Odwalla Chocolate Protein Monster

Here's a drink that has been getting me through the day. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I have three classes in a row- three hard History classes and damn if I ain't beat by the time those are finally over. Usually, I stop at the "Oasis" in my hall and grab a bagel or something, but lately I've been trying to avoid carbs and if I don't need them in a snack, no point in eating them.

So I've been getting this drink. The first time I saw it, it was while gazing hungrily at it and I got up because it looked so good, I had to get one. I did, and it was no mistake. The shake is soy milk, but I couldn't taste anything remotely resembling soy. Just good, rich chocolate.

The shake fills you up fast, so it's good for a meal replacement or just a good "to go" snack. One recommendation I do have is that the drink is thoroughly mixed pre-consumption. There's a layer of Dutch chocolate at the bottom that should not go to waste!

7/10- TASTY

Lunchables Extra Cheesy Pizza

Lunchables shame me.

These stupid little meals are the results of my wasted childhood. My mother packed me lunches in bags and wrote my name on them and included notes, and damn it, I just wanted these fucking Lunchables.

If I'd only heeded her wisdom. If only. If only.

This Lunchable demon contains the makings to create a full-scale nuclear apocalypse, or three small pizzas. It's relatively sparse, containing none of the candy or Capri Sun pouches I remember as a child. Merely the stark remains of what used to constitute...a meal. It has three pizza crusts, a packet of sauce, and two compartments for mozzarella cheese and cheddar cheese.

The crusts are essentially canvases for mass destruction, and the taste is nothing special. It's like eating a bland flatbread with sweet sauce and crappy cheese. The sauce appears to be appetizing. It has many different colored herbs in it, but the taste is sickeningly sweet like...oh yeah. Low budget pizza sauce. The cheese is cheese, but what really grosses me out is the appeal in eating these raw.

Save yourself money and heartbreak. Buy a frozen pizza. Thaw it. Eat it. Still cold. Then, cook it and eat it like pizza ought to have been eaten.
1/10- SHIT

Oscar Mayer Deli Fresh Combinations: Chicken and Ham

Here's another little lunch set. I ate this for dinner last night. Really, it's quite substantial and I'm pleased with the presentation.

The chicken was the same, and the ham was a little gamier than I would have liked it. The photo on the outside depicted flaky shavings of ham, but the pieces inside were floppy and a little tough. A lot of water, too, from the water packed. Not bad, though.

The crackers and cheese were the same. Really, the only difference in this was the addition of the ham and the omission of the turkey. I wish that the cheeses had been different, like a pepper jack or a havarti, or even a mozzarella. Anything. The swiss was nice but the more I ate it, the more I disliked the cheddar. It just wasn't as sharp as I would have enjoyed, which was a shame.

I'll be trying more of these in the future. I have a few Oscar Mayer Deli Creations, and as a sandwich snob, we'll see how those work out for their price and taste. I have a few Lunchables, too, and they might or might not compare to the Deli Fresh ones...

5/10- AVERAGE

Oscar Mayer Deli Fresh Conbinations: Chicken and Turkey

I want to point out that I tried this last night, pre-Yom Kippur, and am fasting for the day in observance. Just sayin'. And that I'm aware that this is the wrong photo, but bah, they're all stock photos any how!

This is, essentially, a glorified Lunchables for adults. But better. It contained crackers, chicken and ham, swiss cheese, cheddar cheese, and a small candy. I didn't expect the candy and it was freaking Milka. A Milka bar, the likes of which I can never get, in a damned Lunchable for adults. It was awesome.

So onto the lunch. There is something inherently fun about stacking and making your own lunch, like in a sushi roll or an assembly line. The chicken and turkey are both rather wet, and required drying off. I rarely enjoy meat that has been packed in water, so that was a bit of a turn off. However, this was quelled once I ate them.

Each sandwich was substantial, making eight total for me to eat. The chicken was good, but the turkey was either smoked or secretly ham, because it tasted and smelled like ham but definitely was not. It was awfully strange. Regardless, they pack a good amount of stuff into such a small box. I liked how the meat was sliced and natural, but at the same time I craved those little turkey frisbees in the kid's Lunchables, solely for the continuity in size and the fact that you got some of it in every bite. Which brings me onto the cheese. The swiss cheese was mild and delicious, with just a hint of a bite, and was square-shaped so as to cover the entire cracker and underlying meat piece.

