SPOTTED ON SHELVES (STORE BRAND EDITION) – 12/19/2012

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Here are some interesting new and limited edition store brand products found on store shelves by us and your fellow readers.

The Snack Artist Limited Edition Dark Fudge Kettle Corn

This is limited edition? Dark Fudge Kettle Corn sounds like something that should be always edition. (Spotted by Marvo at Safeway.)

Safeway Select Simmer Sauce

This photo shows three Safeway Selects slow cooker and simmer sauces, but there are a whole lot more. There’s a flavor for any busy (or lazy) palate looking to make a quick dinner. (Spotted by Marvo at Safeway.)

Safeway Select Iced Coffee Drinks

Iced Mocha Latte and Iced Coffee Latte? Such generic names for Safeway’s version of Starbucks’ bottled Frappuccino. I was hoping Safeway would come up with a creative name like they did when they called their Mountain Dew-like citrus soda, Mountain Breeze. Perhaps they could call them Frattes? (Spotted by Marvo at Safeway.)

Market Panty Limited Time Only Gingerbread Cheesecake

Didn’t get your hands on Limited Edition Gingerbread Oreo cookies? You could settle for Limited Time Only Market Pantry Gingerbread Cheesecake Creme Sandwich Cookies. (Spotted by Marvo at Target.)

If you’re out shopping and see an interesting new or limited edition product on the shelf (or really unusual), 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: Materne Apple Mango Pineapple Banana GoGo squeeZ Fast Fruit

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Materne GoGo Squeez Fast Fruit Apple Mango Pineapple Banana

Fruits are Mother Nature’s candy.

However, even though I can walk into the produce section of a grocery store and easily buy pounds of Mother Nature’s candy and get sick from eating it all at one time like a kid with inattentive parents and a jack-o’-lantern pail full of candy on Halloween, I still don’t consume enough fruit.

I also don’t eat enough of Mother Nature’s medicine (vegetables) and Mother Nature’s fun pills (Psilocybin mushrooms).

I don’t consume a lot of fruits because I’m horrible at picking fruits that don’t have some kind of defect, the produce guy at my usual grocery store handles fruit in a creepy way, and cheeseburgers and potato chips always block my mouth from getting any.

Materne is a company many of you have never heard of, but you’ve probably seen and/or purchased their applesauce pouches for children — GoGo squeeZ (Yes, that’s how they spell it). According to Materne, 30 percent of their fruit pouches for kids are consumed for adults. I believe that number is accurate because I enjoy eating Kid Cuisine frozen entrees and stabbing Capri Sun pouches from time to time.

Perhaps, in order to stop parents from eating their kid’s snacks, Materne introduced a line of adult fruit pouches called GoGo squeeZ Fast Fruit.

The adult snack, which could be consumed by kids for revenge, comes in three flavors: Apple Raspberry Cranberry, Apple Peach Passion Fruit, and, the one I’ve been sucking on, Apple Mango Pineapple Banana.

Sucking?

Well, in order to get the fruit out of the pouch and into your mouth, you could be civilized and squeeze out the pouch’s contents into a bowl and eat the mashed fruits with a spoon. Or you can do what I imagine most people do, which is GoGo sucK the fruit out of the pouch.

Each 4.2-ounce pouch, which is just an ounce more than the children-sized GoGo squeeZ, contains three-fourths of a small apple, a slice of mango, a wedge of pineapple, and a slice of banana. That farmer’s market of fruit equals one fruit serving. The contents of the BPA-free pouch are also gluten-free, vegan, all-natural, certified kosher, and contains no artificial colors, flavors, or preservatives.

Materne GoGo Squeez Fast Fruit Apple Mango Pineapple Banana Closeup

Even though it contains a number of fruits, the Apple Mango Banana Pineapple Banana GoGo squeeZ looks, tastes, and has the same consistency as applesauce. My taste buds could detect a hint of banana and mango, but if a civilized person secretly squeezed out the mashed fruit from one of these pouches and served it to me in a bowl, I would think it looks and tastes like applesauce.

To be honest, I was a little disappointed I didn’t get a small tropical party in my mouth.

However, Apple Mango Pineapple Banana GoGo squeeZ is some mighty tasty mashed fruit. After I sucked the pouch dry, I wished there was more mashed fruit. I even used every toothpaste tube emptying technique I knew of to try and get every bit of fruit out of each pouch.

If only GoGo squeeZ Fast Fruit came in larger pouches. Although, if they did, I might not be able to hide them in an inner jacket pocket, like was a gin-filled hip flask, so I can sneak in quick shots of fruit.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 pouch – 80 calories, 0 grams of fat, 0 milligrams of sodium, 20 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of fiber, 17 grams of sugar, and 1 gram of protein.)

