2016 Secret Identity Rosé

Things I love about this wine: the bottle looks cool (it's slim and long), the label art/ethos is cool, the screw top is cool, and the makers kindly told me they are all nut-free. So I felt safe and happy to drink this alone. It was pleasant! I like rosés because they're usually not SO acidic, and indeed this wasn't. It's not super duper sweet or bitter, but it's sweeter than most whites (and I think a little bitterer than most dessert wines). Basically the same warm and cold, which is pretty rare. If I had to say, it might be even better on day 2. Good winedrunk state, mild headachey hangover state -- not too shabby.

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 6/10

Haribo Gold Bears

Unlike the Valentine pack, this actually contained one of each of the classic five flavors. And I guess I was just low on food but I liked it more than I normally like Haribo, even though the texture is still stupid to me. 

The flavors are: 

 Strawberry: Weird because it's green! But tastes nice, has a light strawberry flavor and a fruity gummy vibe.

Raspberry: It's just fine, very neutral to me. Kinda evokes beer (or framboise).

Pineapple: Also fine. Light pineapple flavor.

Lemon: This has a stronger flavor than the others! Nice and lemony.

Orange: My least favorite one -- a light orange flavor but also kind of bitter, I don't love it.

Really all in all not bad, the flavors are mostly very subtle but they are still distinct/recognizable.

Overall
Cost: 6/10
Taste: 6/10

De Cecco Gemelli Pasta

Buon giorno, pasta. These are more unique shapes than I'd realised -- they're very dense, sorta thin tubes, A lot of pasta per centimeter I'd say (which is fun). 10-12 minutes is probably an underestimate of the proper cook time. A little chewy/spongy texture even with 12 mins. I like it! Would get again.

Overall
Cost: 6/10 (2$ish)
Taste: 6/10

A La Mode Pumpkin Spice Ice Cream

Just finished a 2-day job interview for my dream job that I have a very slim chance of getting, so I decided to bust into this bad boy. You can tell I've been hoarding for a while, since it isn't really pumpkin spice season. Anyway, this is a really similar vibe to the last two flavors I tried - the cranberry (aka cinnamon) apple tart and the ginger cookies (aka cinnamon) brown sugar. Here too, as is usual with pumpkin spice, there's a heavy cinnamon flavor. BUT, there's also pumpkin puree, so the color is a fun orangey brown. Also noteable -- there's no mix-ins, no cookie bits, no swirls, which normally I'd see as a con, but this flavor is much creamier, texturewise, than the previous ones, which I like better. The actual pumpkin flavor does come through a little bit, and I also kind of get a minty (or maybe just refreshing) note, which is completely random but I love mint so I kind of like it. Overall this is perfectly pleasant, and the texture makes it seem like a very posh gelato treat, which is great. Good for little bowls, if I have the self-restraint!

Overall
Cost: 3/10
Taste: 8/10

Dean's Sweets Chocolate Dipped Pretzels

Goodness knows I love chocolate covered pretzels! I like the looks of these, but the sprinkles actually detract from the pretzel experience. Otherwise I am a big fan.

Milk Choco Dipped: Really good! But the sprinkles have a weird "sprinkle artificial taste" if you linger on them. The pretzel was nice and crunchy and goes great with chocolate; you gotta love this. 8/10

Dark Choco Dipped: This was just less good for me because dark choco is less tasty, and IMO goes less well with pretzels because it's not as sweet. The sprinkles really do smell "off" -- you should not smell them! Anyway, still solid to eat and enjoy, just not as much as milk choco.

Overall
Cost: 5/10 [not currently for sale though]
Taste: 7/10

Hershey's Hot Cocoa Mix - Milk Chocolate

Thanks to Dean's Sweets mainly, I've been a real HoCho connoisseur this winter. So I'm always happy to chug a new varietal. Even though this is your cheapo 50 cent hot chocolate (apparently), I liked it quite a bit. First, it's safe, and it's by a brand I trust. My hometown hero! Also, this tastes like a slightly posher version of the hot chocolate that came from a vending machine at USC. Gosh, I miss that stuff. But the point is, it's creamy, sweet, milky, and has no grittiness or artiificial taste. It is, however, quite unhealthy. C'est la vie!

Overall
Cost: 7/10 (3$ for 6 packs)
Taste: 7/10

Idahoan Cheddar Broccoli Hearty Soup

So, Idahoan never got back to me about their contradictory allergy labelling, which isn't great. Yet I decided to support them by buying a bunch of soup. Oops. But in my defense, you only need water to make these, this supposedly doesn't have soy protein in it, and I like soup. I like soup! Sue me! :D:

This is pretty solid, anyway. It's a pot of warm, filling, potatoey mush. I admit it was weirdly salty and sugary for a soup, and it had an aftertaste of sugar cookies, which was very very weird. But, I like it. It's cheap, easy to cook, didn't make me itchy, and isn't super calorific even though the salt/sugar stats are no bueno. Not a ton of brocco (or cheese) flavor, mostly sweet + potato, which sounds kind bad, but it's really not bad. Pleasant soup. I will try adding veg to it at some point, because that seems like it might be an upgrade.