The cheddar, though, was inexplicably half the size of the swiss piece, perhaps a tiny bit thicker. It provided much less coverage and although sharper, just had less flavor and creaminess to it than the cheddar. Granted, neither of these are "cheese" and are "cheese products," but are still good. I just wish the cheddar had been...better, if you'll excuse the rhyme.

Overall, though, this was a really substantial and tasty lunch. I enjoyed the creation, and the little Milka bar at the end was phenomenal. I would have liked to have a spread, and perhaps another flavor of crackers in the mix, but for a $3 lunch pack, it was not bad by any means.
7/10- LOVELY

Crispy Husky Bar

Here's a review of a bar that reminds me of my ex-boyfriend. It's flaky, unreliable, and tastes vaguely waxy.

This bar also happens to be from the college at which he matriculates, UConn, but is from a much more awesome source, my good friend Swagger. What's this? Why, it's a Husky Bar, one of the many flavors made by Munson's, a local chocolate company, to support our state university, UConn, and their famous team mascot, the Huskies.

This is a really hefty bar, at 2 and 1/4 ounces, and is pretty tasty. The squares are really thick and it's hard to put away an entire bar in one sitting. The chocolate is all right. It's not Chocolove, it's not Coco-luxe. It's meh. It's a rich, waxy chocolate with a strange mouthfeel and interesting inner coating. It leaves a grainy, healthy aftertaste, like my ex-boyfriend but is, in fact, not very healthy at all.

I will say that I did love the crispy bits in the bar. They added a nice texture to the bar and were consistently present and not overwhelming or stabbalicious like Captain Crunch.

Oh, PS, it's my 19th birthday. Huzzuh!

5/10- GOOD

Japanese Mayonnaise Potato Pringles

I just got a box of items from J-List and am too excited to share them with you! The first item is a Pringles treat, that's advertised as a mayonnaise potato flavor. The box is nothing special, just your standard Pringles tube.

Well, I've never had mayonnaise on my potatoes before. In fact, I can't stand it. But this was so strange it just begged to be tried. When you open the can, you get an extremely strong scent of paprika. The chips aren't red, they just smell like paprika to the highest degree.

The first thing you notice when eating these Pringles is that they're about eight hundred times as crispy as our Pringles. They taste like Pringles deep fried, or Pringles that have taken a walk in the Sahara and gotten sunburnt. The taste of these is nice and mild, but with a slight spicy burn in the back of your throat after you rest from eating.

I don't taste much mayonnaise, but I do taste a tang, and I definitely taste potatoes from the flavor of the chip! I'm not too impressed with these. I'd have liked to try them when they weren't all crunched up, but for a first impression, not bad at all. They definitely beat out American Pringles, which I detest, in that there's so much more flavor on these than the US ones.

6/10- ALL RIGHT.

Whoppers

Every time I see Whoppers, I feel like I've been craving them for years and that it's the perfect thing to sate my hunger and chocolate craving. Not Whopper, the burger, mind you, but Whoppers, as in, the malted milk balls.

Essentially, these are the poor man's Aero bars. They're fluffy, crunchy, and sometimes have a propensity for cutting your mouth open. Mmmm! Delicious! The malted flavor is not very strong at all. I tend to like a strong flavor, as I'm used to delicious homemade chocolate malted shakes with a heaping tablespoon of malt powder, but what do I know? The chocolate is pretty crappy. It's mockolate, with artificial flavors. It's waxy and doesn't melt well in your mouth and essentially provides a mere buffer for the crunchy malt.

They're not that great. Save yourself the next time you crave these and go get something better. I liked it when Hershey's had these in their Twosome collection, with more chocolate, real chocolate, and tinier malt bites, like little B.Bs from the guns. But alas, like all good product, that was to be discontinued. Another day, Hershey...another day.

3/10- LAME

Fun with Google Analytics!

Never fear, the review will be up tonight. Just thought I'd indulge you a little bit with some funnier lines.

-"nibbler 2" eat each other
Oh my god, this is not a website for cock-fighting or vorephilia.

-burgerkingorangecheese
Ew.

