I hope you guys had a great weekend. Mine was filled with permits, variances, and car shopping, with a little Fruit Ninja VR mixed in for good measure, but there is a light at the end of my short sale home-buying tunnel! It's so close I can taste it! Or maybe that's just the Kit-Kat's...
Did you know that Aldi and Trader Joe's are related? YUP! They're sister companies owned by the same German family. For the most part, each store releases their own items catering to different niche markets and trending flavors, but once in a while both stores will release the same product, with different packaging and price points. (Like these pumpkin scone cookies I compared and reviewed.)
Years ago, I picked up THIS beautiful dark chocolate passport gift item from Trader Joe's, and I completely lost it over the gorgeous packaging. Flash forward to now, when I see Aldi trying to release their own dark chocolate themed gift pack for the holidays. It's no-where near as cute as the Trader Joe's one, but this has something the Trader Joe's version lacked. Variety.
The Trader Joe's bars were all dark chocolates from various locations around the world, but they were just dark chocolate. No toppings, not mix ins, no nothing. They were pretty, but by the third bar I was bored and my palette was exhausted. I don't think I ever finished reviewing the box set, mainly because...my tongue just didn't care. I was craving some flavor, and (hopefully) Aldi will deliver.
So back in 2014 Hostess released two limited edition Twinkie flavors to advertise the X-Men movie: Days of Future Past. Both of the limited edition flavors features the classic white cake and a different fruity filling. One was a blue raspberry, featuring Beast, Mystique, and Colossus (one of these things is not like the other...), and a Strawberry version featuring Professor Xavier, Storm and Bishop, which make even less sense color tie-in-wise. If they were going for an obvious color theme, Iceman should have replaced Colossus on the blue box, and the red should have had Bishop with Magneto and Pixie. Or they could have broken the boxes up with one being the future, with the aged characters, and the other being the past with the youthful characters. What they've done here makes no sense, then again I'm looking for sense in a promotional snack food item from a 2014 movie tie-in.
Anyway, I didn't try either of these flavors back then, because Banana Twinkies hadn't yet shown me the error of my snack-cake-hating ways, but I DID see the movie, which was much better than I expected. Will these Twinkies be as palatable and a rugged, time-traveling, Hugh-Jackman-Wolverine? (Or as disappointing as QuickSilver's outfit?) We shall see.
Happy New Year everyone! I know 2016 had a bad rep, what with all the celebrity deaths and the Election results and all, but it was actually a pretty great year for me. I am still finishing up the process of buying a house (short sales aren't fun kids, but if they work out they'll save you $$), and I will be moving into my first real house-house this year, which is very exciting. I also replaced my car (which if you remember was totaled last Christmas. FYI not my fault), and, of course, I ate tons of yummy food here on the blog.
Although I am not happy with how my 2016 update schedule went, which was pretty sporadic, I have learned a lot and I have made some changes/progress compared to years prior. I've been playing around with photo backgrounds and trying to change up my dishware to be more like those hip lifestyle food blogs, and I hope that once I do get my house I can upgrade my photo/filming area so I can make content a lot more easily.
With that being said, I wanted to take a moment to THANK YOU all for following me on this foodie journey. This blog started as a personal hobby, and a way for me to work on my writing skills, but it's become so much more, and that's all thanks to readers like you guys. So, again, THANK YOU, and I look forward to steering you all towards some really yummy new products in the new year!
© Maria Smith http://poison-and-antidote.net
Why are Cheerios so popular? I've tasted all different kinds and they always taste bland and boring, yet they've been around for ages and are practically a breakfast staple. Maybe it's because I grew up in a Cheerio-less household?
As someone who worked at a daycare facility, I always relate Cheerios to toddler-finger-food-fodder. (Sounds like a tongue twister!) They're the perfect food to sprinkle on a highchair tray so kids can practice feeding themselves, and they're easy to clean up. Are those qualities I really want in my grown-up adult breakfast? (Provided that I don't have any heart problems.) I, a self proclaimed Cheerio-hater, have decided to give this brand one last shot thanks to their newest flavor, Strawberry, and I really hope they convert me this time...because I had to buy a family sized box.
Remember how I said this wasn't going to be a thing? It might not be a permanent addition to my blog line-up, but it's an awesome way for me to bust through similar products in my stash, so I'm doing it again! This time I've got three different flavors of Tic Tacs.
My friends and family have been buying me these flavors as gifts, because they haven't been on the blog yet, but really...they've been in my food stash all along. So I figured I better get these posted ASAP before I drown in Tic Tacs!
