I was at a rest stop somewhere on the Oregon/California border and saw these Red Velvet Twinkie-like creme cakes and thought they’d be interesting to try.
I brought them back to my sister’s house and she, my brother-in-law, Ethan and I gave them a try.

So…not so interesting.  These cakes were pretty tasteless. Zac, my brother-in-law described them as too airy and that t was like they tried to use as little flour as possible.  You’d think that would result in a nice, fluffy cake but they definitely lacked some sort of substance.  These crumbled very easily and were hard to enjoy.  We all agreed these were a disappointment – too bad I thought i stumbled upon a little treasure.

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One of the great ice cream shop(pe) treats is a root beer float. I’ll make these one in a while at home too. I’ve seen this product of root beer float in a bottle and had my doubts but finally gave in and bought one, just for the sake of trying it. A&W makes a pretty decent root beer so I figured they must know what they’re doing when trying to recreate a root beer float in this format. There is also an Orange creme version of this but for some reason that combo never tasted good to me so I just got the root beer or just “Float” version.

This post is almost too easy because I could wrap it up in one word: “no”.
I don’t know why anyone at A&W would think this passes for a root beer float. Never mind the lack of froth or carbonation but the taste was very chemically. I guess there was some vanilla and root beer flavor but for the most part, it tasted like something NASA made for their crew to “remind them of home” but if you’re on planet earth, just make a root beer float normally because there is no amount of convenience that is worth drinking this.

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Wow, I can’t believe it’s been a week between posts. I like to try to update this more often but since I was laid-off it’s been crazy trying to get my life in order. So please bear with me.
Cel-Ray is one of those things that is a an occasional treat for me at the deli. I seem to have it in my mind this can only be consumed with a Ruben or a nice whitefish salad sandwich with homemade pickles and coleslaw.
That I know of, Dr. Brown’s is the only brand that makes a celery flavored soda. I have no idea why anyone would even think of creating this flavor for a drink but I think it’s one of those things that people either like or really don’t like.

I like that at soon as the can is opened it smells like opening a container of celery seed. This tastes like sweetened celery, yet almost like a cousin of gingerale.
There’s just something so oddly appealing about this to me. The only thing is that it is just a smidgen too sweet, and I wonder if it were sweetened with cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup, if that would make it perfect.
Ethan felt the taste of this seemed borderline alcoholic in some way. He also thought the celery flavor was too strong and he just didn’t like it. He ended the evaluation with the description of “gross”, so he’s just not a fan of the Cel-Ray.

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Because of the popular demand (1 person) to post about Sky Bar, I just had to go ahead and do it. As mentioned in the candy hearts post, Sky Bar is made by Necco and will forever be my favorite candy bar. For those who are unfamiliar with Sky Bar, it’s a four-section milk chocolate bar and each “compartment” is filled with their caramel, vanilla, peanut or fudge.
As I’ve mentioned before, my sisters and I weren’t allowed too many treats growing up but Saturday nights were all about living it up. I have such fond memories of Saturday nights with my grandmother and sisters, eating Sky Bars while watching Love Boat…if we were awake long enough, Fantasy Island too. My sister likes them so much I’ll send them as a treat to her out in Oregon.

One thing I can never figure out is if they always package it opposite as the “map” on the front portrays but you can usually tell from looking at the bottom and seeing where the little bits of filling are showing where it was injected.

I’ve never cut a cross-section of a Sky Bar before so sorry it didn’t come out better and the photo really doesn’t do it justice, but from left to night is caramel, vanilla, peanut and fudge.
The caramel has a smooth and tooth-friendly texture, with a slight saltiness to it. Vanilla is like marshmallow and chocolate and marshmallow is one of my all-time favorite combinations (right up there with chocolate and peanut butter). The “peanut” in Sky Bar isn’t peanut butter, I’m not sure what it is but can only describe it as peanut caramel and has a very mild nutty flavor. Fudge is thick, smooth and chocolaty just like…fudge.
Unfortunately, Ethan doesn’t share my love for Sky bar – at all. He’s unimpressed with flavor and dared to describe vanilla as “gross”, peanut as “bland” and that in general they always taste stale to him. He rambled on but I just blocked him out.

Anyway, not sure about fellow Sky Bar lovers but I have an order I like to eat the sections in depending on my mood. If I’m going for instant gratification, I’ll go: Fudge, Marshmallow, Caramel and Peanut. If I’m feeling like going for a big finish, I’ll reverse the order. At certain times I may also switch Fudge and Marshmallow’s order.
You can check out Necco’s site here for more info on Sky Bar.

