Month: July 2012

REVIEW: Jack in the Box Waffle Breakfast Sandwich

Marvo 4 Comments

Jack in the Box Waffle Breakfast Sandwich

Haffles.

I think that’s what I’m going to call the waffles Jack in the Box uses as buns for their new Waffle Breakfast Sandwich.

Or, maybe, waffakeles. Okay, maybe not.

Why haffles? Well, it’s as if Jack’s waffle iron doesn’t have a top or a Dr. Moreau-type successfully combined a waffle with a pancake, because one side looks like an Eggo, but if you flip it over, it’s as flat as a table.

So if you happen to be in the extremely rare situation where you don’t have a coin to flip and need to determine who bats and who bowls in a game of cricket, but have a Jack in the Box Waffle Breakfast Sandwich, you can flip the bun. Actually, since cart-wheeling stump, corridor of uncertainty, cow corner, dibble doubly, flat-track bully, luncheon, mullygrubber, pie chucker, platinum duck, rib tickler, and silly nanny are all cricket terms, “flip the bun” might already be one.

Jack in the Box’s Waffle Breakfast Sandwich features a fried egg, American cheese, and Jack’s new country-grilled sausage in between two lightly sweetened maple haffles. Jack in the Box isn’t the first fast food chain to use starchy breakfast food as buns for a breakfast sandwich. Dunkin’ Donuts offered a waffle sandwich and one that used French toast. Also, McDonald’s has their McGriddles, which use pancakes. Personally, I’m waiting for someone to come out with a breakfast sandwich that uses hash browns as buns.

Jack in the Box Waffle Breakfast Sandwich WTF

Although the nutrition facts for Jack’s Waffle Breakfast Sandwich look like it’s for a hefty burger, the sandwich is a bit small. So if you believe breakfast is the most important meal of the day, I’d suggest you order the combo with hash brown sticks and a drink since the sandwich by itself isn’t a filling meal.

The haffles and country-grilled sausage create a wonderful balance of sweet and savory. I don’t remember what Jack’s old breakfast sausage tasted like (or whether it was grilled in the city), so I don’t know if the new stuff is an improvement, but I did enjoy its flavor and texture. The haffles didn’t have a crispy exterior like most waffles, instead it was as limp as a handshake between Indian and Pakistani cricket players. As for their flavor, I don’t know if I would consider them to be maple-y. However, I do think they were perfectly sweetened to complement the sausage.

The American cheese was like Major Toht’s face in Raiders of the Lost Ark — melted beyond recognition. It also didn’t have much flavor. As for the fried egg, its flavor was noticeable, but my tastebuds mostly ignored it and focused on the sweet haffles and savory sausage.

I can’t say I’ve enjoyed Jack in the Box’s other breakfast sandwiches, so I ordered the Breakfast Waffle Sandwich with low expectations. But, it was, surprisingly, very good. Or as they say in cricket, it was a Michelle.

(Nutrition Facts – 479 calories, 306 calories from fat, 33 grams of fat, 11 grams of saturated fat, 1 gram of trans fat, 271 milligrams of cholesterol, 983 milligrams of sodium, 230 milligrams of potassium, 24 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of fiber, 6 grams of sugar, and 19 grams of protein.)

Other Jack in the Box Waffle Breakfast Sandwich reviews:
So Good Blog
Brand Eating

Item: Jack in the Box Waffle Breakfast Sandwich
Purchased Price: $5.69 (small combo)
Size: N/A
Purchased at: Jack in the Box
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: Very good. Great balance of sweet and savory. Available all day. Finally, a fast food sandwich with completely melted cheese. Cricket references. A Michelle.
Cons: Available for a limited time. Smallish. Indo-Pakistani relations. Awesome source of sodium. Awesome source of trans fat. Waffles were haffles.

REVIEW: Cap’n Crunch’s Cinnamon Roll Crunch

Drew 14 Comments

Cap'n Crunch's Cinnamon Roll Crunch

There’s something a bit surreal about eating breakfast food patterned after an entirely different breakfast food, isn’t there? I don’t want to get overly zen, but it’s like saying, “I enjoy this food enough to want to duplicate its taste, but do you have a slower, less convenient way of eating it?”

