Here are the Tofutti coupons winners:
Congratulations to the winners and thanks to everyone who participated. Also, a special thanks goes to Tofutti for providing the coupons.
Keep your eyes open for a new giveaway soon.
Month: October 2013
FAST FOOD FIVE – 10/26/2013
Here are five recent fast food news bites:
Hey, Impulsive Buy readers in Japan and those who are visiting Japan soon! McDonald’s Japan is bringing back the McPork Sandwich for a limited time. With its popularity and it being discontinued, I could say it’s Japan’s McRib, if the McRib wasn’t offered in Japan a few years ago. (via McDonald’s Japan translated via Google)
Sonic has sandwiches with habanero sauce, so have ready in your hand one of the thousands of possible Sonic drink combinations. (via Grub Grade)
Dunkin’ Donuts has brought back their Boston Scream Donut…or as I shall call it from now on, the Booston Scream Boonut. Yup. I am horrible at names. Remind me to not name any of my future children. (via PR Newswire)
Hey, Impulsive Buy readers in Australia! You’re getting McDonald’s McWraps and their convenient eating sleeves! (via Burger Business)
Get a free Krispy Kreme doughnut when you wear your Halloween costume in store on October 31. Or get a free Krispy Kreme doughnut by hanging out near a Krispy Kreme drive-thru window and hoping someone drops one and doesn’t run over it. (via Krispy Kreme)
Image via flickr user Nicky Pallas / CC BY 2.0
REVIEW: Trader Joe’s Speculoos Cookie and Cocoa Swirl Spread
Do you remember your first time?
Were there scented candles? Sensual music in the background?
I remember my first time. It took place right outside of Central Park. I didn’t mind the public watching. Children stared. There was whipped cream. Things got sticky. Real sticky.
Yup, I remember my first time trying speculoos spread like it was just yesterday. Like many others, my first taste of speculoos spread came atop a waffle from a Wafels & Dinges truck in New York. That sweet, slightly spiced cookie butter knocked my tastebuds’ socks off. (And my tastebuds don’t even wear socks.)
Naturally, when I found out that Trader Joe’s had combined their speculoos spread with a cocoa swirl, I jumped at the opportunity to try it. Chocolate is the only thing that could ever improve speculoos, right?
Behold: Trader Joe’s Speculoos Cookie and Cocoa Swirl.
Removing the lid from the glass jar released the heavenly scent of speculoos, an aroma reminiscent of raw sugar cookie dough mixed with cinnamon. Strangely, my proboscis was unable to detect any trace of chocolate.
The light brown speculoos base is fabulous: sweet with a light cinnamon spice, like a spreadable mixture of snickerdoodles and graham crackers. Tiny bits of cookie crumbs are incorporated into the speculoos, providing a very slight crunch. For those who have yet to experience the joys of speculoos, be warned: it is extremely addictive.
But the chocolate? Oh boy. The chocolate changes things for the worse.
The dark brown cocoa swirl is saccharine and excessively rich, almost like a chocolate syrup in solid form. Its chocolate flavor seems artificial, two-dimensional, and ultimately unappealing. There’s no way I would ever eat the chocolate portion of this spread alone.
Because it’s not as thick as peanut butter or Nutella, the cookie butter spreads easily onto bread, waffles, and anything else you can imagine putting speculoos on. (Keep it PG, kids.)
When the speculoos and chocolate portions of the spread are combined, the result is one dark brown mass, more similar in appearance to Nutella than a cookie butter. The speculoos helps to calm the overpowering chocolate flavor of the cocoa swirl. However, the chocolate equally mutes the speculoos, converting the spread in its entirety into what tastes like a cheap, knockoff speculoos spread. Essentially, the addition of the cocoa swirl smothers the speculoos base’s wow-factor, downgrading a spectacular cookie butter to mere mediocrity.
What happened, Trader Joe? There was so much potential here. You took the easy way out by cutting corners and using cheap chocolate, didn’t you? For shame!
I should have known better than to trust a cookie butter sold by such an elusive man. I’ve been to his store countless times, but I still haven’t been able to find this Trader Joe guy. He’s harder to locate than Carmen Sandiego, Waldo, and the corpse of Jimmy Hoffa all combined.
Trader Joe, I will never again purchase your Speculoos Cookie and Cocoa Swirl spread. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
(Nutrition Facts – 1 Tbsp. (15 grams) – 90 calories, 50 calories from fat, 6 grams of total fat, 1.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 20 milligrams of sodium, 8 grams of total carbohydrates, less than 1 gram of dietary fiber, 6 grams of sugars, and less than 1 gram of protein.)
Other Trader Joe’s Speculoos Cookie and Cocoa Swirl Spread reviews:
What’s Good at Trader Joe’s
Purchased Price: $3.99
Size: 14.1 oz.
Purchased at: Trader Joe’s
Rating: 5 out of 10
Pros: First times. Speculoos base is fabulous. Cookie crumbs mixed throughout.
Cons: Chocolate seems artificial. Combination makes spread seem mediocre. The corpse of Jimmy Hoffa.
SPOTTED ON SHELVES (SEASONAL EDITION) – 10/25/2013
Here are some interesting new and limited edition products found on store shelves by us and your fellow readers. If you’ve tried any of the products, share your thoughts about them in the comments.