Overall
Cost: 6/10 [2.50$ at Walmart.com]
Taste: 7/10

Dean's Sweets Solid XOs Chocolates

Yum! My biggest complaint with plain chocolate has been that it's too thick to bite into, but these lovely thin letters (about 16 of 'em) don't have that problem. So you just get the tasty chocolate to chomp with impunity. Both the dark chocolate and the milk chocolate were enjoyable to me, maybe even equally so, which is pretty rare for me to say. Plus you can spell lots of romantic words like "Ox". :) 

Overall
Cost: 4/10
Taste: 7/10

2015 Portland Wine Project PDX Blanc

One annoying thing about wine, in addition to the lack of allergy labelling, is that wineries often have multiple label-names or brands that they produce under. So like, this is "Portland Wine Project" but the actual winemaker is almost certainly named something else, which is annoying and difficult, especially in non-English contexts. I'll never catch 'em all contact-wise. 

Disregarding that very general issue! This wine is fine. I enjoyed it, both warm and cold (maybe a little bit more warm though, which I know is inappropriate for whites). On day 3 it was a little bit acidic for my liking, but in general, it had a solid, bright flavor. And a screw top! We gotta like that.

Overall
Cost: 5/10 (19$)
Taste: 6/10

Deep River Snacks - Black Truffle Chips

Love Deep River for being Nut Free loud 'n proud. I haven't had any chips from them in like, a year! So I jumped at the chance to get these even though I have no truffle opinions (fungus truffle opinions, that is -- I love choco truffles, duh). Luckily or maybe unluckily, I still don't know - you can't really taste the truffle. They just taste like plain sea salt flavored chips, which isn't bad but isn't really good, it just is. Crunchy texture, good oil ratio, but nothing to write home about.

Overall
Cost: 6/10
Taste: 6/10

Fruit Bliss Apricots

Dried apricots? What am I, a hiker? These are very similar to dried grapes (AKA raisins) -- super dense, sticky, sweet, smooshy. A little different flavor profile in that they do taste like apricot, but mostly they taste like raisined apricot, if that makes sense. Apparently you ought to refrigerate these once they're opened, which is confusing and not intuitive to me. I also wish they were more overtly nut-free, being turkish, but they seem to only make dried fruit (including... tomatoes) so I guess it's fine. Not my #1 favorite snack but definitely more filling than your Crispy Fruit.

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 6/10

De Cecco Pennoni Pasta

DeCecco is a fairly new pasta brand for me -- I've mostly stuck to the Barillas and the Ronzonis that I'm used to. And I've never had any allergy issues with those pastas, but Barilla does make a lot of legume-heavy varieties and Ronzoni is a little cheap feeling, so I thought I'd check out DeCecco, since they don't seem to make any legume noodles but they also seem fancier than Ronzoni (no shade to Ronzoni, I still like you). This shape is also fun and new -- pennoni is like big, smooth penne. I like that. The cook time is 10-12 minutes, but even that wasn't enough, because my noodles were still pretty firm. I should have given them more time. That's not ideal because I got used to my 5min Ronzonis, but the taste was good otherwise, and the shape is very fun. I'll cook em more next time!

Overall
Cost: 5/10 (About 2$)
Taste: 6/10

a la mode Ginger Cookies Brown Sugar Ice Cream

Another now-retired seasonal flavor -- but sadly, the winter ones like Mint Choco Chip are retired too, and I never got a chance to buy them!!!! Maybe next year. Mint choco chip is my favorite ice cream. Anyway.

This tasted basically just like the apple tart one I had. I guess the ice cream is ginger flavored (very similar to cinnamon? or shortbread?), with crumblier parts in it that were like, gingerbread shortbread cookie dough. But the texture of the cookie bits isn't eggy (no kidding, cause this is egg-free ice cream), which is too bad. Not my favorite flavor, or texture, because the ice cream itself was also more crumbly than creamy, even when it melted. Still good though - I ate it in basically 2 servings, because I'm dumb, but it's my least favorite flavor of theirs I believe. You can tell there's really real ginger in it (I think), because the ginger bits are crunchy like a piece of cabbage, which is honestly pretty weird in ice cream. But you know it's genuine!