We all know cereal is awesome, but you can’t eat it one handed while changing lanes, shifting gears, adjusting the radio, balancing coffee in your lap, and flipping off some moron who’s trying to do too many things at once. And if you can, please cease driving along the PA/NJ border between the hours of 8:30-9:00 every morning.

Nonetheless, Her Majesty’s honorable Captain Horatio Soggybane Crunchley has decided to give it a go, so here we are. If you’re like me, your first thought was, “Did they try to make the pieces look like mini cinnamon rolls? Or will they resemble the jagged Cap’n Crunch bits we all know and some of us love?” The surprising answer is “neither” — these are just little asymmetrical balls, about the size of a Cocoa Puff. No biggie, but it’s slightly puzzling why they didn’t just use the standard CC shape (and for that matter, why they don’t do the same for Peanut Butter Crunch). Either way, it doesn’t impact the taste, and I suppose these are less likely to irritate those with more sensitive palates.

The packaging is fairly typical fare, with the Cap’n holding up a cinnamon roll with wisps of aroma lines that let us know, damn, this fictional drawing of a breakfast pastry smells good. In keeping with the theme, the back has two pictures of a bakery scene, inviting you to find ten differences between them. (I got nine without checking the answers — let me just offer that two of them are such incredibly subtle differences, they make Where’s Waldo look like a child’s search n’ find.) The answer key is on the bottom of the box, though this isn’t clarified anywhere on the package. I guess they figure anyone not smart enough to figure it out isn’t going to be wasting their time with the puzzle anyway.

Continuing on, one side panel boasts the standard nutritional information, the other links to the Cap’n’s website, Facebook page, and Twitter account. Maybe I’m just an old fuddy duddy, but I’m not sure I really want to know that the Cap’n’s current relationship status is “My life, my love and my lady is the Sea” or what he’s hashtagging these days. Although if Quaker Oats just turns the Twitter feed over to some wiseass intern and lets him run with it, I can see the potential for comedic goodness. “Hey, remember when I met Spider-Man? How freaking stoned was whoever dreamed that up? #FourTwenty” or “Avast, y u no like crunchness, Soggmeister? 🙁 ”

Cap'n Crunch's Cinnamon Roll Crunch Closeup

I’m realizing we’re four paragraphs in and I haven’t touched on the flavor, so let’s fix that. As you’d expect, these don’t taste exactly like cinnamon rolls, or much like them at all really. In the movie version, the most they’ll be legally allowed to put on screen will be “loosely inspired by.” But they still taste quite good, as I sit here eating dry pieces out of the box, unable to stop myself from reaching for more. There’s a definite cinnamon flavor, though far subtler than you’d find in an actual cinnamon roll. They’re crunchy but not nearly as much so as regular Cap’n Crunch, possibly due to the shape. And if you were hoping for any kind of a frosting drizzle, keep looking. But the smell, while understated, is sugary and appealing.

You know what cereal they vaguely remind me of? The late, much lamented (by me) Waffle Crisp. The texture is a little different, not quite as hard, but they have the same initial burst of sweetness with a maple syrup-y taste. The major difference is that these (obviously) also feature cinnamon, but again, it’s a lot less intense than you’d expect, nowhere near what you’d get from, say, Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Which, since we’re addressing the elephant in the room, is still the preferred cinnamon-based breakfast cereal, due to being far more aggressive and flakier. In this case at least, baker comes out on top of seaman. And alas, the good captain’s boast that his cereal doesn’t get soggy in milk is about as credible as his tale of once making it with a mermaid.

But don’t let that steer you away from trying Cap’n Crunch’s Cinnamon Roll Crunch. It’s still a good-tasting cereal that’s worth trying at least once. And since it’s almost certainly for a limited time only, once might be all you get, so hoist the mizzenmast and make for the nearest port immediately.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 cup – 110 calories, 15 calories from fat, 1.5 grams of total fat, 1 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 grams of polyunsaturated fat 0 grams of monounsaturated fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 170 milligrams of sodium, 50 milligrams of potassium, 23 grams of total carbohydrates 1 gram of dietary fiber, 12 grams of sugars, 10 grams of other carbohydrates, and 1 gram of protein)

Item: Cap’n Crunch’s Cinnamon Roll Crunch
Purchased Price: $3.79
Size: 10.3 ounces
Purchased at: Giant
Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: Tastes kind of like Waffle Crisp. Back-of-the-box activities that actually make you work. Crunchy, and sweet but not overly so. Successfully resisting a poop deck joke. Good for dry snacking. What I imagine the Cap’n’s Twitter feed to be like.
Cons: Less interesting shape than normal CC. Cinnamon taste a little subtle. Gets soggy. Makes you crave an actual cinnamon roll. What the Cap’n’s Twitter feed is probably actually like.