Item: Materne Apple Mango Pineapple Banana GoGo squeeZ Fast Fruit
Purchased Price: $4.29
Size: 4 pack
Purchased at: Target
Rating: 7 out of 10
Pros: Mighty tasty mashed fruit. Tasty enough that I wished the pouches were bigger. Pouches are portable. Gluten-free, vegan, all-natural, certified kosher, and contains no artificial colors, flavors, or preservatives
Cons: Tastes too similar to ordinary applesauce. Mango, pineapple, and banana didn’t have a strong presence. Pricier than buying regular fruit. Eating too much candy on Halloween.

REVIEW: Kashi Chocolate Almond Butter Soft-Baked Cookies

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Kashi Chocolate Almond Butter Soft-Baked Cookies

Some mornings, I wake up and make a list of the things I could do to be a better person:

1. Learn to play the bagpipes.
2. Engineer a machine that cures allergies.
3. Prove that a Hadamard matrix exists for every positive multiple of 4.

Somewhere down that list, I eventually land on the inevitable, “Eat more whole grains.”

Ah, yes, whole grains: the former foundation of the food pyramid (prior to its 2000 re-fashioning) and topic pressed by nutritionists, early morning talk shows, and grandmoms alike, and, well, grandma knows best. While I still love my white bread and peanut butter sandwiches, no doubt more whole grains are gonna help me live longer, so, if I find a product that fulfills my grainy requirement in the form of a baked goodie, you can bet I’m on-board.

This is where Kashi cookies came into my life. Aisle 7. Tip top shelf. There it was. In shining bold letters.

Kashi Chocolate Almond Butter Soft-Baked Cookies Kashi cookies have whole grains

“Whole Grains”!

First, I would like to take a moment of appreciation for this packaging. Like a miniature treasure hunt, these cookies are housed in a package within a wrapper within a box and let’s face it: there is no replacement for the utter joy brought about by ripping open a box then ripping open another package. It builds that bubbling, anticipatory suspense… slowly…slowly… until…

Kashi Chocolate Almond Butter Soft-Baked Cookies Look at that Kashi packaging

Boom.

There it is. 8 little cookies all in a row.

Now, the gloves come off: it’s tasting time.

Well, slap me sideways and call me Cabbage McPhee. There are whole grains everywhere in this cookie. Inside each of these eight hockey-puck-shaped wonders is the dense, rocky road of Cookieland. Those classic “7 Kashi Grains” take up the majority of the cookie. The chew is a little too texturally challenging for my cookie preferences, but, if you’re a texture kid, pull out your adventure hat and hop in the Jeep Wrangler. This is an off-roadin’ cookie.

Kashi Chocolate Almond Butter Soft-Baked Cookies Oh, ye crumbly kashi cookie

This cookie’s flavors are much like a night of good jazz improv: all the components support one another. The nuttiness of those grains plays the bass beside the almond butter while the cocoa plays the saxophone, highlighting all that roasty-toasty swing (plus, who doesn’t want to play the saxophone?). It all comes together, with the chocolate being the main highlight and a hint of salty-sweet almonds at the end.

And did I mention there are chocolate chips? There are. And they’re especially soft. And especially good after microwaving the cookie for 5 seconds. Especially good.

Each cookie packs a double-punch of almonds with both almond butter in the cookie batter and whole almonds poking out from the jagged terrain of each crumbly offering. There were no noticeable almond butter swirls, but I was cool with that. The almonds echoed enough in the flavor that I trusted there was some almond butter in there doing its job.

While these rocked on taste combination, my particular box seemed to be suffering from a “Dry and Tough” disease. (Sad face) Although it wasn’t the soft chew I was hoping for, there was something I was rather fond of that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, so I ate another while listening to Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker in hopes that a holiday musical muse might descend from above and enlighten me. It was right in the middle of the “Waltz of the Snowflakes” that I realized (with a particularly dramatic gasp): these are cakey granola bars! In cylindrical hockey-puck form!

Talk about a way to energize the mid-day snack attack: whole grains, chocolate, and a recyclable box, which, after you dispose of said receptacle at your local recycling center, will give you good karma in days to come.

Within us all rests a desire to explore, and it seems the folks at Kashi channeled that urge into a cookie. While the multiple grains befuddled my child-like taste buds, I admire Kashi for what they’re doing. They like their 7 whole grains and, by gum, they’re not about to change them for anyone. There’s something admirable in embracing who/what you are and not being afraid to hide it, no matter what the cost.

At the same time, I do believe that these cookies could benefit from a tweak to the recipe that would allow them to transform from a tough granola-bar-like product into a softer cookie-like product, and I have faith that the good people at Kashi can and will do just that. In the words of that terrible 1990s parody of Star Trek, Galaxy Quest, “Never give up. Never Surrender.”