Overall
Cost: 3/10
Taste: 7/10

Dean's Sweets Double Dark Hot Chocolate

I got a big bag of this bad boy, which is exciting! I'm glad it's not the Aztec one, hehe. I like the style of this bag, it's very cute with its little self-closing top, although it did leak a little bit from the bottom (too much choco!). In general this made a tasty drink, even with just water - I use 1 Tbsp per serving and you get some nice choco chips in there with the powder. This yielded 15 servings! It all mixes up decently well, although the chips kinda melt and stay at the bottom to slorp up later. Not a super strong flavor in my opinion, no real vanilla notes, just thin dark choco - but I do like it.

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 7/10

Enjoy Life Soft Baked Mini Cookies - Chocolate Chip

Surprised that I haven't had (or at least reviewed) these yet! There's so many combos of enjoy life soft/crunchy mini/normal cookies. And it seems I really didn't like the crunchy version of these, but this soft baked pack wasn't too bad. It tastes basically like a slightly cardboardy, flavorless version of chewy chips ahoy, which isn't the worst thing in the world. No weird flavors, just not a ton of flavor.

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 6/10

Good Health Monster Shaped Veggie Chips

These were OK! They say "made in a nut free facility" on the back, kinda like an anti-warning, which is super nice. They were thin and crispy like chips, and the shape/colors are fun, but the taste was very very 'meh'. Like air with mild potato and milk "veggie" spice. Fine but I wish they were actually tasty (or healthy)!

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 5/10

Vegan Rob's Turmeric Puffs

I'm still a little shocked that turmeric has two "r"s in it. Also a liiittle shocked that it's so trendy in the hipster food sphere, since beyond being Very Yellow (or orange, in this case) I'm not sure what it really offers. So these were a weird flavor. They had an aftertaste of.... chicken noodle soup. The supposed pumpkin and cinnamon flavors, while intriguing in theory, were too subtle to really perceive, and the overwhelming notes were just the cheesy inner puff and the noodle soup (aka turmeric, I guess?) flavor, which was honestly a weird combo. Better to stick with the veg or cheesey flavors of these puffs, because this was too confusing for my palate. The basic inner puff is still solid though.

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 5/10

Bakery Bling Cozy Cottage Designer Gingerbread House

I always wanted to make a gingerbread house, so at the age of 31 I finally found a safe one online and did it. However, I have no artistic sensibilities so I will not shame myself with the picture of the finished house. It was, let's say, pretty similar to what age-6-me might have produced. 

Luckily I can try again since this company has multiple house-building kits, and cookie decorating kits too, and they're clearly nut free, which is so great. The actual taste of the gingerbread (and icing/sugar) was like, not that good, but I think that's probably par for the course with food that is also a structure. It was edible, and I did indeed eat the whole thing over the period of a week or so, but it was a firm, not-that-flavorful sugar bomb. Still, I'm glad I got to have the full experience! Even if I was alone...and old...and it's February. Check it off the bucket list baybee!

Overall
Cost: 5/10 (20$)
Taste: 6/10

Dean's Sweets Marshmallows

Ah, now we see how the sausage is made! The sausage being, of course, the chocolate covered shmallows. These bad boys are weird! They're brownish and not chewy at all, which is not what I expect from a marshmallow. I understand they are homemade with higher quality ingredients, but in this case I am a tragic normie who just wants a normal marshmallow. They're just too weird for me -- tastes like straight brown sugar in a somewhat poofy square. Not what I'd ID as a marshmallow if I weren't told that's what they were! Not a fun snack on their own, not chewy or substantial enough, just like gnawing on pure sugar. I should try these in hot choco later, that might be superior!


Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 5/10

Push Pop Candy

This is a weird candy, right? I mean, just look at 'em. They're made by Bazooka, who has a nice allergy chart online somewhere, and no nuts. So that's good. 

Blue Raspberry: This tasted just like a blue pop ice. Very sweet. Wrapped in plastic so it felt safe. The actual eating process is weird. It made my finger sweaty and also made me feel like a weirdo. But I guess it's also fun? Nice sweet flavor, in any case. 7/10

Overall
Cost: 6/10
Taste: 7/10

Dean's Sweets Chocolate Covered Marshmallows

OK, I know it seems like my diet is 80% chocolate, but that's just because it's the only new stuff I try anymore in this no-grocery-shopping super allergy-anxious time, y'all. Anyway, praise be to Dean's Sweets for providing me with new foods to try. Negative praise be to myself for not taking a better pic before I ate these. But anyway, they came in milk choco and dark choco. 

Milk choco: mostly this tasted like milk choco! There was a mild vanilla sugar flavor inside. The marshmallow was weirdly brown. Overall it was very tasty, but the marshmallow had an unsatisfying texture, almost melts in your mouth, but isn't chewy or substantial at all. Tasty though! 7/10

Dark choco: And this mostly just tasted like dark choco. Sadly it's way less tasty because dark choco is less tasty than milk choco (to me). It's very overpowering, and yes, the chocolate is good quality, but where's the marshmallow!? 6/10

Overall
Cost: 5/10
Taste: 6/10