-does ramen noodles have adhesive on them?
That's an awful question. I'm trying to figure out what this means. Adhesive? They're more useful as an adhesive than a food product. Uh, maybe?

-gorditas porn
Flame-roasted...gaaaahh!

-how to dissect coconat brittle
Your science teacher is definitely on acid.

-how to make pure spring water
Go to sink. Turn on tap. Stick head in oven.

-iceland medium cheddar
Eeeeeeeew. Cheese water? Really?

-imwendy99@
For all of my readers, this isn't Twitter. It's Foodette Fucking Reviews.

-taco bell slimy chicken
Eeeeeeeew, why do you guys type this stuff?

-wang aloe dream juice
The perfect counterpart to the semen cookbook.

-what is the motto for entenmann's
DO NOT WANT.

Japanese Spicy Chicken Pringles

Another J-List item. These are billed as tasting like spicy fried chicken and carry a photo of drumsticks on the front to hit the point home.

The powder tastes like chicken breading, actually. I licked some off the top of the canister package. It tastes like salt and pepper and MSG. Your standard ramen flavor. Maybe a hint of chicken bouillion, too. The unfortunate case with Pringles is that they're so concentrated with their potato crisp and flavor that they often ignore the flavor their chips are supposed to be, and eventually, all you can taste is the potato flavor of the chips unless you pay attention.

I think real chips would benefit from this flavor, even though there's no spice or chicken flavor to speak of. It had hints of garlic, paprika, but overall, simply your generic spices found on snack foods mimicking real foods, and no spiciness or heat at all. Like eating roast chicken skin.

For someone who likes salt, these border on unbearably salty, almost getting sour at the end. I'm a salt fan, but if you don't like the taste sensation of pouring Morton's into your mouth or snorting flavor packets from ramen noodles, please avoid these.

3/10- SUCKS

Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Chipotle Hazelnuts

I'm rather addicted to these. Amherst has spoiled me because they've placed a Trader Joe's not ten minutes from campus by car, as opposed to Branford where the closest one is roughly 30 minutes away. So now I can go to TJ's all I want and buy their wonderfully overpriced food and gorge on samples.

I'm definitely nuts about these. Ha ha. They're chocolate-covered hazelnuts, a portable version of Nutella, but with a touch of chipotle heat and cocoa powder on the outside. I think the best thing about these is that if you're a girly wimp like me, it's masochistic portion control. If you eat too many of these, your tastebuds will go bye-bye and then you'll be fucked. With these, they're sweet, but spicy enough to hurt just a little. It's definitely a good hurt.

The hazelnut is really creamy and crunchy inside, and the dark chocolate is of an extremely high quality. They're an excellent candy. If I had any complaints, it would be that the cocoa powder is messy, and I live in a dorm, so like to eat things in bed. These are not a bedtime food. It leaves a residue. Not a bad one, necessarily, but enough to make me stop typing and wipe my hands on my roommate's towels. (Just kidding.)

8/10- SPICY GOOD

Bueno y Sano- Amherst, MA

Beware. I've been doing many positive reviews lately, so if you've been inclined to send mushrooms or something else vaguely disgusting, send them now.

I had the best meal of my life yesterday. I might murder a human so that when I go on death row, I can request two of these.

These are in reference to the barbecue chicken quesadillas at Bueno y Sano, an authentic Mexican restaurant in the center of Amherst. These are no ordinary quesadillas. This, my friends, is the sheer embodiment of the Mexican rebuttal to...a pizza.

But first, let me prolong the anticipation by telling you about the soft taco I had for a small appetizer, the chickpea and red curry soft taco. It was very tasty, and the peas were firm, not at all mushy, but very clearly cooked. Unfortunately, I didn't taste as much curry as I would have liked, and tasted more of a "generic Mexican red sauce" than anything else. The taco came with lettuce, tomato, onion, all of which I scraped off, cilantro, and the finest, smoothest cheese I've ever tasted. It was so tiny, I thought it was well-packed rice. It was amazing and cold and wonderful.

6/10- GREAT

And then, the masterpiece, the barbecue chicken quesadilla. The sauce is homemade. The chicken is tender. The tortilla is crispy.

