Being from the Midwest, I didn’t know anything about Cuban sandwiches until I moved to California. You read that correctly. It took a move 1,600 miles in the wrong direction for me to finally experience the warm, toasty delights of the Mixto — roasted pork, sliced ham, swiss cheese, pickles and yellow mustard on fresh Cuban bread pressed with a plancha (iron) and cut diagonally across the center. ¡Delicioso! So far be it from me to shy away from sampling the newest addition to the Hot Pockets line-up, the Limited Edition Cuban Style Hot Pocket.

Much like the East Coast/West Coast hip hop feud of yore, there’s a rivalry between Tampa and Miami regarding ownership of the Cuban sandwich. Tampa appears to be the original home of the Mixto (a.k.a the Cubano), which was introduced there in the 1890s by hungry Cuban cigar factory workers in the Ybor City neighborhood. They did, however, add salami to the sandwich — a highly controversial move, especially considering how Miami’s sandwich artists have adhered to the traditional recipe. I suppose this would be the “Who Shot Ya?” event of the sandwich war because things really popped off after that.

Suffice it to say, the salami-free Limited Edition Cuban Style Hot Pockets seem to welcome me to the city where the heat is on, all night on the beach ‘til the break of dawn. Bienvenido a Miami…

These Hot Pockets are demanding that I get Pitbull on the phone and tell him to meet us in the V.I.P. at LIV for some bottle service after the Heat game and then afterwards, crank up the salsa as we speed to the Ritz-Carlton South Beach in our yellow Lambo for the after party.

But before I book that plane ticket, let’s pause for a moment and talk about Cuban bread. It’s delicious and airy with that necessary touch of fat that makes Cuban bread Cuban and almost all other bread crap. I can’t be sure that the Hot Pockets people have injected lard into their crust, but the Cuban Style Hot Pocket is soft and delicious. True, the crust isn’t crispy since these Hot Pockets are heated in the microwave and don’t come with a crisping sleeve, but it isn’t soggy either. It manages to maintain a perfectly bread-like exterior with the right amount of give and softness without becoming a mushy mess.

When it comes to the innards of the Limited Edition Cuban Style Hot Pockets, they closely approximate the makeup of authentic Cuban sandwiches. They are full of pickle flavor, but I’m at a loss trying to explain where the intense pickle-y taste actually comes from. How did they manage to get so much flavor out of these itsy bitsy chunks of pickle? The meat portion of this Hot Pocket consists of diced ham and sliced pork — two delicious meats that come from the same magically delicious animal. There is a hint of mustard in the Hot Pocket, but it definitely takes a backseat to the pickle flavor.

The Limited Edition Cuban Style Hot Pocket is a winner with a pleasantly soft crust, savory pork bits, gooey Swiss cheese, tangy pickles, and no salami. Though it lacks the crispy, toasted texture one can only get from using a sandwich press instead of a microwave, I am positive that anyone looking for some Cubano goodness won’t be disappointed. Just don’t tell Tampa.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 sandwich – 260 calories, 90 fat calories, 10 grams of fat, 3.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 30 milligrams of cholesterol, 680 milligrams of sodium, 32 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 3 grams of sugar, 10 grams of protein, 15% Calcium, 10%Iron, 0% Vitamin C, 2% Vitamin A.)

Item: Limited Edition Cuban Style Hot Pockets
Purchased Price: $2.00 (on sale)
Size: 2 sandwiches
Purchased at: Ralphs
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: Pickles, pork & cheese. Thick, soft bread. Lard injections. Pitbull.
Cons: Teensy mystery pickles. Sandwich feuds. Definitely not plancha crispy. Only around for a short time.

New year, new Limited Edition Lean Pocket.

I’ve reviewed a lot of Hot Pockets and Lean Pockets on this site… and I’ve realized that there comes a point when every Hot Pocket starts to taste the same. It could be because I’ve burned my mouth so many times eating these things that I’ve lost my sense of taste, but I think it goes deeper than that.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s clear that Lean Pockets and Hot Pockets come in a wide variety of flavors, and Hot/Lean Pocket connoisseurs would argue that each Hot/Lean Pocket is its own unique creation, like a snowflake… or a TSA patdown.

But let’s get real here.

