I am deeply suspicious of snacks that make health claims. Healthy eating doesn’t mean giving up pleasure in food. That won’t make you live forever – it’ll just feel that way. As long as you get all your fruits and vegetables and so on at meals, there is nothing wrong with a snack that’s just junk once in a while.

What’s more, I’ve lived through enough bogus food trends – oat bran, low fat snacks that ended up having twice as much sugar, people eating nothing but bacon and meat and thinking it is a health diet – to have learned that any health claim is going to be used as a way to make money by companies whose only interest in your health is whether you have the strength left to take your wallet out of your pocket.

So when I was asked if I wanted some samples of these to review, I was all, “Bring them on! You can’t fool all of the people all of the time! I wasn’t born yesterday! Etc.!”
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This was tough. What with all the excitement over the election - I never thought I’d live to see people celebrating an election in the streets like a sports win - I was feeling unusually patriotic.

So, comparing these Vermont-made cookies to the Canadian Dare maple cookies, I wanted them to be better. I expected them to be better. They were prettier, for one thing. And larger. And had a nice rustic effect with different amounts of cream in each one, not so factory-made looking. And, Vermont. What could be a more maple-y, all-American place?
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While visiting my Mom the other day, we discovered that we had the house to ourselves, so we brought out the Breyers ice cream. My Mom is a big fan of Breyers, so she always has some various flavor packed away in her freezer. This time it was Breyers Triple Chocolate All Natural Ice Cream.

I’m all for chocolate, but sometimes things can be a little too chocolaty, so I was hesitant to try it, figuring all three flavors combined would give my taste buds spasms. The three flavors in this ice cream carton were: white chocolate, dark chocolate and milk chocolate. I decided to try all of them separately before combining them.

I tried the white chocolate first: I noticed the taste of chocolate right away, but my Mom didn’t think so and said it tasted like plain vanilla. She is so wrong.
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Milkshakes have always been an important part of the complete snacker’s repertoire, and with the success of this year’s There Will Be Blood and the popularity of the quirky and brilliantly creepy “milkshake” scene (is there any doubt that Daniel Day-Lewis is a genius?), there seems to be a slight surge in popularity for the frosty and deeply satisfying drink.

You can also find t-shirts at the “Ultimate T-Shirt Search Engine” Teenormous featuring the milkshake-drinking catchphrase.

With cooler weather upon us, or at least gaining on us, I took one last look at this summertime beverage and compared a few of the choices on the market. Here are the astounding results.
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Last week, as I was cleaning my apartment (a rare enough occurrence), I came across a box which seemed out of place. Intrigued, I opened it up to discover a small treasure of snacks from the folks over at Divvies. Words I won’t repeat here suddenly erupted forth as I realized that this box had been sitting around for a few weeks and the review was sorely overdue.

As I looked through the contents I realized someone else would probably be a better fit to do the review, as I don’t really like ginger in any form. So, I figured I would just pack the box back up and send it on its way to one of the other writers. That’s when a little voice told me to look at the expiration date on the cookies. D’oh! They’d never make it before their date expired. Panicked, I searched my brain for someone close by who could review them. This is when I realized that a) I really need to get more friends and b) my employer loves baked goods! I trotted over with the box and settled in to record her opinion.
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