Sometimes Foodie

Wegman’s Chocolate Mousse - Wegman’s : Cherry Hill, NJ

It’s been a rough couple of months, so my mom decided to pick up some little treats for the family.

I am in love with this plastic angled container! The translucent, packing tape-like, label peels off cleanly so that the presentation becomes that much nicer. These are just so impressive looking, especially for a pre-made grocery store creation. I bet theses would look fantastic at a dessert table for a party.
Once I removed the lid I could instantly smell the chocolate. The aroma is a bit sweeter than a dark chocolate, but richer than a baking chocolate.
The dark chocolate shavings on top add texture but they quickly melt in your mouth and blend with the frothy chocolate mousse. The flavors are pretty rich for a grocery store product, and I liked this a lot, but it’s a little too sweet. (It took me two days to finish my portion because it was just too much for one sitting.)

I love the packaging and presentation. These gorgeous ready-made desserts from Wegman’s are definitely worth a try!

© Maria Smith http://poison-and-antidote.net

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Skinny Cow Peanut Butter Creme Chocolates - Dollar General : Cherry Hill, NJ

(I bought the Key Lime Coconut Patties as the same time.)

I bought these from the dollar store because I recognized them from a review on Candy Blog. (One of my favorite foodie sites.) For some reason I remembered these getting a really favorable review, so I grabbed a package.

I have had skinny Cow products before, and while I liked the product, I hated the logo. It’s just plain creepy. A humanized cow with an hourglass figure wrapped in measuring tape? Combine that image with the slightly suggestive pose and you have a decent amount of nightmare fuel. (This pose actually reminds me of Molly Ringwald’s from The Breakfast Club.) Logo aside, this design has a decent layout. Personally, I would tweak the sizing of the text and make everything a little bit larger, but the placement allows the design to flow nicely.

Inside the plastic packaging there is a cardboard sleeve that holds three curvy milk chocolates. I like the unique shape, and I feel like this is a decent portion, so no complaints there.

When it comes to smell, I can’t detect any peanut butter, just milk chocolate.

After my first bite I was a bit surprised by the texture of the peanut butter filling, it’s almost translucent! It looks and feels more like a caramel than any peanut butter I have ever had. Although the texture and appearance are a bit odd, the filling definitely has a salty, peanut taste. To me, the fault in this candy lies with the milk chocolate. It’s just too sweet. (This is on the same sweetness-level as Cadbury chocolate, which I am not a fan of.)

After eating my chocolates I looked up the Candy Blog review and realized these only got a six out of ten. For some reason I thought they ranked much higher, but I totally agree with Cybele’s review. The filling is overly salty and the chocolate is overly sweet. These aren’t a satisfying candy, and I found myself craving a real candy bar once I was done my chocolate pieces, so I wouldn’t recommend this to any dieters. In my opinion, Skinny Cow needs to stick to ice cream.

© Maria Smith http://poison-and-antidote.net

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Unreal 54, Candy Coated Chocolates with Peanuts - Target : Cherry Hill, NJ

These were a little gift from my mother, she saw them on sale during a trip to target and picked up a little bag for me. I have already reviewed two other Unreal candies, and so far I’ve been pretty impressed.

Other reviews:

Unreal 8 (Snickers)

Unreal 77(Peanut Butter cup)

I love the look of this brand! All of the packaging I have seen so far has used bright, metallic, colors for accents and their signature logo. The first time I ever saw the logo, it thought it looked like some kind of alien language, but it’s actually a really stylized font that says “UNREAL.” (You can read it in the 1st photo when you turn your head to the left.) The black packaging and limited text give this brand an secretive, adult, feel. It’s really different from everything else on the candy shelf, and I love that.

Inside, there are peanut-filled M&M-like candies. Right away you can see the candy colors are intense, but a bit different. Instead of food dyes, this brand uses natural coloring. (So yellow is made with turmeric root, red with cabbage, and so on…) At first, the colors can be a little off putting, because they are a little muddy-colored, but that is only because we are used to the bright colors of food dye. These are also irregularly shaped, and they vary in size.

These smell like a mixture of chocolate and roasted peanuts. I was pleasantly surprised by how strongly these smelled, the peanut aroma is really intense,

When I ate the first piece of candy, I instantly noticed the bold peanut-y taste! When compared to peanut M&M’s, the panned hard candy layer is about the same thickness (maybe a just tiny bit thicker) and the chocolate layer is a bit thinner. This allows the chocolate to quickly melt in your mouth, and allow the roasted peanut to really shine.