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So…I’m walking through the holiday candy section of Walgreen’s and I see this candy called “Reindeer Licks”.  This is a lollipop, shaped like a tongue and when you lick it, makes you look like you’re making out with a reindeer. Too stupid for adults, too inappropriate for kids, I’m not sure who they were gearing this towards, but the slogan is “The only pop that licks you back!”
No thanks, I don’t want a pop to lick me back.  Who does?  Well I guess there’s always someone but they’d buy something like this online.

Wrap up:
While the idea of this is enough to make it onto the “one of” list, after taking the pictures, Ethan got to know the reindeer better and said the pop actually tasted really good.  I asked to take a picture of him licking this but he declined because he didn’t know if the reindeer was a boy or a girl.  Still, I’m going to skip this as a stocking stuffer for my nephew to avoid any grief from my sister.

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I almost don’t know where to start.  I guess I’ll start with saying there are some flavors of Combos that are good, like Nacho Cheese and Cheeseburger, but when I saw these I thought “Sick, I have to try though!”  So knowing that Ethan hates egg, I skipped him and brought these to work.  Only two people, Becca and Brendan, were even brave enough to consider when I emailed them to come over to my desk to try these.  I think I lost Becca immediately when she looked at the package and said “Ew…New?”  Then I opened it and they would only smell the Combos.  Brendan said they smelled like dog treats, Becca agreed and then they walked away, sans Combos.
So I conducted this evaluation solo.  

Okay, so they didn’t smell great. I wasn’t expecting them to smell good either, but for all the horror they induced with Becca and Brendan, these were pretty uneventful.
After the plain crunchy cracker, the center tasted mildly like egg and a little bit of cheese.   I was surprised that they really lacked bacon flavor considering how easy it would be to add smoke (or at least imitation smoke) flavor to jazz it up.  They weren’t the worst thing in the world, but I definitely would not buy these again.  Some flavors, like egg, should not be artificially replicated.
I don’t see these featured on the Combos website, so I guess they’re discontinued already – probably a good thing.

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I really don’t know much about these except that they’re made by the Owyhee Candy Co.  in Boise. I disovered them while visiting my sister in Oregon and brought one home for Ethan and I to evaluate.

Evaluation: It’s kind of ironic that I’m watching Caddy Shack while I write this because when I took the spud out of the wrapper I immediately thought of the scene where a Baby Ruth bar falls into the pool and Spaulding yells “DOOTIE!”

The outside of these are chocolate with coconut flakes. The inside is an…odd, firm, bouncy blob of something that seems like it should be marshmallow but isn’t.

I looked at the ingredients and they say it contains “agar agar” which is a seaweed-based gelatin.  I can appreciate that hooves (or whatever gelatin is usually made of) aren’t used, but the texture of the blob wasn’t pleasant.  Ethan noted that it also had a very coffee-like taste, which seemed mismatched with the chocolate and coconut.

Wrap up: It just seems like something is off. Ethan couldn’t even finish his half. I finished mine but I think it was just out of curiosity because I like chocolate and coconut, but was trying to pinpoint how this gelatinous/pasty/coffee center really threw off that flavor combo.  I have to say though that Idaho Spuds do have a strong following. They even have their own fan club listed on the Owyhee site which features recipes people made up from melting these down. I wouldn’t go so far as to say the Spud is disgusting, but it’s definitely something I am glad there’s only one of.

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This is the first of occasional posts about a product that there is no second rate version of and maybe it’s a good thing.   I first saw this product called “Chelada” last month at a drug store and did a double take.  Budweiser and…Clamato??   Why? How?…Why? The curiosity stuck in my mind though, so while I’m visiting my sister and brother-in-law, I had them test this out with me.
I have to admit I did not have high hopes for this but tried to go into it thinking maybe the folks at Am-Busch know what they’re doing and as the can states it’s “The Perfect Combination” of beer, clam, tomato, salt and lime.

Evaluation:
Everyone got their own little tasting cup of the pale, pinkish-redish bubbly liquid.
It was hard to describe the taste of this.  I could first taste the tomato and the beer was almost undetectable except for the bubbles and just a hint of hop flavor and a little brine.  My sister Elaine said it tasted kind of like soup and bad beer.  Zac said while it wasn’t disgusting enough to spit out, that only someone who spent time in a Turkish prison would be glad to drink this.

Wrap up:
As we sat around trying to describe this we all agreed on summing it up as “Wrong in a can”.  A few minutes later Elaine wasn’t feeling so good and got a headache. Coincidence or…Chelada?

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