There is really only one way to make this. This has to be the messiest, most amazing food you've ever eaten. You are morally obligated to wear the sauce stains like blood on your white-collared shirt, and then the world will know that you are a proud, proud foodie.

So you take this quesadilla. You admire it. You smear it with sour cream, and then with hot sauce, and you eat it. Sauce runs down your fingers. It gets on your face. It stains the hardwood beer pong table you're sitting at. And nothing really makes your happier. It's carnal. It's delicious.

10/10- OBSCENE

Japanese Wild Cheese Cheetos

Hey, again, trying more Japanese snacks with Roomba and MM. Today we sampled some Cheetos advertising themselves as "wild cheese". Dubious as I was, I must admit that these live up to their title of being wild.

The main difference between American Cheetos and these that you first see is the shape. These not only contain the baton, bicep, and occasionally Iowa-shaped curls, but also contain a special paw-shaped Cheeto. These are more of a Frito consistency, quite dense, and very crunchy. However, the texture of these combined with the cheese tastes a bit like eating uncooked macaroni and cheese, and often juxtaposes strangely with the softer texture of the batons.

The flavor is what really changed our rating from a lower score. First, the pieces started out cheesy, averagely cheesy, like macaroni and cheese, but got spicier with a hint of jalapeno flavoring. The flavor was identical, down to the last salty bite, of those cheap Maruchan macaroni and cheese ramen cups. These were quite tasty and we couldn't stop eating them.

7/10- DECENT

Saralyn's Shortbread

The best thing about shortbread is that they're crunchy and powdery at the same time, and maintain such an incredible buttery flavor. So when Saralyn's Shortbread offered to send me a few samples, how could I resist?

The best shortbread I have ever consumed was in a cafe in Edinburgh Castle. It was a four by four square, roughly an inch, inch and a half thick, dusted with granulated sugar and warm, fresh out of the oven. It was a chilly, cold day, and that shortbread was slightly chewy, perfectly crunchy, and buttery good.

So did this pass the test?

I received three flavors to try, none of which I'd ever seen. I'd only had buttery shortbread before, so these were a good treat to see if the shortbread flavor could hold up to other add-ins. The flavors she sent me were mint chocolate chip, peanut butter crunch, and maple walnut.

The peanut butter crunch and maple walnut were in boxes with cookies roughly the size of large buttons. They might have been the cutest thing I've ever seen. The maple walnut was easily the best of all three and maintained the butteriness of the shortbread authenticity, yet incorporated its own flavor, a nice, toasted walnut taste and a maple-kissed hint, into each and every cookie.

8/10- GREAT

The peanut butter crunch was also very tasty, but I found it a little too sweet for my liking. The pieces of peanut butter cup were far and few between, and the shortbread flavor was completely dominated by the peanut butter. The texture was great, as this shortbread is, and was quite crumbly and good.

6/10- NICE

The mint chocolate chip shortbread cookies were the last of the lot to try. These were delicious! They maintained a fantastic, cool, minty taste, and the chocolate chips kept the cookie moist and tasty. I'm not a big fan of things that are mint-flavored, but Roomba loved these and ate two of them! I nibbled on them. Again, texture is a huge deal with these, and they're consistent and perfectly petite.

7/10- TASTY

Thanks, Saralyn!
www.saralynsshortbread.com

General Mills Cereal Eating Contest

In college, we have themed weeks for the dining halls. It was General Mills week this week. It was pretty relaxed, I didn't see a whole lot going on, but I did participate in a cereal eating contest tonight.

It drummed up a lot of publicity. Six kids, myself included, participated, and the winner had to eat four bowls of cereal, Lucky Charms, as fast as they could. I placed my own personal bets on the kid next to me. He looked like he could eat a lot of cereal.

I gave a girl my cell phone camera and she took a really great photo of my arm, pouring milk, and little else.

I tried to mix the cereal with the milk so when the time came to eat it, it would be mushy and easier to eat. I think everyone had that mentality. So we started, and there was a whole crowd of people around us, going nuts. Some even brought signs.

I ended up finishing three bowls, not even starting on the fourth, when the winner was called. It was the kid next to me, and he was neck and neck with another boy. It was a lot of fun. We all got prize packs, including shirts and snacks and a miniature basket ball hoop!