There’s very little you can do to mess this thing up (see my previous entry on the Limited Edition Four Cheese Garlic Pasta Bake Hot Pocket for examples of how this could be done) – it’s a toasted crust stuffed with meat, sauce, cheese and/or veggies. Culinary Rocket Science, it’s not. The result is that there’s never much to explore or even to improve upon with this fairly simple microwaveable sandwich, and the new Limited Edition Chicken Carbonara Lean Pocket does little to dissuade me of this notion.

The Limited Edition Chicken Carbonara Lean Pocket has a decent flavor but has little to distinguish itself from all the other Lean Pockets in the freezer aisle. It’s crispy, gooey, savory and piping hot just like a Lean Pocket should be. But the only thing making this Limited Edition Lean Pocket different from its toasty brethren is the inclusion of those tiny mushy globules we call peas. Did you know that carbonara sauce is a mixture of eggs, cheese, bacon and black pepper… and has nothing to do with peas?

Peas may populate carbonara dishes the world over now, but back in the day when carbonara was created (like in WWII or something), it was all about the eggs and bacon. Lean Pockets don’t care. Lean Pockets is all, “We’ve got your cured bacon, your Italian spices, and your parmesan cream sauce with peas, so dig in, you crazy carbonara lovers!” I don’t hate peas or anything, but you can’t depend on peas. We learned that in WWII.

Anyway, this thing also has mozzarella and grilled white meat chicken to accompany the bacon, peas and parmesan cream sauce. The chicken is okay, but the bacon is really the major selling point here. I don’t think that anyone can argue against the presence of bacon in this Lean Pocket. What’s better is that the bacon chunks seem to be evenly spread throughout the sandwich along with the parmesan cream sauce, creating a delicious mélange of savory flavors from end to end. As for the Italian style herb crust, it’s warm and crispy and good. No complaints here.

The Limited Edition Chicken Carbonara Lean Pockets aren’t all that different from some of the other Lean Pockets out there, especially those from the Culinary Creations line, which seem to specialize in seasoned crusts. If someone who hasn’t eaten nearly EVERY SINGLE Lean Pocket or Hot Pocket on the planet were to sample this new Chicken Carbonara Lean Pocket, they would probably delight in what they’d think is its amazingly unique flavor and composition.

I can’t, however.

My enthusiasm for this Lean Pocket is as dead as the skin on the roof of my mouth now.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 sandwich – 260 calories, 7 grams of fat, 3.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 25 milligrams of cholesterol, 540 milligrams of sodium, 38 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 4 grams of sugar, 9 grams of protein, 4% vitamin A, 15% calcium, and 10% iron.)

Item: Lean Pockets Limited Edition Chicken Carbonara
Purchased Price: $2.99
Size: 2 sandwiches
Purchased at: Vons
Rating: 6 out of 10
Pros: Eternally hot. Creamy sauce. Delicious chunks of cured bacon. Crispy seasoned crust.
Cons: You can’t depend on peas. Mouth burns. Mid-century global conflicts. Lean Pockets don’t care.

There are many terrible things I am more likely to do before I ever again eat the latest addition to Taco Bell’s signature FirstMeal menu:

Walk barefoot in an Irish bar on St. Patrick’s Day.

Get some fillings when I don’t really have cavities, “just for the heck of it.”

Watch Paranormal Activity by myself in an empty house and then leave the bedroom door open when I go to bed.

Steal my boss’s corporate card to buy myself an expensive lunch and defiantly say it’s because “they owe me.”

Accidentally swallow a goldfish.

That is how little I enjoyed these pudgy little artery-cloggers they call the Taco Bell A.M. Crunchwraps. Speaking of which, let’s break down the title of this new breakfast item: “Taco Bell” – OK, so we know where we can buy this. “A.M.” – Only available in the morning. Check. “Crunchwrap” – Woah, now… slow your roll. There wasn’t anything crunchy inside these wraps. Just chewy, oily, and rubbery things.

The A.M. Crunchwrap comes in two inexpensive, standard breakfast varieties, Bacon or Sausage. I tried both, and let me tell you that while the grilled flour tortilla is warm, toasty and crisp around the edges, the insides do not crunch. Both A.M. Crunchwraps come with the meat on top of a layer of scrambled eggs and cheese paired with a once-crispy hash brown. Unfortunately the hash brown patties inside of the two A.M. Crunchwraps I got were soggy with grease and excess moisture from being trapped in between a jacket of melted cheese and a flour tortilla, so what had probably been a nice, hot golden exterior was now golden mush. They get some points for even thinking of including hash browns though. It’s the idea of hash browns that counts.

