this was a really successful flavor!
© Maria Smith http://poison-and-antidote.netLike me on facebook to keep up with all my adventures!