I'm not sure if I ever want to eat another bowl of cereal in my life. That stuff fills up quickly. I'm so stuffed! However, this has turned me onto the fun of competitive eating.

More news. I'm participating in something extra special for General Mills week at UMass tomorrow night, something that I'm a little afraid of, but photos will come. I'm not revealing where or what I'll be doing, but it's going to be epic.

Until then, foodies.

SNACKDOWN: Japanese Oreos vs. American Oreos

My apologies to Saralyn- I bumped up your post to tomorrow, but rest assured, it's going to be awesome!

Today is a well-deserved Snackdown with two kinds of Oreos, one from the vending machine downstairs and one from Japan. The Japanese Oreos come in a tube, with two tubes per bag, apparently the equivalent of the Oreo box here, and the American Oreos come in the standard "six-pack".

The Japanese, lucky for them, never got the memo about downsizing the Oreo size, so as a result, theirs are much larger than ours are.

The American Oreos have that standard, sweet-sweet taste to them, with a creamy filling and that crunchy texture, a nice mixture of sweet and...er, sweet. Almost too sweet. The cookie is pretty dense and crunchy and maintains a nice flavor.

The Japanese Oreos are completely different. The cookie is almost a light, fluffy crunch, that can only be likened to panko, it seems. If I were to liken this to anything, it would be to the Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafers that are used for making damned good icebox cake.

Even the frosting is different on these. As you can see on the American cookies, the frosting is gooier. It has a marshmallow, vanilla-y taste to it, and is very soft and oily, making it easy to peel off if one should wish to.

The Japanese frosting tastes more like a plain frosting and is very dense, to the point of almost flaking off. It's the same overall taste, but the texture makes it more lush, like halvah.

Overall, I really did prefer the Japanese Oreos. They were much different than the American ones and reminded me of the dessert my mother likes to make. I especially enjoyed the crunchiness.

JAPANESE- 7/10
AMERICAN- 5/10

WINNER: JAPANESE OREOS

J.B. Dough Bread Adventure #1

Oy. Today I made my first loaf of homemade bread.

It was from a package, (and beware, this is a series of 12) of bread dough from J.B. Dough company. They were extremely friendly and sent me all this bread, and today, I had some free time and decided to try my hand at it.

Ha ha. Get it? Hand? There I am, kneading the bread. I'm kneading it in an ice tray stolen from the community kitchen. In front of our window. In my dorm room.

It's sitting on the shelf now, rising.

The view from our dorm. Some kids brew moonshine or grow weed, The Foodette bakes bread.

When I baked this, these were my potholders. Please, someone send me potholders.

Otherwise...this will happen. I still can't quite fathom that I got a third-degree burn on my finger and yet took a photo of it before I washed it off. It's a little pathetic and makes me worry just a little.

There's the bread, in the oven. On the tin foil that I bummed off the dining hall in place of a pan. If someone were to send me cooking supplies, I would be most indebted.

Beauty shots of the delicious, delicious bread.

It looked so pretty.

All my friends ate the bread and we had a bread and Nutella eating party. It was the shit.

They loved it! We ate most of the loaf.

Bread and Nutella...Mmmmmm!

Your Foodette. Eating the Nutella off the knife. I AM NOT PRETTY.

The bread was really great. It had excellent cell wall definition, was puffy and tasty, and had a buttery flavor without any toppings on it. It came out crispy and had a good crust. Overall, an awesome experience.

8/10- SUPER!

Sky Bar

This bar is one of those "old-timey" candies, like Necco wafers, candy buttons, Squirrel Nut Zippers, etc. Actually, anything made by Necco is brittle and antiquated. So this is one of those classics that everyone sees but never has any desire to try, passing it up for a Snickers or other 21st century candy bar.

This rickety old fucker gives good reason for people to never wish to approach it. It has four components, each much bigger than I expected. Each component has a different flavor in it- chocolate fudge, marshmallow, caramel, and peanut butter.

Upon opening the cantankerous old man of a candy bar, I have an encounter with the worst white bloom I've ever seen. Is this a white chocolate candy bar or- OH GOD. Seriously. It's got a shiny, waxy sheen that can only mean one thing- mockolate. But it's not. It's just authentic, awful milk chocolate, which almost disappoints me more.