Look at what trick-or-treaters living in gated rich communities are going probably to get in their gold-plated jack-o-lanterns this year. Oh, who am I kidding? They’re getting money. (Spotted by Sylvia at Ralphs.)
Ben & Jerry’s Pumpkin Cheesecake Ice Cream is back. Here’s our review from last year. But who cares because Ron Burgundy has his own Ben & Jerry’s flavor. (Spotted by Jamie at Walmart.)
If you think about it, aren’t we all just limited edition products. (Spotted by Nicolas at Target.)
Ghosts turn milk green? That’s hard to believe, unless their names are Blue No. 1 and Yellow No. 5. or Slimer. Here’s our review from 2011. (Spotted by Brian at Walmart.)
Sooo, Betty Crocker. When you say, “Fall Vanilla,” you pretty much just mean “vanilla,” right? (Spotted by Kassie at Kroger.)
Thank you to all the photo contributors! If you’re out shopping and see an interesting new or limited edition product on the shelf, snap a picture of it, and send us an email ([email protected]) with where you found it and “Spotted” in the subject line. If you do so, you might see your picture in our next Spotted on Shelves post.
REVIEW: Hershey’s Rally Bar (2013)
Having witnessed multiple variations of time travel in movies, I’ve learned that some methods of journeying into the past are more dangerous than others. For example:
- I might get sucked in a black hole (Star Trek)
- I might have to become a hyper-intelligent wizard in a near-death situation (Harry Potter)
- I might have to drive 88 miles per hour on a suburban street (Back to the Future), which would encourage speeding tickets from my local law enforcement
Because I know that Hollywood is fact-checking all its sources, one can only conclude that time travel can be painful, high-maintenance, and/or involve unnecessary trips to traffic court. Nonetheless, I often dream of going back and snagging a taste of some of those rare products that disappeared before my time. Thankfully, Hershey’s is sparing me the toil of arranging time travel transportation by resurrecting their Rally Bar from its 1970s grave and stashing it at Walgreens all over the land.
Taking inspiration from its longstanding confectionary kin, the Rally bar compresses the caramel-peanut combo of a Pay Day with the lumpy, bumpy look of a Baby Ruth, resulting in a chocolate covered, peanut-coated caramel log that may or may not be a geographically correct interpretation of the Austrian Mountains.
“The hills are alive with the sound of music!”
Diving right in, the chocolate is quick to melt, sweet, and fudgy. This is trademark Hershey’s chocolate: the kind that gets gooey on s’mores and calls forth multiple washes of your jeans after it melts in your pocket in 80-degree weather. Its palm-oil-y layer is sugary with a hint of cocoa to remind you it’s chocolate. On its own, the coating hangs off the cliff of getting too sweet. Thankfully, the peanuts and caramel nougat are there to back it up.
The structural support beam of the bar comes in the form of the nougat, which has a bit of an identity crisis. Is it caramel? Is it vanilla? At times it’s both, and I’m okay with that because it’s surrounded by a stringy, Twix-like caramel. This spin on the sticky sweet stuff gives its taste headline to the dextrose while a buttery-nut chaser comes in at the end, and anything with a chaser makes things better.
The peanuts are outright impressive. These aren’t those puny little nubbins you might get on your discount $49 plane ride you booked on that questionable discount travel site. These are huge, fresh specimens, lightly toasted without a trace of bitterness. Mr. Peanut would approve.
Room temperature, the Rally is pleasant, but, when given a 3-7 second nuke in the microwave, every element heightens to a new form. The caramel gets goopier, the chocolate more fudgy, and the peanuts ride this chocolate slip-and-slide with ease, and all because of seven seconds in my radiation-grade mini-oven. While attempting to maneuver this goopy, malleable mass of chocolate from the 600-watt microwave into my mouth, all I could think was, “Man, this would be great in my morning oatmeal.” And it was. It was also quite good topped with potato chips. No matter how you eat it, eat it while it’s hot.*
*The unofficial title of my debut rap album.
This Rally resurrection reinforces the hypothesis that, when one combines chocolate, caramel, and peanuts in the right ratios, Goodness results. The bar itself is nothing groundbreaking, but just because it isn’t unique doesn’t make it un-delicious. It’s got a funky shape, a sugary coating, and peanuts that tide me over till the next meal/mini meal/snack/pre-dinner chomp/midnight craving strikes, so welcome back, Rally. It’s good to have you.
(Nutrition Facts – 230 calories, 110 calories from fat, 13 grams of fat, 5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 45 milligrams of sodium, 0 milligrams of potassium, 27 grams of carbohydrates, 1 gram of dietary fiber, 24 grams of sugars, and 4 grams of protein..)
Item: Hershey’s Rally Bar
Purchased Price: 97 cents
Size: 1.66 oz
Purchased at: Walgreens
Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: Fudgy. Stringy, sweet caramel. Fresh, chunky peanuts. Similar to a chocolate covered Pay Day. Even better when microwaved. Slip-and-slides made of fudge. Underdogs. Time Travel.
Cons: Chocolate flavor stunted by palm oil. Caramel may be too dextrose-forward for some. Only available at Walgreens. Washing chocolate out of your jeans. Getting sucked in a black hole. Speeding tickets.