That still isn’t the worst of it. Let’s talk specifically about the Bacon A.M. Crunchwrap. Contrary to my preconceived notions, there were no crisp, savory strips of bacon in this breakfast contraption, just bacon bits — the kind you’d probably find in a pre-packaged Cobb salad sold for $10.95 at the airport sandwich express counter right next to the case of SoBe and Evian. If Taco Bell were being really honest, they would’ve named this thing the “Bacon Bits A.M. Crunchwrap.” And if Taco Bell were being really, really honest, they would call it the “Chunks of Rubber A.M. Gushwrap.”

The hash brown made everything excessively oily. The bacon bits were tough. I imagine ground-up eraser tips from #2 pencils would taste like those bacon bits. Furthermore, they were stuffed inside one corner of the wrap instead of sprinkled throughout, so when I sliced it in half, all the bacon bits spilled out onto the plate. I can’t imagine what would’ve happened if I had been eating this straight out of the wrapper. Best case scenario, I would’ve ended up with a final bite filled with nothing but bacon bits. Worst case, a shower of bacon bits on my lap. The decent flavor of the scrambled egg and cheese was the only factor that kept the Bacon A.M. Crunchwrap from being 100 percent garbage.

The good news is that the Sausage A.M. Crunchwrap is better. Not excellent, but better. The Sausage A.M. Crunchwrap is sufficiently savory. Ironically, it wasn’t dripping with grease like the Bacon one. I’d think that a thick sausage patty would be oozing with the slick stuff, but alas, no. The sausage patty inside the Sausage A.M. Crunchwrap was of a decent diameter, too, and it was thick — a nice meaty counterpart to the egg, cheese and fried potato inside the tortilla. It also had some heft and felt like more of a substantial meal than the Bacon A.M. Crunchwrap.

The Sausage A.M. Crunchwrap seems like the final draft while the Bacon A.M. Crunchwrap was the shitty rough draft Taco Bell churned out in 30 minutes because they were working under deadline and hadn’t slept a wink after watching Paranormal Activity by themselves the night before.

If you’re in the mood for something relatively cheap and quick that’s not the worst fast food breakfast you’ll ever eat, then the Sausage A.M. Crunchwrap is for you. But if you’re interested in flavor, texture and experiencing complete satisfaction with your breakfast, then why are you eating at Taco Bell?

(Nutrition Facts – Bacon – 680 calories. Sausage – 720 calories.)

Other Taco Bell A.M. Crunchwrap reviews:
So Good Blog

Item: Taco Bell A.M. Crunchwrap (Bacon & Sausage)
Purchased Price: $2.50
Size: N/A
Purchased at: Taco Bell
Rating: 2 out of 10 (Bacon)
Rating: 5 out of 10 (Sausage)
Pros: Tortilla is warm and crisp around the edges. Sausage A.M. Crunchwrap has nice heft to it. Sausage patty is savory and thick. The idea of hash browns.
Cons: Greasy. Bacon tastes like #2 pencil erasers. Something totally slamming that bedroom door shut in the middle of the night. Soggy hash browns.

Halloween is coming, and I can already tell that for some of you, one of the most frightening events of this particular season is the recent release of a Candy Corn-flavored Oreo.

Now, I understand that to many, candy corn is unappetizing. These folks see it as striped candle wax melted down and shaped into chewy, inedible shapes suggesting the appearance rotten dog teeth, which is then given away in loads by lazy or otherwise uncaring households to trick-or-treaters who can only greet the sub-par candy gift with gritted teeth and a half-assed “Thank-you” mumbled through their Batman masks. Those people strongly believe that all candy corn tastes like sticky, flavorless plastic.

But it’s not true.

There is a difference in candy corn flavor from brand to brand, and unfortunately, many people have had the misfortune of tasting the cheap brands that do not use real honey in their confections. I get that some people just don’t have a sweet tooth or don’t care for excessive amounts of sugar, so they stay clear of candy corn. I’ve never had this problem. The sweeter, the better. As a result, I have had no fear of candy corn, and having tasted nearly every type of candy corn, I consider myself to be a candy corn connoisseur. (This is probably the most I’ve typed the words “candy corn” in one sitting. I deserve a medal … shaped like a piece of candy corn.)