So I bit into each component. The chocolate was brittle and flaked off. The first flavor was caramel, but I thought it was peanut butter because of the graininess and absolute aversion to smooth texture that the bite had. But no, it was just a sugary lump, so it must have been caramel.

The next bite held marshmallow, or if marshmallow had hung out in an old folk's home for sixty or so years and had slowly decomposed into a sugary white goo that got all over my frigging French notes. It put me into a coma, like my geriatric candy bar, and I almost didn't get to try the next piece.

That piece was the peanut butter. Oh yeah. I didn't get a photo, but there was a small layer of oil from the peanut butter that made this inedible. I did not eat most of the piece as it was smelly, bitter, and oozing liquid. Again...like some old people. Shame on you, Necco.

The last piece was fudge...and I'm not even going to make a stool joke here. It was soft. It was mushy. It tasted like caranuba wax and broken dreams of dime stores.

2/10- AWFUL

Bittersweet Men's Pocky

Swagger came by for the weekend and had a nice visit and left us food for weeaboos- dark chocolate bittersweet men's Pocky.

We're not entirely sure why this Pocky is just for men. Probably because it has a darker chocolate on it that might not appeal to those with sweet teeth. Maybe because it has trace amounts of hormones and bull semen for that extra muscular taste. The cracker has a salty, pretzel taste that mingles with the dark chocolate like an interracial party at a dance club. Either way, Pocky is damned good.

I'd been craving a snack I could eat in bed with. There's not a lot of space in our dorm, so we have to eat and work in the same spaces. These are clean to eat, no crumbs or little messy bits, and you can literally overdose on these without worrying about your figure. There are at least twenty to a package, and two packages in a box. Eight grams of fat, two hundred calories. Damned delicious. More filling than a candy bar, and the ratio of biscuit to chocolate makes you think you're eating more chocolate.

It's edible mind control!

From the exquisitely cryptic Engrish, "Stick to fun!" on the bag, to the masculine package, this is a phenomenal snack. So, men who are keeping their figures slim, women who want to be men, and CIA members, eat this. It "brings a whole new flavor to fun."

8/10- MMMM!

Pom Wonderful 100% Pomegranate Juice

We were sent these adorable bottles of juice in a special blogger package from Molly, at Pom PR, so thanks, Molly!

First, let me extol the graces of how useful POM Juice is for kids in college. We've had this, the Roomba and I, for about a week and it's made our mini fridge brighter and stocked full, and is also the perfect size for bringing to class on those mornings when we have to get up really early! The antioxidants, which are molecules that prevent the oxidation of other molecules, (duh) lower the risk of heart disease and help with other health-related benefits, as well as promoting the effects of exercise when one should get up off of one's bunked dorm bed and turn off the Food Network.

These little juices are great. For my tastes, they're a little too rich and tangy, but that's the price I'm willing to pay for good, pomegranate juice, not the nasty, ghetto juice with strange dirty sediment at the bottom. This shit is pure.

And like any good crack cocaine, the juices are small but intense enough to refresh without having to drink a whole lot of it. Looking forward to trying other varieties.

7/10- MMM!

Spoleto Restaurant, Northampton, MA

Last night I went on a date to Spoleto, an Italian restaurant in Northampton, MA. It's the town next to mine, roughly ten minutes away by car. It's a funky place to go and eat, with cool history and neat people. We went to Spoleto and had their $20 special. It consists of almost any appetizer on their menu, any entree, and any dessert.

My partner had calamari for an appetizer, while I had the carrozza, which the waitress told me I was the only one to pronounce the correct way. That was fresh mozzarella sandwiched between two pieces of bread, sauteed in a pan, with a dipping sauce. I asked for the sauce on the side, but was ignored. What I received was decent. It was filling, but the mozzarella was gooey and I expected some crunchiness to counteract that. Unfortunately, the heavy tomato sauce, most of which I scraped off, was somewhat soggy and made the rest of the dish soggy. I ate half. I would have liked to experience more of the flavor, but unfortunately, the tomato sauce also took over the majority of the flavor palate, and the freshness of the mozz was thus undermined.

3/10- SOGGY

For an entree, I had the ravoli alla vodka. It was obvious with this dish that the ravioli was homemade, and the sauce as well. I ought to take the time to mention that our waitress, although I did not catch her name, was extremely friendly, courteous, and talkative throughout our dining experience.