While these don’t look as pretty sitting out in a candy dish, I do prefer the flavor of these Unreal candies to Peanut M&M’s. If you love roasted peanuts, give these a try. You won’t be sorry.

© Maria Smith http://poison-and-antidote.net

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Key Lime Coconut Patties - Dollar General : Cherry Hill, NJ

Put the lime in the coconut and dip it all in chocolate! I saw this at the dollar store check out and I thought it might be interesting because I love these flavors. (I just don’t know how successful they would be when combined into a candy.)

The plastic packaging features an overall lime-green color scheme with a hibiscus flower print in the background. Piled on top of that, are images of palm trees, limes, coconuts, chocolate, and the coconut-candy-bar product itself. The design is busy, but graphically I think it works. I feel like the fonts and typography are where things gets a little iffy. The text choices makes this product look cheap. (Then again I got this at a dollar store, so you get what you pay for.)

Inside, there are two sweetened coconut squares that have been dipped in dark chocolate. The lime flavored coconut is a beautiful bright spring-green, but it isn’t natural at all. I would love to buy clothing or nail polish this color, but I don’t know if my food should be this bright.

The candy has a very strong coconut aroma, and it easily over powers the lime and chocolate.

Taking a bite…I was instantly disappointed. The chocolate is not chocolate at all, It’s that fake, overly sweet, waxy, “mock-late” that you can find in a lot of cheaper drugstore treats. Once you get beyond that gross mock-late, the coconut itself has a great texture, and there is a tangy lime flavoring, but it is more artificial than realistic. This is like mixing sweetened coconut with concentrated limeade. Surprisingly the combination isn’t bad, but that mock-late just ruins everything.
I actually liked the key lime flavored coconut patty quite a bit, but I hated that fake chocolate stuff. I bit around it, but that wasn’t enough to save this candy. I won’t be buying this again. When will I learn my lesson and stop buying dollar store sweets?
© Maria Smith http://poison-and-antidote.net

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Limited Edition ‘Shure, Bert’ Oreos - Walmart : Cherry Hill, NJ

Another limited edition Oreo! This time the filling is flavored with a mixture of lime and raspberry sherbet. My boyfriend actually bought these before I did, and he told me they were review worthy, so I went out and bought my own bag.

The packaging is the same yellow-orange color as the vanilla/golden/blonde Oreos. The only distinct design differences have been the addition of “Limited Edition Ice Cream,” “Rainbow Shure, Bert,” and an image of a sherbet ice cream cone. My only gripe is that this is NOT rainbow sherbet. Traditionally, orange is also in the mix, so I wish Oreo had included orange in the filling, or made the cookies orange flavored. (Sometimes lemon is also in rainbow sherbet, so that would have been nice too.)

Inside, the cookies have an amazingly accurate sherbet aroma. You can actually smell sweet raspberry and tangy lime! I think there is even a hint of orange in the raspberry notes, but I might be mistaken. Either way, I was really impressed by the smell.

Like most limited edition Oreos, the cookies aren’t filled evenly. Some may have almost all raspberry filling (like the one pictured) or a full streak of lime in the middle. (I found that a majority of the cookies in my package were raspberry with tiny bits of lime.)

Sadly, the flavors smell a lot stronger than they taste, but these are still pretty damn good! The raspberry filling is sweet and has a light raspberry sherbet flavor, and the lime adds a little bit of a citrus tang. I might be wrong, but I can taste a little bit of orange in the filling as well.

The limited edition Oreos have been a little hit and miss, but I really liked these a lot! These are great for summer! (I think Oreo should make a lime filling and do some key lime Oreos this summer.)

© Maria Smith http://poison-and-antidote.net

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Ichitan Organic Green Tea with Chrysanthemum - SunSeng Market : Pennsauken, NJ

Blast from the past! A few moths ago I started reviewing these bottled green teas, but I never got around to posting the last flavor. Here it is!

The only difference between these three bottles were the shrink-wrapped labels. This flavor has a bright white background with scattered yellow chrysanthemum flowers and luscious leafy greens. I think the design is light and refreshing, but it’s my least favorite. I just feel like it’s a little boring when compared to the texture and color of the other two labels.