I say all this to give you some perspective on my experience with the new Limited Edition Candy Corn Oreo cookies… and after sampling this new (very sweet) sandwich cookie, I’ve come away with one question. How on earth are these Candy Corn Oreos? Have the people at Nabisco never eaten a real piece of candy corn before? Before you even get the cookies out of the package, you can smell the very potent (yet admittedly pleasant) aroma of cupcakes. Candy corn does not smell like cake, so already, I’m wondering what these sandwich cookies are all about.

The Limited Edition Candy Corn Oreo is shaped just like a regular Oreo with a thin layer of sugary crème filling between two Golden Oreo wafers. The filling is dyed with one orange side and one yellow side to mimic the appearance of an actual piece of candy corn. They’re forgetting the white tips, but… whatever. This is the level of commitment we’re dealing with.

The cookie part of the sandwich does not balance out the extreme sweetness of this filling at all, and that’s probably because they’re Golden Oreos, which I think are sweeter than the original chocolate Oreo wafers. In fact, they amp up the sugariness to 1000.87 percent based on my Sugar-o-Meter readings. (Full disclosure: The Sugar-o-Meter is just a girl I know who bit into the cookie and said, “That’s really sugary.”) Candy Corn Oreos have the same satisfying crunch as regular Oreos, and you could probably dunk them in milk. However, I’m weird about milk the same way some of you are weird about candy corn, so I can’t give you any advice on dunking your Oreos without feeling nauseated. So let’s move on.

As I mentioned before, Limited Edition Candy Corn Oreo cookies smell like cupcakes, so it makes sense that the crème filling tastes like vanilla frosting. Seriously, that’s what these Oreos taste like to me – sugary Vanilla cupcakes with buttercream frosting. Don’t get me wrong… They’re yummy, and I didn’t dislike these Oreos at all. However, they are not Candy Corn-flavored. There wasn’t a note of honey or mellowcreme-style flavor. Nothing about these Oreos besides the color scheme evokes the experience of real candy corn. If Nabisco wanted to make a Vanilla Cupcake Oreo next, they could just change the food coloring of the crème and re-release these sandwich cookies.

So basically, I was looking forward to an Oreo that tasted like one of my favorite Halloween candies, and instead, I got a cake frosting-derived interpretation of one of the world’s most-loved and most-hated holiday confections, which totally missed the mark. These Limited Edition Candy Corn Oreos do not taste like candy corn at all. I’m putting that down as a “con,” but I bet many of you would count that as a “pro.”

(Nutrition Facts – 2 cookies – 150 calories, 7 grams of fat, 2 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 80 milligrams of sodium, 21 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fiber, 12 grams of sugar, less than 1 gram of protein, 0% vitamin A, 0% calcium, and 4% iron.)

Other Nabisco Limited Edition Candy Corn Oreo reviews:
Hot Ink Reviews
Grub Grade
The Holidaze

Item: Nabisco Limited Edition Candy Corn Oreo
Purchased Price: $2.99
Size: 10.5 ounces (297 g)
Purchased at: Target
Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: Filling tastes like vanilla buttercream frosting. Pleasant yet strong cupcake aroma. Real Candy Corn. Medals shaped like candy corn.
Cons: Candy Corn Oreos do not taste like candy corn. Rotten dog teeth. May be too sweet for some people to handle. The thought of milk being used for dunking.

I had to call my cable company regarding some serious internet connectivity issues over the weekend. For those of you who have ever had the misfortune of having to contact your cable provider for any reason, I don’t have to tell you that it was a long, tedious process, fraught with drama. There was shouting, pleading, whining, and some profanity, and that was before I even spoke to a person. The automated system kept misinterpreting my voice commands, putting me on hold, and then kicking me out to the main menu in an endless loop of broken promises.

What kept me sane in those terrible moments before I finally broke through to an actual human being? Some crispy, corn-based snacks in the form of geometric shapes. Special K’s new Popcorn Chips are crunchy baked snacks that taste like tortilla chips but look like Styrofoam triangles. And they are the one thing that kept me from crossing completely over from blissful, crunchy serenity waiting on hold for 20 minutes to completely losing my shit on some innocent customer service representative who probably hates their job as much as I hate their company’s chirpy, ad-filled phone queue soundtrack.

Special K Popcorn Chips are made from corn (natch), and they taste like it. However, I never got the sensation of eating popcorn. It was more like I was eating tortilla chips. By referring to these thingies as “Popcorn Chips,” Special K may have wanted to emphasize how their snacks are baked and are similar in texture to Pop Chips. Like Pop Chips, Special K Popcorn Chips are low in fat and present a healthier option for those in need of a crunchy, convenient snack. Unlike Pop Chips, they have no association with Ashton Kutcher. See? Special K Popcorn Chips are already winning at life. They also appear thick enough to withstand some dipping as well, so if you’re curious as to whether a Popcorn Chip mixes with ranch dressing or nacho cheese and don’t care about fat, have at it.