Back to the pasta. There were seven or eight large ravioli, each roughly the size of a doll's plate, or an oversized watch of Flava Flav's. They were covered in a nice tomato vodka sauce. Unfortunately, a lot of the creaminess was lost in the tomato flavor, but was still hearty and tasty. The pasta was done perfectly- al dente and soft, with the perfect amount of gooey cheese filling inside. It was a very tasty dish for a raw and rainy night. Quite filling, too. I finished half of it, but did not manage to take a photo.

7/10- LOVELY

For the last part of our dinner, we finished off with a selection from their dessert menu. Unfortunately, the dessert that I was most eager to try, the Late Summer Berry Cheesecake Bites, were sold out, and I was most disappointed. I was assured by the waitress that the strawberry cheesecake was just as good, which I ordered, and she made it special by swirling lovely designs on the plate in strawberry syrup.

The cake came on a plate accompanied by whipped cream, homemade that morning. I was surprised to see that the cake was not a cheesecake with strawberry topping, but rather a cheesecake with strawberries incorporated into the mix. It was delicious, tangy, and flavorful. The crust was crumbly and soft, and the cake was very filling. I ate half and put it in. The syrup and cream made it an enjoyable texture adventure.

8/10- DELIGHTFUL

Spoleto Restaurant
50 Main Street
Northampton, MA, 01002
www.spoletorestaurants.com

Coco-Luxe BONANZA.

I got a package from Amy at Coco-Luxe with a selection of their famous chocolate bars and chocolate truffles. My roomba and I are going to try them for a delicious review!

Expect a Halloween review soon! Nyahahahahaha!
The first bar we tried was the Roark, a dark chocolate bar with cocoa nibs. It was partitioned into little squares, which Roomba adored. The Roomba is a dark chocolate connoisseur, and instantly informed me that it is a 72% dark chocolate. It was sweet enough, but not too sweet, had the crispest bite I've ever felt in a chocolate, and had an added wonderful crunch from the cocoa nibs.

The bar wasn't bitter at all, and tasted of coffee reminiscent and had a nice, milky and smooth taste with a fantastic, clean aftertaste.

8/10- AMAZING
The next bar was the Spumoni bar, which is a white chocolate bar with dried cherries, pistachios, and cocoa nibs. The bar was yellow than most whites I've seen, which implies a higher butter content, so that made me happy. It was delicious, and the pieces of fruit and nut crunched nicely. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to taste a lot of them, as the pieces were drastically overpowered by the white chocolate.

The chocolate had a clean taste, but I wish there were more essences or pieces of the other components in the chocolate. It had all the makings of a Spumoni dessert, but very muted tastes of it.

6/10- DECENT
Another crisp, clean bite to this one. This is the Good Fortune bar, a dark bar with pieces of crystallized ginger and fortune cookie bites. Instantly, even before you tasted the chocolate, you got a delicious, but not overwhelming, taste of ginger. The chocolate was clean and had a light taste to it, rich, but not overpowering. All the flavors just went well together.

The fortune cookie pieces mingled and crunched well, with a light vanilla-y taste to them. The bar just went extremely well with everything. It was crisp and so tasty. I might eat more later.

8/10- DELIGHTFUL

The next selection of things to try were the caramels. Three were in the selection, butterscotch, coated in white chocolate with a dash of Sonoma salt, praline with milk chocolate with Alaea salt, and shoo fly pie with dark chocolate with some Salish smoked salt.

The salt on the praline was very subtle, but made for a more exciting caramel experience. The praline caramel was rich, rich, rich, and had a toffee, coffee, tasty taste. The texture was phenomenal. It was chewy, but not so chewy that it stuck to my teeth. The chocolate melted around the caramel and mixed in. Overall, delightful.

7/10- MMMM!

The salt on the butterscotch was sweeter, a little more acidic in taste, though. I was extremely surprised when I bit into the butterscotch, because the texture was unlike any caramel I'd ever had. It was soft, like a ganache, and the density reminded me of a brown sugar truffle.

Without the salt, this would be almost grossly saccharine, but there was enough salt to make the sweetness a little better to take, and balanced out the flavors so none were too intense.