Right away this tea smells sweet. In fact, I think this might be the sweetest of the three. There are hints of honey, chrysanthemum, and cane sugar.

This is so sweet, it’s almost syrupy! At first it tastes like tea with too much honey, but there are some bitter chrysanthemum notes in the aftertaste. This really isn’t what I was expecting. To be honest, it’s like I mixed a menthol throat drop with a ton of honey and a splash of green tea.

I wish I could say that I saved the best for last…but this is undoubtedly my least favorite of the three green teas. (I won’t be buying anymore of this in the future.)

© Maria Smith http://poison-and-antidote.net

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Strawberry All Natural Cane Sugar - Home Goods :Moorestown, NJ

Okay, this post is going to be a little different…

I’m going to do my typical review, but I totally bought this without knowing what I should do with it, so I am going to ask all of you for suggestions.

What should I make with this?

I was drawn to this product because of the packaging. The sugar is inside a thick glass jar with metallic detailing, which gives this product an industrial look, but the typography feels a little off. The lowercase font that is used for “strawberry” looks out of place when mixed with the distressed information in all caps. I like the look of either font on it’s own, but something about mixing the two just doesn’t work.

The only ingredients listed are raw sugar, dried strawberries, beets and red cabbage (the latter two were for coloring purposes only), so this is pretty good stuff. This smells exactly like I expected. I can smell delicious cane sugar mixed with tangy, ground up, dried strawberries.

I love the smell and taste of this fruity sugar, but I have no idea on what to make with it.

PLEASE SEND ANY SUGGESTIONS MY WAY!

© Maria Smith http://poison-and-antidote.net

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Wegman’s Premium Ice Cream - Wegman’s : Cherry Hill, NJ

I was so impressed with the Wegman’s premium banana ice cream, I decided to try this cherry one. (Which looks a lot like Cherry Garcia, my favorite Ben and Jerry’s flavor.)

The design is just like the banana, but with a red color scheme. While it doesn’t look that great in person, these bold designs really photograph well.

The ice cream has a deliciously sweet black cherry scent. Right off the bat, this looks a LOT like Cherry Garcia. I can see chocolate fudge flakes scattered on the surface of the ice cream, but there wasn’t any sign of the cherries.

As I scooped the ice cream I found several black cherries hidden under the surface. The fruit bits are always my favorite part, so I was really happy that there were a lot of them in my first scoop.

This looks and smells like Ben and Jerry’s, but it isn’t quite the same. The ice cream has a strong black cherry flavor, which I like, and there are plenty of add-ins throughout the pint. The chocolate flakes aren’t quite fudge-y, they are more like little bits of dark chocolate, which isn’t a bad thing. This tastes great! (It just doesn’t taste like Cherry Garcia.) The overall flavor is a lot like chocolate covered cherries.

While I liked this ice cream, I’d rather have a pint of Cherry Garcia. I think I’ll use this to make some root beer floats. (I always use cherry ice cream for my root beer floats, and using this means getting little bits of chocolate in my float too!) I’m still very impressed with the Wegman’s banana ice cream, and I would still love to try more flavors.

© Maria Smith http://poison-and-antidote.net

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AZ Arizona Energy Drink - Dollar General : Cherry Hill, NJ

I VERY rarely use energy drinks, but right now I have a psych paper, two finals, and a summer practicum observation course all at the same time! I just don’t have enough energy to keep going and get everything done, so I resorted to an energy drink to give me the boost I needed. (I didn’t even know that Arizona made energy drinks.)

Typically, Arizona cans are tall and colorful. This design has more of an urban-graffitii feel, and it doesn’t match any other product in the Arizona line. I don’t feel like this design was very well thought out, because the can doesn’t even say what flavor this drink is. The ingredients list mango and other fruits, as well as a laundry list of chemicals that I can’t even pronounce. While I like the idea of an Arizona energy drink, I think this can needs a bit more design work and information.

I popped the can open and the liquid inside smelled similar to a typical Arizona tea. Maybe this is another tea-based energy drink?

Well I guess not, because it is carbonated and a bright yellow egg-yolk color.

I have no clue what this will taste like!

Turns out, this is a pretty quirky drink. I get an artificial tea flavor similar to Arizona or Brisk, but with carbonation. The aftertaste is pretty similar to Red Bull. I imagine if you mixed a can of red bull with a can of Arizona, you’d get this drink. (Maybe not the same color.)

