lip smacking treats

I’m always on the search for a good burger. And recently someone tipped me off to Canyone Burgers. They are a now 1-year-old franchise system that has started up in Woodstock, GA. Rather good! The burgers were decidedly better than those you can crank out of the grill out in the backyard, well for me at least. And the fries were really tasty, a wee bit too salty, but tasty. I enjoyed it. My only problem was that I went on a night when there were lots of little kids (and by little I mean 15 and under) and it was really really noisy in there. It echoed terribly. Hard to concentrate.

Oh, I tried the Red Smoke Burger. It’s a burger with bbq sauce, hickory smoked bacon, cheddar cheese and grilled onions. They gladly customized the order for me – don’t care for the grilled onions that much – and it was a very good dinner. The girls behind the counter bring your food to your table and they were very cute, too.

The four large LCD screens didn’t hurt at all! If you are in the area where one of these franchises is located check it out. Worth it.

The other day I got a free sample in the mail of General Mill’s Fiber One Chewy Bars. This was the oats and chocolate bar. Its a naturally flavored granola bar and it was chock full of one of my favorite snack ingredients: chocolate!

It’s an interesting twist of granola and tiny chocolate morsels. The bar felt a little sticky and I thought for sure that I would have sticky fingers aftewards, but I didn’t. Now that I think back on it, and it was only about an hour ago that I tested this one out, I don’t remember if I licked my fingers afterwards or not! Too good of a snack. It came along with an ad that proclaimed “Cardboard No. Delicious yes.” And I agree with that. Truth in advertising there!

Of interest to a lot of people of this type of product is the nutritional information. The bar had 140 calories, 35 of those from fats. 4% of your days sodium, and 2 grams of Protein. 10% of your calcium is a nice extra bonus, too! I’m not too sure on what it is in a product that helps on weight loss, but if you are trying to loose weight I’m sure the cornerstone of those diets is limiting calorie intake. A middling 140 calories for this as a mid-afternoon snack will help you from needing something else, like say pop-tarts, to keep you going until dinner time.

General Mill’s had done a good job with this product, and I feel pretty good that if I’m in the store in the future looking for a granola snack to go, I’ll be really tempted to choose this one. They are individually wrapped which makes them perfect for tossing in the glove box of the car or your backpack for later.

Thumbs up! You will smack over this one if you like granolas.

Spending some time looking at a coupon flyer this week I noticed a cookie dough coupon for Nestle Cookie Dough. While Nestle Tollhouse Cookies aren’t exactly “gourment cookie” dough material, it isn’t anything to scoff at. I can’t say that I’ve never tried these cookies, but I’ve never tried the tub variety.

How these work? Well, its just cookie dough. You either buy the kind that are in “squares” and you break off however many you want to bake – bake ‘em and eat them. Or you buy them in a tub and spoon out as much cookie dough as you want.

The coupon is a $1.50 off two Nestle’s … and that is the issue! If it were just a coupon for, say, nestle chocolate chip cookies then there wouldn’t be an issue – I’d just go for it. Instead, preliminary investigation at the grocery store (I forgot the coupon! Don’t you hate that?!) reveals all sorts of varieties of Nestle cookie dough to choose from. Take a look at their website! They even have halloween cookies!

So how to choose? First of course I believe I must get the chocolate chip cookies. Then for the second package? Maybe the brownies? Or the oatmeal? I need to try the tub version instead of the pre-cut version or the roll.

But, getting some cookie dough opens lots of tough questions. Things like how long can I refrigerate cookie dough? and the proverbial is it safe to eat raw cookie dough? Safe, well, I get different opinions on – but fun or tasty or good the answer to that is YES!

I don’t think that there are many nestle coupons that go around, so I need to use this coupon!

Yesterday I got a handful of coupons in the mail and so today I went through them at lunch and noticed a coupon for $1 off a bag of M&M’s Premium Chocolate Candies. Being the chocolate fan that I am, I cut this one out and made it a point to stop and try them. I mean, $1 to try? So I’m in!

