Perdue Chicken Thighs

Sorry vegetarians, the lacto-ovo life was killing me. The only reason I'm living the lacto-ovo life in the first place (apart from cost and fatigue, I guess) is that my grocery store has been out of non-store-brand chicken breasts for several months now. I was starting to think Perdue went out of business. But, they didn't, because they recently started stocking "Chicken Thighs". I love chicken thighs. As you can see, they have skin on, but I wasn't sure if they had bones in (they do) and there was absolutely no indication of this on the package. I should have used pragmatics to conclude that if it didn't say boneless, it must be boned (bone-in?), but grocery labelling is honestly worse at pragmatics than me, so IDK. A bone-in chicken thigh is a little bit like duck. It's fatty and delicious. (I just released that 2 of my favorite (live) birds are also 2 of my favorite meats, which is kind of weird, but that's #farmlife for you I guess). I cold roasted these with shallot and carrot and now I'm living the good life for the rest of the week. When I was a kid, we never had any bone-in or skin-on meat because of diet culture (or, charitably, health culture), and so I only had it on vacation, which is probably why it is so decadent to me now. I don't even eat the skin! But I could!! It's the little things.

Overall
Cost: 5/10 [10.50$, but that's 4-8 meals, so, worth it]
Taste: 7/10 

Dunkin' Double Café Mocha Iced Espresso

Finally, I've completed the trifecta. And this one has the strongest "can" taste of all. What is that, anyway? Is it actually the metal of the can leeching in, or is it some preservative, or is it the type of coffee, or? It's definitely stronger in cancoffee than in bottlecoffee. It tastes so bad. Ugh. Other than the can taste, it's good, like chocolate milk but coffee. A good sweetness (very sweet) that goes well with the choco-pudding vibe. But the can! It's extreme! Boooo, canned coffee. Boo. 

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 5/10 

Oat Haus Cinnamon Graham Granola Butter

I actually had this in a single serve packet also (which indicated this is apparently the same as "original flavor"), but no such pictures are available and I already toothpaste-crumpled mine beyond belief. One of my biggest "learnings" (I really hate that term... I need to add it to a list somewhere) is that the packet form factor sucks shit. I just have wet wet oil here while the oat bit remains inaccessible to me, even with all manner of knife and scissor. Otherwise the flavor is not bad. It does taste like a cinnamon graham cookie. I put it on my beloved ginger snaps and it matched well. (I know people put nut butter on Oreos because of Survivor, so I figured it wasn't a crazy thing to do). A nice amount of (all)spice, cardamom, ginger, cinnamon. But I genuinely feel like I got 2 tsp of content out of the packet so it's all a bit uncertain. 

Overall
Cost: 4/10 [1.70$]
Taste: 6/10? 

DiGiorno Supreme Speciale Wood Fired Style Crust Pizza

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with DiGiorno: they taste bad, but I'm not allergic to them (possibly they are the ONLY fullsize frozen pizza not to contain legumes at this point) and my grocery often has them on sale for 5$. So, here we are, off to sample another crust varietal. Wood-fired. How were the other ones fired? We may never know. This is about 1200 calos, aka 4 servings (or perhaps 2 servings if you're feeling peckish). It actually looked pretty, and fit perfectly on my large plates. Was hard to cut, because the texture of the crust was, hmm. Firm. Not fluffy or puffy like many frozen pizzas. But actually, I liked it. The crust tasted like hard flour, like a pizza at a bad non-pizza restaurant when you ill-advisedly order the pizza. And that's much better than usual DiGiorno. The roni was the same as ever (not my scene), the red peppers were most prominent of the peppers, which is funner than green, and the snausage was your classic Pizza Hut style snausage. (Full disclosure, it did make me a lil anxious-itchy but I think that's just fatty salty meat + tomato sauce and not a secret unlisted allergen). The sauce seemed less weirdly sweet than usual. I was pleasantly surprised by the whole endeavor. Good job, Digiorno. Maybe someday we can progress to a like/love relationship. 

