Hello All!
Today I am back with a post sharing some recipes that I recently made and also sharing my food reviews on a couple of products! I hope you enjoy and let me know if you have any questions in the comments below!
First, the product reviews:
1. Goldfish Crackers Epic Crunch Honey BBQ Flavor
I must start by saying these are not very good. I picked these up one day at the store because I love to try new products, especially snack foods. Goldfish are some of my most favorite little crackers and since I like to always have a large Goldfish supply in my house, I decided to purchase these and try them out.
The first thing you’ll notice about these crackers is that Pepperidge Farm decided to plump up their size and these are jumbo sized fish compared to the regular size goldfish. Then I took one bite and Whoa! What a crunch! Ok, I know that they are calling these epic crunch but, like, literally the crunch is a bit much. I’m talking borderline my teeth kind of hurt. And I love Corn Nuts and other crunchy snacks just as much as the next guy, but the crunch on these was too much for my liking.
In addition to the crunch being really extra, this is basically a goldfish cracker masquerading around as something it’s not. The bag advertises as being a tortilla chip crunch with a honey bbq flavor – but unfortunately, it’s still a cracker and not a chip! I will say that the general honey BBQ flavor is actually very tasty and reminiscent of Fritos honey bbq twists (which are seriously delicious and one of the best snack foods of all time and what I think Pepperidge Farm was going for.) However, this flavor is not good on a goldfish cracker. They also tried to change the cracker flavor by adding in some sort of tortilla taste, but the end result falls short. Very short.
Do yourself a favor and don’t bother trying these! I will most definitely be picking up a bag of Fritos honey BBQ twists instead or some honey BBQ chips since that is all that these goldfish made me want to eat!!
2. Pop-Tarts
I used to eat pop-tarts pretty much every single day when I was in high school. I would throw a pack of either the strawberry or wildberry flavor in my backpack and try to nibble on it either in between classes or eat a chunk of it in homeroom while trying to hide my face. Once I got to college I stopped with the pop-tarts because I pretty much ate every meal at the dining hall and then I kind of forgot about my old friend, the pop-tart. Recently, I started wondering about my old friend and I decided to pick up a box of pop-tarts on my last shopping trip.
I found the box and general packaging to be very similar to that of 15 years ago. I was delighted to see that my old friend looked the same! A square-shaped pastry covered with a layer of white frosting with fun colored bits of sprinkles. I took one bite and instantly smiled. I was transported right back to homeroom in the fall of 2002. My old friend still tasted the exact same! Soft, flaky crust on the outside, sweet strawberry flavor on the inside. And I would just like to take this opportunity to thank the fine folks over at Kellogg for never changing Pop-Tarts and trying to make them be some awful healthy snack with no preservatives. That normally strips away the delicious taste and I’m happy to report that Pop-Tarts have not yet succumbed to the peer pressure of the all natural foods industry. Two thumbs waaaaay up on Pop-Tarts and although I have yet to find Wildberry in stores, they are available online from Amazon and Wal-Mart! I’ll be getting my hands on those soon enough!
In my quest to always try new recipes, I stumbled up Sally’s Baking Addiction. Her recipe pictures look amazing and immediately I was trying to decide which recipe I should try first! She is mostly known for baking, but had recently posted a recipe for alphabet soup. I was honestly thinking it was kind of dumb to post a recipe for this because I feel like anyone can just throw together pasta, tomatoes, and some frozen veggies and technically make a soup. However, I love soup and love trying out new soup recipes especially in the colder months and decided to give this one a whirl.
The most difficult part of this recipe was just making sure that I had all of the spices on hand. I didn’t, so a quick run to the store solved that. Other than that, this was really fast and easy to make and tasted soooooo good!! Sally has really nailed the amounts and different kinds of spices in this recipe and they really make the dish. It was such a flavorful soup that tasted so hearty that I didn’t even miss that there is no meat in this recipe! This is definitely a winner and a great recipe to make for dinner, especially during this Lenten season or if you are vegetarian or trying to even cut out meat a little. I’ve read a few articles lately about how you should cut out meat one day a week as a good lifestyle choice and this soup would be a good way to help jumpstart that change!
The other recipe that I recently tried from Sally’s Baking Addiction, was her recipe for monster cookies. I had never made anything called monster cookies before, but I got the general concept of adding in a bunch of different mix-ins to cookie dough and calling it a monster cookies.
I had all of the ingredients already on hand to make these except for chocolate chips and I was actually trying to use up the last of my Valentine’s Day colored M&Ms, so I decided to just add a bit more of those to make up for the lack of chocolate chips. I quickly made the dough and was a little surprised by how thick the cookie dough was. I triple checked the recipe and I know I made it correctly!
Despite being a little leery of the cookie dough consistency, these cookies came out very good. The weirdest part of all though, is how the taste and consistency of these cookies changed each day after I baked them. Every time I bake cookies, I wait for them to cool 5-10 minutes out of the oven and then I obviously eat one (I mean how can I resist?!) The first cookie that I bit into left me feeling disappointed in the flavor and the consistency was kind of crumbly. Then I tasted one or two more cookies a few hours later and felt that they tasted a little better and that the consistency had improved.
The next day they tasted even better. Then on day 4 when I was down to my last 3 cookies because I had brought most of them into work, I was actually so mad that I only had 3 left because they tasted so delicious! It was honestly the strangest thing that they got better with age. I can’t say that I’ve ever experienced that before with any other cookie recipe. I would also say that flavor wise, these really just tasted like peanut butter cookies with M&Ms in them, which is great but I think I need to add in more mix-ins next time to truly call them monster cookies. Overall, I would make these again or perhaps try this Paula Deen monster cookie recipe. And since these cookies tasted great for days they would actually be good to make if you had some big party and wanted to make something way in advance that would last!
One thing I’ve been incorporating a little bit more of this year is eating salads. I had a coworker a few years back who used to bring in salads from home in a mason jar. I had never heard of the idea, but thought it was great and started looking up recipes of how to do it. It’s a bit of a project to put them together, as it requires a few hours to do over the weekend, but it’s worth it to have either lunch or dinner ready to go during the week.
The website that I typically use to make mason jar salads is this one here. I typically add lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, red onion, pasta, bacon, chicken, hard-boiled eggs, and silvered almonds. I think the cheapest place that I’ve seen Mason jars is Wal-Mart and if you can find the wide mouth ones, they worked especially good for these salads. I will typically make 4-5 jars at one time and I would say that they keep for 4 days. I think once I stretched it to 5 days and it tasted just alright, and by that point you are sick of salads!
That’s it for today! I hope everyone has a great day! Let me know if you have any questions or comments!
xo
Holly