(Nutrition Facts – 1 cookie – 130 calories, 45 calories from fat, 5 grams of fat, 1 gram of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 80 milligrams of sodium, 19 grams of carbohydrates, 4 gram of dietary fiber, 7 grams of sugars, and 3 grams of protein.)

Item: Kashi Chocolate Almond Butter Soft-Baked Cookies
Purchased Price: $2.50 (on sale)
Size: 1 box/8 cookies
Purchased at: Harris Teeter
Rating: 4 out of 10
Pros: Chunks of chocolate. Almonds and almond butter. Whole grains. Good karma from recycling. Learning to play the bagpipes.
Cons: Tough. Dry. A bit crumbly. References to poorly made 90s movies. The re-fashioned food pyramid. Not figuring out if a Hadamard matrix exists for every positive multiple of 4.

SPOTTED ON SHELVES – 12/17/2012

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Here are some interesting new and limited edition products found on store shelves by us and your fellow readers.

Limited Edition Marshmallow Pebbles Starring Barney

This is the second Limited Edition Marshmallow Pebbles box we’ve featured here with the first being the Wilma Flintstone box. From the looks of it, Post will probably have Betty Rubble and Dino boxes, but I hope Post releases a super limited edition Pearl Slaghoople box. (Spotted by Cortney at Walmart.)

YoCrunch Vanilla Yogurt and Applesauce

Maybe it’s just me, but it feels like YoCrunch added the words “Terrific Taste Combo” to the packaging specifically to convince shoppers that the combination of yogurt and applesauce isn’t as weird as it sounds. (Spotted by Stefanie at Walmart.)

Green Giant Casseroles

I will not eat them with an evil coven. I will not eat them from an oven. I will not eat them with a horny stag. I will not eat them from a microwaveable bag. I will not eat green bean casserole. Oh, no. Oh, hell no. (Spotted by Marvo at Safeway.)

International Delight Caramel Macchiato Iced Coffee

International Delight has a new half-gallon carton iced coffee flavor — Caramel Macchiato. I’m waiting for Starbucks to come out with their own iced coffee in a half-gallon carton. But instead of calling it a half-gallon, I hope they call it gigantesco. (Spotted by Marvo at Safeway.)

Kidfresh Frozen Entrees

According to the Kidfresh website, “Because most children don’t eat enough vegetables, each of our fresh frozen meals are full of hidden veggies that have been pureed and snuck in. Shhh…don’t tell the kids!” Well, if Kidfresh is trying to be secretive about it, maybe they shouldn’t have highlighted “with hidden veggies” on the front of the box. (Spotted by Marvo at Safeway.)

Thank you to all the photo contributors! If you’re out shopping and see an interesting new or limited edition product on the shelf (or really unusual), 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.

SPOTTED ON SHELVES (HOLIDAY EDITION) – 12/14/2012

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Here are some interesting new and limited edition holiday products found on store shelves by us and your fellow readers.

Jet-Puffed SnowmanMallows French Vanilla

Jet-Puffed GingerbreadMallows

MoreMallows! But I’d really like to see artificially flavored EggnogMallows and CinnaMallows. (Spotted by Stefanie at Walmart.)

Candy Cane Pop Rocks

With these Candy Cane Pop Rocks, I can make my breath kissable, but the popping may make my mouth super unkissable. Or, for some of you, super kissable if you like swapping spit with a side of mini explosions. Here’s a Candy Cane Pop Rocks review. (Spotted by Lauren at Safeway.)

West Soy Chocolate Pepperming Stick Soy Beverage

“Serve warm or chilled”? I need West Soy to be a little more specific with “warm.” Do they mean room temperature? If that’s the case, the box might as well say, “Serve chilled or at temperature that makes you regret you didn’t serve it chilled.”
(Spotted by Audrey at Whole Foods.)

Rondele Limited Edition Gourmet Spreadable Cheese

President Rondelé Limited Edition Cranberry Orange Gourmet Spreadable Cheese and President Rondelé Limited Edition Pumpkin & Spice Gourmet Spreadable Cheese allow me to make a sentence that’s way longer than it should be. (Spotted by Linda at Fresh & Easy.)

Twinings Keurig Tea

To make your Keurig look more festive this time of year, you could wrap it in Christmas lights and tinsel; give it a red, white, and green paint job; put it back in its original box, cover it with holiday wrapping paper, and put a bow on it; or put a supply of these Twinings Christmas and Winter Spice teas next to it. The Tea Review Blog reviewed both flavors. (Spotted by Audrey at Harris Teeter.)

Thank you to all the photo contributors! If you’re out shopping and see an interesting new or limited edition product on the shelf (or really unusual), 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.

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