I am not a huge energy drink fan. After drinking 1/3rd of this I started to feel nauseous, but that quickly passed. I nursed the can for the rest of the night and I was able to stay up and get a decent amount of work done.

If I needed another boost of energy, I might get this again because it was effective, but I didn’t really care for the flavor (or the can design).

© Maria Smith http://poison-and-antidote.net

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Cream Cheese and Crab Wontons - Pinterest Recipe Review : The Pin

This is a VERY easy and VERY yummy recipe. (Plus the finished product looks professional and impressive.) Since pinning it, I have completely stopped ordering these from take-out restaurants!

All you need is a package of cream cheese, green onion, garlic powder, and oil. (You can check out THIS recipe for more details.)

The only modification I made to this recipe was adding crab meat. (I just mixed it in with the cream cheese filling.)

I have made these several times, and here are some flavor variations I have done:

Jalapeno Popper: I added shredded cheddar cheese and diced jalapeno peppers to the cream cheese mixture.

Pumpkin Pie: I had some leftover pumpkin pie filling and wonton wrappers from other recipes, so I fried up some little pumpkin pie wontons and sprinkled them with cinnamon.

Cherry Pie: The same as the Pumpkin, but with cherry filling.

Wonton wrappers are a fantastic item to have in your kitchen or pantry. They are easy to use and delicious! (I want to make some buffalo wing and pizza ones)

© Maria Smith http://poison-and-antidote.net

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Wegman’s Premium Ice Cream - Wegman’s : Cherry Hill, NJ

The other day I had to stop by Wegman’s to pick up some wonton wrappers for dinner, and I saw they they had little pints of premium ice cream, similar to Ben and Jerry’s. I just couldn’t resist. I love banana ice cream. (It is second only to Cherry Garcia.)

Store brands typically mean no frills, so the designs and packaging are very basic. The container is a bright, gaudy, yellow with chocolate brown swirls and generic graphics. At first glance, the packaging looks like a 2nd semester design student project, but it actually photographs really well. The bold colors and design give it a nice graphic quality in photos.

Once I peeled the protective plastic coating off, the ice cream had a creamy vanilla-banana scent. It wasn’t a very strong aroma, like banana chips, but it was very pleasant.

As I scooped the ice cream I was pretty impressed with the distribution of add-ins. There were little peanut butter cups and fudge swirls in every scoop! I wasn’t able to see any of the marshmallow swirl, but I think it blended in with the banana ice cream.

I fell in love with this after the first bite. I could taste yummy vanilla-banana ice cream and chocolatey swirls instantly. When I got a bite with a peanut butter cup in it, it not only added a delicious peanut buttery flavor, but it added a nice texture to the ice cream as well. I couldn’t taste any marshmallow, but I think the marshmallow flavoring is what gave me the nice vanilla notes in the ice cream.

I have to say, this banana ice cream is awesome! I am really impressed with the Wegman’s store brand, and I will be buying more flavors in the future. (They had a little something that looks like their version of Cherry Garcia..<3)

© Maria Smith http://poison-and-antidote.net

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One year ago I started this blog. It began as a little hobby that made me happy, but now I have over 200+ followers. After year one, my writing and photography have both improved so much! I am excited to see where year two will take me.

To thank you all for following, here is a chance to win some snacks!

RULES:

You must be 18 or older to enter
I will only ship to USA or CANADA (Sorry, shipping fees are expensive. Maybe next time I’ll open it up for international shipping.)

TO ENTER:

CONTEST ENDS: JUNE 18th 2013

(There is plenty of time to enter )

ABOUT THE PRIZES:

1st place is a pack of some of my favorite items

2 Meiji Samplers
Seafood Ramen
Pudding Mallows
Several different candies from USA and ASIA

2nd place is a sampler pack of several candies

Some USA and some ASIA
Sweet and Sour

Thank you all for following, and GOOD LUCK!

___

Just a Reminder, there is a little more than a month left to enter!

Why did I make the contest so long?

I am finishing the teacher prep program with a dual certification and right now I have Spring Finals and Summer classes all at the same time. It’s pretty hectic and very fast paced. Plus I have my etsy shop orders to complete each day! I am barely sane as it is, so I gave myself some breathing time for the contest to make sure I announce a winner and ship everything out on time.

Plus I am adding more and more things to the give away as I go! (Since I am still reviewing more foods I am adding more candies to both prize packs.)