Well, they are new. That should of been my first tip off that they might be hard to find. The first two stores I didn’t see them, and the third I decided I’d ask. The clerk had never heard of them. Finally, before 9pm, I was able to find them and scored a bag! I decided on the triple chocolate flavor.

There are five different flavors:

1. Chocolate Almond: A whole roasted almond in milk chocolate
2. Mocha: Milk chocolate with mocha flavoring
3. Triple Chocolate: (I’m here!) dark chocolate, white chocolate, and milk chocolate.
4. Raspberry Almond: Raspberry flavored white chocolate with a dark chocolate coating and an almond at the center.
5. Mint Chocolate: White chocolate with mint inside dark chocolate.

For some dumb reason I let these get tossed in with the rest of the groceries I bought tonight and have to wait until I get home to try them. Actually, it tuns out to be a good thing since I noticed a police car behind me a little while later — and the last thing I needed was to be driving distracted.

The package was rather interesting, a very odd shape. The chocolate (all 6 ounces of it) are inside a resealable bag. Like I’m going to need to reseal this?

The first taste test. I open the package and promptly drop the first one on the floor! Argh! It instantly becomes a cat toy. I spent the next few minutes trying to catch it from the cat as it was batted about the kitchen.

The next one, though, hits the spot. Wow. Tasty. Chocolatey! Good. Way better than regular M&M’s and we know there aren’t anything wrong with them! Very rich, very delicate, very yummy. Before you know it, you’ve eaten too many. They look rather cool, too. Ok, they look like an M&M with a marbled colored shell. But its soft, not hard like a regular M&M, meaning the candy shell is gone and it is simply colored chocolate.

My decision. As much as I hate to say it, without the coupon I’d of paid almost $4 for less than half a pound of these M&Ms. And if I’m paying $8 per pound for chocolate I think I want something decidedly better. For what they are, they are great, its just that I felt they were priced too high to be something that can’t exactly compete with the real premium chocolates of the world. Good try, but these should be priced above regular M&Ms, but not this high above.

If you haven’t checked out the M&Ms website, you should. It’s pretty cool with the M&M characters, Personalized M&Ms, and all. There is even an M&Ms Premium Contest, where you enter the UPC code from M&M’s Premium Chocolate Candies and you could win $5,000.00. If you don’t have the UPC code, they’ll generate one for you!

I’ll enjoy this package. If I see coupons again in the future I’ll buy again, but as far as a treat for myself. Nah, I’ll have to pass. Thanks, I enjoyed them, but how about you? Have you tried any? What’d you think?

A Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Report is saying that food companies are targeting children with $1.6 billion worth of food advertisements. In 2006 food companies spent $1.6 billion on food ads targeted at children, many of these ads for carbonated drinks. The report is from concerns about the growing obesity rates in children in the US.

Even though the spending seems large, the study also reported that the spending was less than previously estimated. The study was initiated by Sen. Tom Harkin.

The report studied spending targeted towards children between the ages of 2 and 17.

The FTC recomended:

• Restriting the amount of food ads in children’s television programming.
• Companies that market to children should also encourage healthy habits and exercise.
• Schools should adopt meaningful standards.

You can read the article here. Or see the FTC’s webpage on this here.

Flipping through the newspaper handout this morning I came across a coupon that has gotten my interest. I never even imagined something like this could exist. It is a $.50 off coupon for Jell-o Singles Pudding! The flavors it lists are regular and sugar free varieties of Chocolate and Vanilla pudding.

Essentially it works like this. Take a cup of milk, pour in the little packet of jell-o mix, and stir for 90 seconds. Let it sit for a few minutes, and presto! you have jell-o pudding! (Chocolate pudding of course!)

It’s a Kraft product, and looks like a really cool idea. I just need to hunt this down in the store and try it!

I was out in the local grocery store the other day and spooted Nabisco’s Oreo Cakesters on the shelf emblazoned with the word “New” across the front. Being that I’m a huge Oreo fan, and sometimes (well, too often) a sucker for the word “New”. I stood there and tried to decide if the Oreo Cakesters or the Nilla Wafer Cakesters would be what I would try.

