All Entries in the "Food Review" Category
POM Wonderful — 100% Pomegranate Juice
We do get samples every now and then. Molly sent us an email asking if she could send us some coupons to sample. We said yes and true enough the package came in the mail just a couple of days later. That was fast.
Chowtimes had often been contacted asking if we would like samples from food manufacturers. We replied to Molly saying that we’re in Canada because we thought that she may have mistaken us for a US blog site. Very often, the samples comes from the US and the products are not available outside of the US.
POM Wonderful, as it turns out, is available widely in Canada. It is just that we had never paid much attention to it.
We went to the Real Canadian Superstore to get some. Never knowing where to look for it, we spent quite a bit of time looking — thinking that it is somewhere in the beverage section. We actually had thought it was some form of a concentrate because of the word “concentrate” on the bottle.
As it turns out, it was in the section where food like salads are … i.e. at the produce section. POM Wonderful came in a nice and unique bottle and is supposed to be drank cold. They have a few flavours all identified by the colors on the cap. The bottle is so nice, I know it will end up in the drawer where Suanne keeps these kind of cure bottles — she can’t bring herself to throw cute things away.
The above is Mango. To me it tastes like More on following page. Click here to continue reading
Dr. Oetker Jam Express
It’s strawberry season. Ben brought home a 4lb pack one day after work as he found a good deal at the groceries store, $4.98 for 4 lbs. Ben usually does not do groceries shopping. It just happened that he was looking for some stationery in the Real Canadian Superstore and saw the good deal.
With so much strawberries, I quickly check my pantry and found a pack of Dr. Oetker Jam Express Gelling Powder which I bought a couple of months ago. I wanted to make some blueberries jam but do not get down to do it. So, this is just great for making strawberry jam.
I like Dr. Oetker Jam Express Gelling Powder for it’s simplicity to use and no additional sugar is required. You can use it to make jam from various fruit like raspberry, blueberry, blackberry and other fruits or blends. If you use defrosted frozen fruit, include the juice which will enhance the flavour and recipe only requires 1 3/4 cup of chopped defrosted frozen fruit.
Nothing beats some freshly home-made strawberry jam on a toast.
Ingredients
- 3 cups fresh chopped strawberries, about 400g/1 lb
- 1 package of 200g Dr. Oetker Jam Express
- Two 250ml washed, rinsed and dried jam jars with sealing lids
Between McDonalds and Starbucks Coffee
Just in case you don’t already know, the coffee war down south had just spilled over the border to Canada.
A few months ago, McDonalds setting its sights on Starbucks fired the opening salvo by putting up billboards that proclaimed “four bucks is dumb”. Dozens of these billboards were erected in the Washington state and from what I read, there is even one erected right in front of the Starbucks HQ in Seattle. It was direct confrontation of the specialty coffee market in the US.
Last week, the coffee war came to Canada when McDonalds announced that you could get a free coffee during breakfast time in all outlets for a duration of two weeks. Starbucks reacted with a feeble attempt by giving free coffee for just a few hours.
Suanne and I do not normally buy coffee. We make coffee at home and there is also a Starbucks coffee dispenser at work. Two cups in the morning is just about the max we consume everyday.
Last Sunday, we decided to go check out what the fuss was. We woke up early, very early and drove to the Starbucks at Ironwood and bought a cup of Starbucks regular coffee.
We then brought it across the parking lot to the McDonalds outlets to get the free coffee. OK, Suanne was afraid of being caught taking a Starbucks coffee into McDonalds, getting a free cuppa and then take pictures. It was quite obvious what we were doing to the people around us. LOL!
Bear with me OK? I am no coffee expert but this is just my way of comparing McDonalds coffee with Starbucks. First off, we are comparing apple-to-apple. Both cups are small coffee (McDonalds Canada does not have espresso yet, I think).
Size wise, Starbucks wins with its taller cup, slightly wider cup.
The Starbucks cup costs $1.65 while McDonalds is 22% cheaper at $1.29. McDonalds wins.
The cup in McDonalds I heard was a new design which does not require a sleeve … Starbucks does. While the sleeve was made of recycled materials, still it is another piece of garbage that needed to be handled by the system. McDonalds wins here.
