Snack Review: New Zealand Natural Ice Cream

I’m kind of a strange choice when it comes to reviewing ice cream. You see, after jaw surgery in my teens, I was left with two small metal plates in my upper jaw. You know how painful metal can be to touch when it’s cold outside? That’s kind of how my jaw starts to feel after too much ice cream. So, I eat it sparingly, and when I do eat it, I want it to be good.

Now we come to the question of what exactly entails good ice cream. If you were to set a dish of Häagen-Dazs ice cream next to a dish of generic grocery store brand ice cream, I will inevitably choose the generic brand. I can’t explain it, but I like cheap stuff. New Zealand Natural Ice Cream is NOT cheap. With that in mind, how would this premium ice cream fare in my freezer?

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Beverage Review: BOING! Fruit Juice

I love bunny rabbits and kangaroos and the sound they make when they hop around: BOING! BOING! (Okay, I know they don’t make that sound, but I watched a ton of cartoons when I was a kid, so play along.) I also like frogs and toads, and crickets and grasshoppers to a lesser degree. But I wouldn’t eat any of them. Not even if you paid me to write snack reviews about rabbit jerky, fried kangaroo bites, or honey baked insects.

I’m also a sucker for a well-designed, eye-popping, brightly colored logo. This appeals to my graphic artist sensibilities as well as my inner hummingbird. At the heart of all this nonsense is the juice. Ah, sweet nectar.

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Snack Review: Smooze! Fruit Ice

I was a sucker for the romance of these when I saw them at my nemesis, Whole Foods. Made of little else besides coconut milk and fruit juice, they are “freshly packed at our farm located on the Equator in East Sumatra, Indonesia,” says the box. And so politically correct: “Our focus on environmental and ethical best practices ensures self sufficiency and sustainability.”

All that, and a delicious snack too? Is it possible? They say that they have “a constant supply of fresh, ripe fruits packed in optimal conditions within hours of picking.” It can’t get better than that, right? And only fifty calories each!

Anyway, they had me at “coconut milk.” It’s one of my weaknesses. There was no way I could avoid trying these.

I couldn’t decide what flavor, though. Hello, snack-makers! Please note: a variety pack is ALWAYS a good idea. Unfortunately, one was not offered in this case, so I had to make a choice. I am a huge fan of mango, as I often mention. But because, as a result, I am very opinionated about mango, I thought maybe that would be an unfair trial. Maybe passion fruit would be a better idea.

Good try. I bought the passion fruit flavor. But then I had to go back to the store and get mango also. The things I do for you, dear readers. I hope you appreciate it.

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Snack Review: Breyers Pomegranate Blends All Fruit Ice Pops

Pomegranate is supposed to be one of those new miracle foods that will make you live forever. Trumpeting antioxidants on a box of ice pops seems silly to me. I mean, if you want a fruit-flavored healthy snack, let’s face it, they invented that a long time ago: they call it fruit.

But I’m always on the lookout for an ice pop made with real fruit juice for a more sensible reason: because they usually taste better. So I figured I ought to give these a go. If nothing else, they’d be a lot easier to eat than sucking all those little pomegranate seeds to get the juice off them. You have to feel sorry for the first human who was hungry enough to try that, you know?

The first thing you notice about these is that they have a much softer texture than something like a Popsicle – definitely not that hard snappy kind of ice pop. If you eat them slowly enough they soften into something almost like Italian ice.

They come in three flavors. Fortunately for the fussy among us, they are helpfully labeled on the outside of each pop so you don’t have to rip a corner open to see which flavor it is.

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Snack Review: Sahale Snacks Nut Blends

Growing up, travel and exploration were some of my greatest pleasures. As an adult, it frustrates me that the trappings of a halfway-conventional life (work, bills, family, etc.) along with exorbitant gas prices, make getaways of any distance darned near impossible. In lieu of letting the vagabond within go mad, I sate my wanderlust as a jet-setting armchair traveler, continent-hopping via the Travel Channel and the local Borders. When possible, I also like to send my taste-buds around the globe.

Ready to send my palate on a new journey, I was thrilled to find Sahale Snacks Nut Blends at my local Ralph’s. Colorful photos on the front of each $3.99, 5-ounce bag resembled upscale trail mix. As a fan of trail mixes - upscale or not - I was intrigued. I was further convinced by equally colorful descriptions of the snacks on the packages’ backsides, which promised to transport snackers to all corners of the culinary world. Only four out of six blends were in stock, but I reasoned that was a varied-enough itinerary. You’re probably all curious about how my trip went, so here goes!

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