I sampled two flavors of Special K Popcorn Chips: “Sweet and Salty” and “Butter.” Sweet and Salty was the chip flavor that kept me from crossing over into the Danger Zone during my telephone adventure. They’re very lightly sweetened, which makes their flavor profile a bit more complex than I first expected it to be. The sweetness mingles nicely with the saltiness, which provides a pleasantly addictive snacking experience. It makes me glad a single serving size of these Popcorn Chips is 28 chips and not something more restrictive and ridiculous like 10. But let’s not kid ourselves, I could totally go to town on these and eat half the box. What can I say? I like crunchy snacks… especially if the crunching drowns out the umpteenth repetition of some perky bimbo’s invitation to ask my customer service agent for more information on bundling telephone service with HD cable and high-speed internet.

The butter-flavored Special K Popcorn Chips, on the other hand, are actually pretty nasty. Special K… if you’re going to go so far as to create a corn snack reminiscent of POPCORN, you really need to hit the mark with the BUTTER-FLAVORED ones. It’s not rocket science. Just use the fake butter everyone else uses on microwave popcorn. Duh. The disturbingly rank artificial butter flavoring is so strong that it comes off tasting more like fake cheese than butter. And I don’t mean the good fake cheese. This is terrible fake cheese. Like the kind that comes in off-brand, plastic dip cups with stale cracker sticks, which would somehow always be lurking in the office break room at the bottom of the kitchen “snack bowl”… dusty and ignored for what seems like centuries. I’m so glad I didn’t try the Butter Popcorn Chips while on the phone. You’d all have heard about the first-ever long-distance throttling via fiber-optics on the morning news. A real triumph of science. For me, not for the cable company.

The Butter Popcorn Chips don’t look all that differently from the Sweet and Salty ones, but you can actually see the fine dusting of “butter” seasoning on each chip. The inherent popcorn flavor of the Butter Popcorn Chips is overpowered by the funky fake cheese flavoring, so I can’t help but wish that they’d toned it down a bit. I don’t know what kind of butter they were thinking about when they created this variety, but it was probably left out in the sun for a while. It tastes like a foot. The butter’s gone bad.

Special K Popcorn Chips are crunchy and flavorful. It’s just too bad that only one flavor is good. They made a serious error with the Butter Popcorn Chips, but I’m not about to give them a call to complain about it. At least not without the Sweet and Salty Popcorn Chips within snacking distance.

(Nutrition Facts – 28 chips (28g) – Butter – 120 calories, 2 grams of fat, 0 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 170 milligrams of sodium, 22 grams of carbohydrates, less than 1 gram of fiber, less than 1 gram of sugar, and 2 grams of protein. Sweet and Salty – 120 calories, 2.5 grams of fat, 2.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 105 milligrams of sodium, 23 grams of carbohydrates, less than 1 gram of fiber, 2 grams of sugar, and 2 grams of protein.)

Item: Kellogg’s Special K Popcorn Chips (Butter & Sweet and Salty)
Purchased Price: $2.89
Size: 4.5 ounces
Purchased at: Target
Rating: 4 out of 10 (Butter)
Rating: 8 out of 10 (Sweet and Salty)
Pros: “Sweet and Salty” lives up to its name. Nice crisp texture. Decent serving size. Low in fat.
Cons: Butter flavor is extremely artificial-tasting and gross. Foot-flavored snacks. Waiting on hold. Ashton.

Sometimes I get tired. Usually it’s a couple hours after lunch when I swiftly enter that mid-afternoon slump that brings my forehead perilously close to smashing into my keyboard. While it would be great to receive daily energy injections at the 3:00 hour, I don’t think most corporate health insurance policies include the administration of intravenous jump juice.

Most people go for a coffee run when they feel sluggish. However, unlike my overly-caffeinated colleagues, I don’t drink coffee. So what’s a java-free girl to do? Simple. Be only slightly unconventional and ingest the latest branded “naturally” caffeinated beverage from one of our nation’s largest peddlers of liquid vim and vigor.