Cute packaging will be the death of me. (And my wallet.) Every time I walk into the Asian Food Market I leave with a bag full of adorably designed goods and food products. (And usually a steamed bun from the bakery which never survives the car ride home.) Here's one of the more interesting items I picked up during my last Asian Food Haul!
It's a fruit flavored chewy taffy square that has always lived in Starburst's shadow. On today's Candyology 101 Cybele and I talk about Now and Laters! This tangy taffy may be the enemy of fillings and dental work, but it something I grew up enjoying with my friends and I feel like it's never had it's moment in the sun. There's not much history for this product, but there is something very very wrong with their wiki page.... What am I talking about? Tune in to find out, and click THIS link for the show notes with links so you can see it with your own eyes.
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© Maria Smith http://poison-and-antidote.netLike Sometimes Foodie's Facebook page to keep up with all my foodie adventures!
Thankfully I've (slowly) worked my way through some of my massive food backlog and I can finally see a light at the end of the tunnel. Great! So, what do I do to celebrate? I buy a bunch of candy that I don't need from the impulse buy area of Walmart of course. I just can't help myself.
One of the peg-bags I grabbed was this new Trolli product that looked a lot like the Warheads cubes I reviewed a few years ago. If you haven't noticed by now, I like building little candy pyramids for my photo sessions, so when I saw a brightly colored cube-shaped candy within my reach...I had to have it.
Drinking kale juice in the morning is gross. I gave it a shot, and it's not for me. (My boyfriend enjoyed it, but it makes me miserable.)
I did it to be cool and healthy like all the fancy lifestyle food bloggers out there with their coordinated dishwear, fabric napkins, and aged wooden table food photos, but I just can't do it. That's not me. I'm a messy, junk food eating, blank-background photo food blogger. Kale chips are way more my speed.
Avocado slices. Covered in breading and served with ranch dipping sauce. You're not fooling anyone Appetitos. Just because it's avocado doesn't mean this is healthier than breaded anything else...but I am curious as to how this will work out.
Taking vegetables and turning them into "fries" isn't a new concept, companies and restaurant chains have been doing this with green beans for years, but avocado slices? They're so soft and creamy. Can they even hold their shape for dipping? Time to investigate!
I don't have the best eating habits. (Shocking, I know.) I eat frozen pizza 3-4 times a week and lately the only way I've been getting fruit into my diet is when I add it to waffle batter on the weekends. My typical routine is crazy and there's no signs of it letting up any time soon, so squeezing vitamins, fruits and veggies into my diet any way I can is probably a good idea. The only catch is, it's gotta taste good.
I hosted my first ever tasting party last night! Which is a lot less fancy than it sounds. Basically I just invited a bunch of my friends over so they could eat excess snacks and sweets I'm reviewing to help with my food hoarding situation. We snacked on junk food, played Wii U games and watched bad horror movies. (Last night's selection was the awesomely bad Zoombies. It featured amazingly bad CG and an epicly dressed character I dubbed "Mr. No-Sleeves." Not the best of bad horror, but it made for a fun evening.)
These Cheetos were one of the many items on last night's menu, so were they a hit, or a miss? Time to find out!
Meiji Marble, in a box? If you're unfamiliar with Meiji products, their candies are often sold in long skinny cardboard tubes with a matching cardboard cap. The only time I've ever seen Meiji Marble in a box, and not their signature tube, is when it's part of a mini-sampler, or a special flavor mix, but this looks pretty normal to me. I can't read much of the packaging, but from what I can see...this looks like normal marble chocolate. I guess we'll open it up and find out.
Sorry I missed a few review days this week. Last night I gave a presentation to the Gloucester County Art League about all the stuff I create and do. On top of running this food blog I also run an art blog, a few online shops, I freelance from home (mostly graphic design), I sew, sculpt polymer clay charms and trinkets, and I sell all my work at conventions. All of that, plus 9-5 graphic design and printing job. Sometimes I get stretched pretty thin with all that I do, but even when I'm sleep deprived and running on sugar, I wouldn't change it for the world.
For today's review I have something that has been sitting in my stash since last December, these Tropical Heat Hot Tamales! Let's see if these candies live up ti their name, or if their spiciness is just a marketing gimmick.
Tong Tong? I may love Korean snacks and watch K-dramas (THIS is my favorite), but I can't speak Korean, so even though there are plenty of context clues on the bag to let me know what this product actually is, I had to google "Tong Tong" to figure out what the product name means.
According to the good ol' internet, it's a slang term for being "chubby." Which, if true, is freaking adorable. They named a junk food after what junk food does to you! I wish America would have fun with their product names like that. Then again "Honey Chubs" might not be as warmly received by the general public here in America...
