Oat Haus Cookie Dough Granola

Hell yeah. That cookie looks good. I don't think I've had a non-packaged cookie since the last time I had roommates!! Living with other nut free humans was really peak cookie time. I love a cookie. Maybe I should get on the apps in pursuit of cookie cohabitation. Anyway, a good omen for the granola.

Granola was not as good as cookie picture. But, it tastes like I am 1000% about to die. Extremely, like, burnt sweet flavor, which is how PB tastes in my mind. I have never eaten it so this might be wrong, but it is the smell of danger and I can sniff it out miles away. I know other PB allergy-havers feel the same spidey sense. Anyway, I'm NOT about to die, at least not from this, because it is explicitly nut free (which is why I bought it). So, settle down, brain. Once we get past that, there is a strong coconut flavor (which makes sense because there's coconut oil in). Tastes more like a nice Chewy bar than a cookie, but I don't mind a nice Chewy bar. (How do you know what a Chewy bar tastes like, Kati? When I was a teen, Giant (Landover) made a nut free knockoff, and it was glorious.)) One user error is that the chocolate was completely melted so things were a little bit of a goopy mess when I opened this. Still tastes fine but I put the bag in the fridge for future summer granola grazing. 

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 7/10  

Town House FlipSides Original Pretzel Crackers

This is a very salty pretzel. But on the flipside, it's a cracker. Hehe. I love a gimmick. It's like those 2-color Oreos but for savory snackers. They're definitely more cracker than pretzel (which is the tastier option). Something disappointing about these, though, is that the picture on the box made me think they'd be big, like a Pepperidge Farm cracker, but they are actually very small, probably half the size of the box pic. They're also pretty thin, so I really doubt they'd hold up to dipping. But they taste good all on their own: very salty pretzel side, very buttery cracker side. A serving is 5, which is like... hm... but I guess that's for the dippers. Would be good for school snackin'. 

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 7/10 

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