Starbucks has introduced their new Starbucks Refreshers – fruity iced drinks laced with the “natural energy” of Green Coffee Extract (capitalization is theirs) from unroasted Arabica coffee beans. There’s no real flavor to speak of from this Green Coffee Extract, but as I quickly discovered, it packs a punch. After sampling these Refreshers, I definitely felt a bit perkier… That is to say, I was jauntily strolling through the office hallways, smiling broadly and cheerfully vocalizing like the Trololo guy. I was curious about this wonderful ingredient that had put some pep in my step, so I read up on Green Coffee Extract. Interestingly enough, studies have shown that the extract from unroasted coffee beans can inhibit fat absorption in lab mice. So if I transform into a lab mouse while drinking a Starbucks Refresher, I can eat all the cheese I want! Yaaahhhhhh yaya-yaaaaaahhhh…!

There are two flavors of handcrafted beverages available in Starbucks cafes: Cool Lime and Very Berry Hibiscus.

According to the Starbucks website, Cool Lime is “real fruit juice, mint and a lime slice shaken with Green Coffee Extract for a boost of natural energy, served over ice.” The taste of lime was dominant, but I couldn’t taste the mint. The Cool Lime Refresher did otherwise live up to its name, for it was quite refreshing. And cool. In fact, this is what a summer drink should be. Light and citrus-y, but not too sweet. I don’t know if one lime slice is supposed to be the standard because I received two slices the first time I ordered it, but the limes were a great addition to the overall flavor profile. The Cool Lime Refresher also didn’t taste artificial like some other mixed fruit drinks tend to taste, and I think that the use of real fruit helped.

On the other hand, Starbucks claims that the Very Berry Hibiscus Refresher is “handcrafted with whole blackberries” and contains a “hint of hibiscus.” I couldn’t really see any whole blackberries in my drink, just crushed ones. I don’t know if it’s because they were muddled at the bottom of the cup with the Green Coffee Extract or what, but it clearly states that they should be whole. By “whole blackberries,” they must mean “once whole blackberries.” And by “hint of hibiscus,” they must mean “unheeded suggestion of hibiscus” because I couldn’t taste any hibiscus. Maybe I don’t know what hibiscus really tastes like… I mean, what does a flower with natural diuretic properties taste like? Mild panic in 20 minutes when you can’t find the bathroom? Anyway, this Very Berry Hibiscus drink wasn’t Very Anything. More like Sorta-Maybe Berry Hibiscus.

Similar to the Cool Lime Refresher, the Starbucks website claims the Very Berry Refresher is made with “real fruit juice and whole blackberries shaken with Green Coffee Extract for a boost of natural energy, served over ice.” The fruit juice tasted a little diluted, despite its bold appearance, and even though it was served chilled, it didn’t really seem like a summer drink to me. For a Refresher, it was not very refreshing.

Of the two new Starbucks Refreshers, you can probably tell by what I’ve written here (and by looking at the photo taken from a later trip) which one I liked best. The Cool Lime Refresher is the lightweight, summery drink with the appropriate flavor and appearance you’d most appreciate on a hot summer day. The Very Berry Hibiscus tries too hard to fit in with the summer vibe and instead comes off as the sort of drink you’d have to order back in the house because it’s not going anywhere dressed like that.

(Nutrition Facts – 12 fluid ounces – Cool Lime – 40 calories, 0 calories from fat, 0 grams of fat, 0 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 0 milligrams of sodium, 10 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fiber, 9 grams of sugar, 0 grams of protein, 0.9% Vitamin C, and 45 milligrams of caffeine. Very Berry Hibiscus – 60 calories, 0 calories from fat, 0 grams of fat, 0 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 0 milligrams of sodium, 14 grams of carbohydrates, less than 1 gram of fiber, 11 grams of sugar, 0 grams of protein, 0.9% Vitamin C, and 45 milligrams of caffeine.)

Item: Starbucks Refreshers (Cool Lime and Very Berry Hibiscus)
Purchased Price: $2.95
Size: 12 oz
Purchased at: Starbucks
Rating: 7 out of 10 (Cool Lime)
Rating: 5 out of 10 (Very Berry Hibiscus)
Pros: Cool Lime Refresher lives up to its name. Green Coffee Extract inhibits fat absorption in lab mice. Real lime slices. Eduard Khil-like happiness and mirth.
Cons: Very Berry Hibiscus isn’t Very Anything. The 3:00 Slump. Hibiscus is a natural diuretic. Couldn’t taste the Cool Lime Refresher’s mint flavor.