Starbucks lid is of simpler design. I like the McDonalds one which has a pullback tab which helps keep the coffee hot a tad longer. McDonalds wins.
You probably read about how big a problem these coffee cups are to the environment. They had largely managed to figure out making the cups environment friendly but the biggest problem is with the pastic lids. They still have no solution to making a viable cheap alternative to the plastic lids.
Oh, there are now proposals to start taxing plastic bottle (I know I am digressing here) in Vancouver. I think it’s a great idea but I know the Vancouver City Hall is up against powerful industry lobby groups.
And now to the coffee. Starbucks serve the coffee with just the right temperature. I can just drink it the moment I get it. For McDonalds’, it was scalding hot when we got it that we had to carefully sip it in the beginning. Starbucks wins.
Starbucks will hand you a cup and lets you add in your own sugar and cream — and you get to chose what creamer you want. In McDonalds, they ask you if you want sugar and cream and adds it for you. You, of course , could add in more if you want but what if you wanted less. OK, Starbucks wins.
Taste wise … heck, I don’t know! Suanne says they taste the same … no difference. I felt Starbucks tastes like 2.4% better because I tasted a hint of bitterness in McDonalds’s cup. Starbucks wins.
Smell wise Starbucks has a stronger coffee smell and so I gotta give it to Starbucks. Starbucks wins.
Give me a sec while I tally up the score …
MaxFrut — Gourmet Fruitcicles
“Yes Virgina. Not only are there Gourmet Jerkies, there is such a thing as Gourmet Popsicle”
Anna of MaxFrut invited us to visit their premises to check out their cool new product … fruitcicles, not popsicles. We went right after the lunch we had at Kash Cool. It was just perfect … this will be dessert after the heavy lunch.
MaxFrut is located just around the corner from Kash Cool. They are located in an industrial area on 127 Garden Ave. This is where the MaxFrut Flavour Lab is … the birth place of the many uniquely cool flavours.
We were greeted by the lovely Anna who were so helpful with our many questions. Suanne and I love learning about the food we eat and was lapping up every single word she said.
As much as we were curious, we were more excited when Anna brought this large tray of samples. Oooo … nice!
Hey … these are not your day to day popsicles. These are what Anna calls whole fruit frozen fruitcicles. She had made a new batch of interesting flavour of cucumber lime. What a combination but really, it was quite nice and fresh.
They had all kinds of Classic flavours made from real fruits. Since this is a laboratory of sorts, they even have Premium flavours which is not found elsewhere but here in the flavour lab in North Vancouver.
We noticed they had a $5 bill tagged on the top corner of this poster. Suanne and I guessed that it must be the first $5 they sold here. You think?
It was fun learning about flavours. Out of curiosity, Anna brought out some chili seasonings and use us as guinea pigs. She wanted to see how we react to this odd combination.
Mango fruitcicle is a very Asian flavour since it is a common tropical fruit found abundantly in South and South East Asia. So, Anna figured perhaps some chilli seasonings may go OK with the Mango fruitcicle.
The taste was … errrr … different. It was not bad especially. Who would have thought of putting chilli on popsicles? MaxFruit would, that’s who!
Pineapple Jerky from Jerky.com
Guess what came through the mail last week. A quick scan of the envelope showed that it’s a package from Jerky.com. I was rather surprised this package actually came … and that it passed Canadian Customs.
I received an email from Jerky.com asking if we would like to try one of their latest product. Doug was pretty convincing that what he had is going to be awesome, in his words. Sure thing … awesome is good … so I asked him to send some over all the way from Texas.
The awesome new product he was referring to was … tada … Pineapple Jerky. Yes, PINEAPPLE Jerky. We could not wait to try them out. We had never come across fruity jerkies before … beef jerky yes … fruit jerky no.
We double check to make sure it’s not some pineapple flavored jerky … no siree. It is the real thing. 100% natural … so the packaging said. And made in Maui too. Of course now … pineapples and Hawaii are synonymous.
What I had was sample packages which came in singles. If you order from them, it comes in packs of 5-8 slices in a bag.