8/10- INCREDIBLE

The salt on the shoo-fly pie was easily the most complex. It had a dark, gritty taste to it, but still the salty properties. It reminded me of camping by the sea, with woodsy and smoky tastes, but a salty finish. This truffle was obscene. The molasses flavor was to die for, the texture was perfect, a mix of the white and the milk's caramel components, and the dark chocolate melted beautifully. This truffle has airs of cinnamon, anise, nutmeg...tons of spices, making an amazing chocolate.

10/10- SUBLIME

These were great truffles and bars! Look forward to the Halloween review!

Oreo Creme Pie

Technically, this ought to be "Mooshy cookie creme pie," because the Oreos are soft and mooshy and the crust is soft and mooshy.

Technically, this ought to be "Mooshy cookie vaguely resembling cheesecake pie," because the cream is more of a dense, cream-cheese like base with a lemony aftertaste, than an Oreo Creme Pie.

And technically, this ought to be "Mooshy cookie vaguely resembling cheesecake pie with fake whipped cream," because the whipped cream was a little sweeter and a little less creamy than whipped cream.

But nobody cares. Why? Because this pie is delicious.

It's just good. It's creamy, rich, thick, and bursting with Oreo flavor. The strange lemony flavor turned me off a bit, but it was good, overall. I'd have preferred a crunchier cookie crust, or at least a more crumbly one, but beggars can't be choosers, and this pie lasts much longer in the fridge than a normal pie might have.

8/10- LOVELY

Chocolove Selection

Got some new bars from Chocolove today, trying out some of their new flavors. I had an altercation with a snippy RA today, they put the wrong name on the package and he kept badgering me for ID. But here's the review. At least he didn't find out about the meth lab in my dorm.

That's a joke, UMass. Search my room.

So the first bar I tried, actually, am trying right now, is a coffee crunch bar, with 55% dark chocolate. Although my photo can't accurately convey it, there are little tiny nubs all over the bottom of the chocolate bar. Those would be the coffee beans.

The chocolate is of a smoky, woodsy variety. There are notes of cinnamon and accents of nutty flavors. The chocolate is phenomenal. The beans were crunchy and went very well with the chocolate. I think 55% is the perfect ratio of cocoa to balance out the bitter notes of the coffee beans, and that when eaten, actually intensifies and accentuates the more subtle flavors of the bean.

I'm not a coffee drinker, but I liked this bar a lot. The complexities of the chocolate along with the texture of the crunch of the beans makes for an enjoyable bar. Definitely a sophisticated treat, but never fear, coffee haters! It combines to create an amalgam of taste for the absolute- or aspiring- gourmand.

8/10- DELICIOUS

I was really excited to try this next bar, as I've been on a sea salt in candy kick and had yet to try a chocolate with sea salt.

Right away, I got the tang from the sea salt in the first bite. The chocolate maintained its woodsy qualities but also gained, with the sea salt, gained a near neutrality that had its positive and negative values, as far as taste went.

The almonds, if there, were barely noticeable. Only once in six squares did I not only feel the crunch, but taste the almond's nuttiness. If there were less chunks of almonds, and more whole nuts, I'd have been more inclined to score this higher.

Combined with the sea salt, this was a good chocolate. I just don't think there was enough of the two flavors in the bar. If this were boosted up with more of the flavors, and perhaps a higher concentration of chocolate in the bar to counteract that, this might be a keeper. For now, though, it's going on the shelves.

5/10- INDIFFERENT

Japanese Pork and Yuzo-Kushou Gourmet Cheetos

Guest Review! From Mangia Massachusetts

These were an interesting experience--they look like Cheetos, they crunch like Cheetos, but they're really not at all like Cheetos. The first bag was supposedly a wasabi pepper flavor, but wasabi definitely wasn't the first thing to come to mind. Black pepper with some sugar was my first guess at gusto. After a few more bites, I could taste a really subtle hint of wasabi, but it was by far not the predominant flavor.

The bag was fairly well filled, more so than your standard bag of vending machine chips. The overall experience was okay; satisfactory as it were. I don't think I would go out of my way to buy more of these, but were they laying around, I'd probably munch on a few.
5/10-SATISFACTORY