PRIZE DRAWING: Because We Want To Help Your Bare Head, Chest, and Freezer

Marvo 383 Comments

2012-07-15 10.21.56

Does your freezer look bare? Is the top of your head naked? Don’t have a utensil to scoop out ice cream? Worried about frostbite when holding a pint of ice cream? Need a huge bag to carry stuff? Are you topless?

Well, today is your lucky day because you can enter to win a prize pack from fine folks at Ben & Jerry’s that could solve every single one of those problems.

The prize pack includes a huge Ben & Jerry’s reusable bag, a Ben & Jerry’s pint cozy, an aluminum Ben & Jerry’s ice cream scoop, a Ben & Jerry’s Greek Frozen Yogurt trucker hat and t-shirt (size XL), and 10 coupons for a free pint of Ben & Jerry’s (yes, ten, even though the photo above shows only five).

To enter The Impulsive Buy’s Ben & Jerry’s prize pack giveaway, leave a comment with THIS post. I don’t care what you say in your comment, but it would be nice if it contained one of the following:

1. Your favorite Ben & Jerry’s flavor of all time.

2. The word “Moooooooooo!”

Please don’t forget to fill out the email field because I’ll be emailing the randomly selected winner for his or her mailing address. The Impulsive Buy will stop accepting entries on Friday, July 27, 2012 11:59 p.m. Hawaii Standard Time. Only one comment allowed per person, and it’s only open to U.S. residents who are at least 18 years old.

Good luck!

Fine Print: The Impulsive Buy promises your email address will not be used to send you YouTube links that will lead to horrible “Call Me Maybe” parodies. The Impulsive Buy also promises your mailing address will not be used to send you J. Crew catalogs. Bribes will not be accepted. The Impulsive Buy will not be responsible for lost mail, damaged mail, or not having enough room for all the free Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.

REVIEW: Lay’s 40% Reduced Fat Kettle Cooked Sun-Dried Tomato & Parmesan

Adam 1 Comment

Lay’s 40% Reduced Fat Kettle Cooked Sun-Dried Tomato & Parmesan

Have you ever had real Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese?

I’m not talking about the stuff you see on the grocery store shelves – or even the domestically labeled “parmesan” you see in the fancy swanky deli cheese section of your Walmart. I’m talking about those massive, aged rounds imported from Italy and encountered in the kind of swanky, dimly lit Italian restaurant your rich, possibly mob-involved Italian uncle takes your family to on special occasions.

If you haven’t experienced this “King” of cheeses (in which case, let me introduce you to my uncle Dave), then you’re missing out. True Italian Parmigiano-Reggiano is nutty and fruity, salty and astringent, and meaty. It’s the kind of cheese which makes you remember it as the best part of going to a restaurant, even after you’ve downed a week’s worth of calories in flatbread pizzas following its appearance on an appetizer plate.

Having recently tasted this epitome of aged dairy (and, I should add, gorged myself in flatbread pizzas) I was looking forward to getting my fill of classic Italian flavors in the convenience of a bag and a fraction of the fat. Forty percent less fat, to be precise, which is exactly how much fat Lay’s has slashed from their new Kettle Cooked Sun-Dried Tomato & Parmesan chips.

When judging the flavor of [INSERT CHEESE NAME HERE] chips, I like to consult the handy dandy statistical tool known as the bell curve. Given a normal chip (read: pretty much all chips excluding those green ones or chips that look like Jesus) one assumes the chip’s flavor is worthwhile if it’s more than one standard deviation from the norm, which in the case of any potato chip professing the flavor of cheese, is your standard Cheddar and Sour Cream. More than two standard deviations from Cheddar and Sour Cream? That’s for sure a winner. Three? There’s a chip worth eating an entire bag in one sitting.