Nanzaro commented that it looked like a flower and nothing resembling a pineapple. It is a healthy one-of-a-kind snack. Sticky, sweet and tangy, these hand-sliced pieces of pineapple are dehydrated and drizzled with honey. It has a certain exquisite taste … very unique and makes us wished they had shipped more!
You can order the Pineapple Jerky here. Shipping is free in the US but am not sure if they will also ship free to Canada.
“Yes Virginia … there is such a thing as Gourmet Jerky”!
Qoola on Denman, Vancouver
A week ago, Suanne and I received an invitation to checkout a new frozen yogurt place called Qoola. Since we were going to be in downtown anyway for the Taste BC event on the same night, we decided to pop over. I know it is kind of weird … we were going for yogurt, waffle and crepes immediately after wine and cheese, sushi, burger … all on the same night.
So, Suanne, Angie and I took a short drive to the western end of Denman to where Qoola is. Qoola is actually located at the old location of Cupcakes (1116 Denman).
We were met up front by Warrick who is the man behind the entire idea of Qoola. Warrick came across to us as a bright, energetic young man with great passion in what he does.
Qoola had been opened for just one month so everything is spanking clean. We love the bright greenish interior. Qoola is green … more greener than what we expected and we soon realized how seriously green they are.
We had a crash course, to say the least … much of which went swosh over my head. Too much data and too technical for me after all the wine from Taste BC.
Not really a person who knows what is what, we left the choice to Warrick and his partners. The only thing we asked is that they surprise us. First came their Green Tea Yogurt with blueberry and marionberry sauce. It was good and we like it.
I don’t care much for frozen yogurt. The only time I had frozen yogurt of note is Red Mango which we had in Bellevue,WA. I was told that many frozen yogurt places uses powdered yogurt which contains only about 1 million bacteria. However, Qoola uses only fresh yogurt despite its limited shelf life of a couple of weeks only. Fresh yogurt has 400 times more bacteria than powdered yogurt.
The next surprise is the Original yogurt with apples, cinnamon flakes and caramel sauce. We love this more than the earlier one. I like especially the fresh looking and crunchy apple chunks. More on following page. Click here to continue reading
Taste BC 2009
You know, one of the things we enjoy a lot with food blogging is when we get invited to events. Suanne and I was invited as “media” to cover the Taste BC event which held on Thursday last week. Ooooo … “media”, fancy huh? LOL!
Angie (Sea Salt with Food) who is a wine enthusiast joined us. We like that because we are such babes when it came to wine and we wanted to learn from the event. I thought that we would only spend like 30-45 minutes but ended staying for almost 3 hours. We had a great time at the event.
Taste BC is more of a wine than fine food event. The event is presented by the Liberty Merchant Company in the effort to bring together the best of BC wines. All proceeds from the event went to the Oak Tree Clinic of the BC Children’s Hospital. I am afraid we did not take many photos of the wine although I did try quite a lot that night.
Our favourite was simply the Ice Lady ice wine from the Forbidden Fruit Winery. Surprisingly, almost all the food blogs that covered the event also picked this as a favourite. I want to say that no one pushed this to us to blog but for some reason it just stands out. It is made of Pink Lady Apple and is very sweet and fruity. It does not reek of alcohol at all. Suanne who does not drink loves this.
I also like the Victoria Gin. They first gave me a shot of Victoria Gin which was awful, like drinking jet fuel. Then they added Tonic Water which made it like a million times better. Nice.
We also had sake and learned a lot of flexibility of this brew … that how this is about the only liquor that can be served both hot or cold and its ability to be paired with any type of cuisines.
The Garibaldi Honey Pale Ale (from the Howe Sound Brewing Company) was another one I like … it was smooth and light with a hint of honey.
In all, there are over 60 wine and drink participants with an average of 5 types of wine showcased. It was impossible to try every one of them for sure … for us at least. On to food …
The Wild Sockeye Salmon on Artisan Bread was presented by a “baby” restaurant in Gastown. It is interestingly called “2 Chefs and a Table” which had just opened for 7 months.
We like the sushi from Miku Restaurant a lot. As a matter of fact, we went back for seconds … and thirds … and fourths. More on following page. Click here to continue reading