Overall
Cost: 6/10 [5$]
Taste: 7/10 

Oat Haus Granola Butter - Vanilla

I admit I wasn't super impressed by the other flavors of Granola Butter, but I am willing to try a 1-serving packet of another flavor, sure. Even if it's the Pikachu of flavors. This is 170calos and has the texture of ketchup. That is, it's way less solid than the jar butters. I kneaded for so long. The most vigorous massage I ever gave in my life was wasted on this granola butter packet. I did all my toothpaste tube maneuvers and ended up with like, one spoonful of wet, shiny, tahini-looking glorp. It tasted like the other flavors, but less good because there was no chocolate. So like, a kinda vanilla, kinda coconut, kinda oat, sugary oily blorp. That sounds good actually, but it wasn't. It was just there. Trying to think what would be good to pair with this and I don't know. Chocolate? Cheesecake? Froyo? But I don't have any of these things. So. Glad it was just a single serving in there! Now we know!

Overall
Cost: 5/10 [1.50]
Taste: 5/10 

Pop Tarts - Frosted Vanilla Cupcake

Look at that lil Pikachop. My entire pokemon knowledge comes from cultural osmosis, linguistics papers, and Sonic video game crossovers, so that is to say, I'm not really the target audience for this branding. But I had a Target gift card to use up (I think the Target boycott is basically indefinite at this point) and thus I bought all the Target exclusive snacks I could find with it, which turned out to be mostly Pokemon branded for some reason. Much to my brand-curious disappointment, this is actually just a regular pop tart flavor (though I hadn't tried it before), only they changed the name from "confetti cupcake" to "vanilla cupcake" and put some pokemen on the box. (I think there was this Pikachop, a Charmando, an Ivysaur, a Squirtle implement, and one other little monster). Is Pikachu vanilla-coded? I guess he (they? she?) kinda is. 

ANYWAY, this is actually a pretty good pop tart flavor, which I don't say often. It tastes like very sweet store brand cake. Is that a good tasting food? Well, depends if you're comparing to other pop tarts (yes) or other foods (no). The sprinkles are extremely unevenly distributed, but they are fun too. The main con (apart from the dietary content) is that there is a still a weird kinda metallic/chemical aftertaste. Not crazy strong, and it might be the sprinkles, but it prevents me from fully thinking "yes, I like this." Still it stands out among PopTart because the inside and outside blend together very well, almost like the Toaster Donut I tried yesterday. Kati, what is your diet right now?? (For those dieticians in the audience, there are a lot more new flavors of packaged junk than there are new brands of veg and egg to review, OK?? Doesn't mean I'm not eating veg and egg! Mind your business!)

Overall
Cost: 6/10
Taste: 7/10? 

Pillsbury Toaster Donut - Boston Cream

What a beautiful world we live in. I hope there's no glass in these. Supposedly there are two other flavors of "toaster donut", sprinkle and frosted, but those ones don't have any filling and the reviews for them are really bad. So that's probably why this was the only version at my store. 

I was really bracing myself for some toaster horrors, but weirdly, these are pretty good. They aren't especially donutty, but the frosting is just regular chocolate frosting and the pastry is better than the toaster strudel pastry - I think it's different, but maybe it's just that it's not enmeshing nasty fruit goo. Anyway, it's less flaky/oily and more "funnel cake". To be fair, it is enmeshing some mildly gross weirdly-fruity bright yellow custard, but I don't really even like custard (see: Boston Cream Donut, dunkin version, and Boston Cream Donut Dunkin Version yogurt) so maybe custard fans would be all about it. It's very yellow though. Anyway, there's just a little of it compared to the amount of Strudel fruit goo, and therefore less gross, even though the whole shebang is definitely donut-level sweet. If I could eat donuts every day, I probably would, so I like it. Unfortunately, although I technically could eat this every day, it's not at that level. But I'd try the other flavors! 

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 7/10