Lay’s 40% Reduced Fat Kettle Cooked Sun-Dried Tomato & Parmesan Ingredients

They say the King of Cheese can stand on its own (or maybe I’m thinking of this song), and if that’s true, then Lay’s wasn’t exactly giving a vote of confidence to the namesake flavor by including Cheddar and Mozzarella Cheese before Parmesan on the ingredient list. Butter and Asiago come later, but the general aroma is that of cheese, salt, and that ubiquitous “chip” smell of maltodextrin and garlic. In other words; we’re starting conspicuously close to the center of that bell curve.

I was excited to see that the “Natural Sun Dried Tomato Type flavor” in the seasoning resembles the stuff that makes Cooler Ranch Doritos so awesome, but the Sun Dried Tomato flavor itself is muted and tough to put a finger on. Inconsistent at best, it comes off as not quite sweet enough or assertive. Last I checked, the flavor of the tomato is intensified through the drying process, yet I’m pretty sure this has less tomato flavor than those ketchup chips we reviewed.

Lay’s 40% Reduced Fat Kettle Cooked Sun-Dried Tomato & Parmesan Closeup

All could be forgiven, mind you, if the Parmesan flavor approached anything near that of true Parmigiano-Reggiano. Unfortunately, I find it ambiguous underwhelming. It’s slightly creamy and a tad meaty, but the assertive and bold notes – not to mention that addictively fruity quality — aren’t there. Don’t get me wrong, you’ll find this tastes like those shelf-stable packs of Kraft “Parmesan,” but it’s more one note and salty than anything else. Which brings us around to the point of the bell curve, and how, even with four types of cheeses and the presence of natural sun dried tomato “type” flavor, these chips can’t break free of a single standard deviation away from the most ubiquitous of all chip flavors.

Still, for a 40 percent reduced fat chip, you’d be hard-pressed to notice a difference in crunch level, although the slightly less than par greasiness of the cheese will be missed by those who enjoy licking their fingers (and not, I should add, by my keyboard.)

All things considered, it’s a decent chip if you have the obsessive tendency to find a way to shave a few grams of fat out of your day, or if you’re just looking for a gentle way to introduce your neighborhood’s resident sour cream and onion chip fan to something a bit more sophisticated. But those looking for a taste distinctly and unmistakably Italian taste are going to find these a little lackluster, more akin to those cakey packets of Kraft “parmesan” than to the “King of Cheese.”

(Nutrition facts – 1 ounce/about 16 chips – 130 calories, 6 grams of fat, 1 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 135 milligrams of sodium, 410 milligrams of potassium, 19 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of dietary fiber, 1 grams of sugar, and 2 grams of protein.)

Item: Lay’s 40% Reduced Fat Kettle Cooked Sun-Dried Tomato & Parmesan
Purchased Price: $3.49
Size: 8 ounces
Purchased at: Giant
Rating: 6 out of 10
Pros: Less calories and fat than regular chips without loss of crunch factor. Four types of cheeses. All natural. Sun dried tomato flavor is a nice change of pace. Actually having an application for those college statistics classes I suffered through. Keeping my computer clean.
Cons: Only 20 less calories and a few fat grams less than regular kettle chips. Four types of cheeses you probably won’t be able to detect. Parmesan is garden variety domestic stuff. Sun-dried tomato flavor could be more assertive. No grease to lick off my fingers.

NEWS: Wendy’s Pushes Out Son of Baconator

Marvo 4 Comments

After learning about Wendy’s new Son of Baconator, I wondered if Wendy’s Double Stack and original Baconator made greasy love to bring Son of Baconator to life.

While the original Baconator uses four-ounce patties and has six strips of Applewood Smoked Bacon, Son of Baconator has two 2.25-ounce beef patties (the same ones used in Wendy’s Jr. burgers and the Double Stack), four strips of bacon, two slices of American cheese, ketchup, and mayo on a buttered toasted bun.

Son of Baconator may not be as big as his father, but his nutrition facts make him sound pretty grown up. It has 700 calories, 43 grams of fat, 18 grams of saturated fat, 1.5 grams of trans fat, 130 milligrams of cholesterol, 1,760 milligrams of sodium, 40 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of fiber, 9 grams of sugar, and 39 grams of protein.