They looked soooo very good!

But, time was pressing and I needed to go. So I vowed to find an Oreo Cakesters Coupon and return! Soon, I was in the store again, but without a coupon, and found myself compelled to try these! So I bit and brought a box home.

First, they look like larger oreo cookies that are puffed up. They are extremely soft and oh so very yummy! Since they described them as “cakesters” I thought it was more of a cake type treat that looks like an Oreo. But it tasted like the cookie! Just not crunchy!

Wow… Very good! I have to say that Nabisco did a great job on these. My drawbacks, and there aren’t but these two, is that they aren’t cheap for the quantity of cookies you get. You basically get 6 servings, 2 cookies per serving. They are sealed in these light-proof-air-tight bags to keep them fresh. And they were fresh. My other beef is with the calorie content! 250 calories from two little cookies? Wow!

So soft. So chewy. So Oreo-Goodnessy! I will be having these guys again! Sadly, though, I don’t think this makes it to the “everyday” list of treats. But, I guess that is the nature of treats, something you give yourself every now and again. So in that definition of them, then I guess they are a success — something that perhaps once every other month of so will be a very welcome “treat”! Try them, you’ll enjoy!

And if you read this blog, nfdaughter’s journal blog, you’ll see her suggestion for putting them in the freezer! Wow … sounds good! I (sadly) had run out before I read that!

Today for some reason it crossed my mind why aren’t there any popular “chocolate eating contests” out there? I mean we have Nathan’s Hot Dog contest that’s covered extremely well as are some of the other food eating contest. I heard about turkey eating contests, there is always the proverbial pie-eating contests and such… but while I’m not a fan of the idea of eating large quantities of some of those, the idea of a chocolate eating contest really interests me! I mean, why not?

Maybe it is because my boss is such a chocolate fiend! Anyway, I think it’d be a good idea. I’d try it!

So, I thought I’d look it up. And with my poor research skills all I see is that there was one schedule for Nova Scotia, Canada this March (2008) but was cancelled because of lack of interest! Supposedly it was an attempt to see who could break the world record eating Ferro Rocher chocolates in one minute. Why would no one try, it appears that the eating contest records for this chocolate candy is 5 in a minute.

It does, however, make you wonder what the effects of chocolate on the body really are. And then after a seconds pause, I would eat the next piece regardless! haha! Godiva and Lindt till we die!

To inaugurate this blog, we’ll start with a short little review of Fanta Strawberry. Saw this little item in the grocery store, and figured, “hey, why not.” I’m a fan of the orange and grape Fantas, but for some stupid reason I’ve just never tried the strawberry.

Fanta, as you may well know, is a product of Coca-Cola. Anyway, Fanta Strawberry is a “strawberry” flavored soda. I put strawberry in quotes, because while it tasted like strawberry, it was a tad too sweet for my tastes. I have no complaints other than it being too sweet. The flavor, when you could discern it properly was nearly dead on for strawberries. But, if it was a little more tart instead of sweet it would have been a drink to replace the Grape-flavored Fanta in my pantry! It is a very light, refreshing tasty drink with just the right amount of fizz and fruity flavor. Nearly spot on.

One of the pressing questions for a lot of you is whether or not there is caffiene. Does fanta strawberry soda have caffeine? Well, thankfully for those of you with concerns, it does not! Woo! A caffeine-free drink with taste! (Aside from Sprite)

For those of you wanting the official recommendation — I would suggest you give it a try. If it isn’t overly sweet for you, then it is definately a drink to consider when it is available. I believe this would make a perfect summer picnic drink!

Drink up! I will be drinking this again!

Hello, and welcome to this blog. Here is where we’ll set out the high hopes that are for this blog. In general, they are for this blog to cover all the “lip smacking treats” that exist out there and give you an excuse to try the ones you might like! We’ll try to cover all things edible, drinkable, etc. If you have anything you’d like to know about in the treat world, then please feel free to ask.

Treats are a good thing!