I usually post up Cheap Eats reviews on Tuesdays. But you know that saying, “Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t?” (Please, don’t make me sing the farking jingle.) Well, yesterday I just really, really, REALLY didn’t feel like a nut. So I figured I’d better hold off on reviewing these new Nature Valley Roasted Nut Crunch bars. Because these bars are so unbelivably nut-filled (nutsy?) that I wouldn’t do them justice if I wasn’t in a nutty type of mood.

I got two boxes of these nut energy bars - Almond Crunch and Peanut Crunch. They’re almost identical, except that the first has whole almonds in it (interestingly, the Peanut one contains almond flour in it). There are six bars per box and each bar is about 1.2 ounces and measures about 3.5 inches long. This seems a bit short actually, but maybe it’s just the ever-shrinking size of prepared foods like this today. I really used to think it was me just growing up so the sizes of candy bars getting smaller and smaller. No, it IS them getting smaller. I’m nut crazy. Sorry, I mean I’m not crazy.

Well, perhaps it’s also smaller because unlike other nut-based energy bars there are a LOT of nuts in it - so the price consequently goes up. I have to say that I was really surprised at the quantity of nuts - if you look at the ingredients (for the Almond ones) they contain: Almonds, Peanuts, Sunflower Seeds, Sugar, Corn Syrup, and Salt. That’s all, which is pretty amazing considering a lot of the chewier bars’ ingredient lists threaten to take over the entire side of the box.

Oh, did I mention that this is NOT a chewy type of bar? In fact, it’s one of the crunchiest I’ve ever had. A downside is that it’s actually very, very messy. I learned early on not to take the entire bar out of the package and just push it up slightly to take a careful bite. This is not something you want to eat while driving. Because it’s basically nuts held together with corn syrup, there’s no way to avoid having them fall in your lap. (Ah.. but if I was a funnier reviewer I would have a sweet time with making a joke about nuts in your lap). If you take too big of a bite it just shatters all over the place.

That said, the taste is pretty great - roasted nuts is what you get. There are no “fake” nuts here made out of compressed powdered nuts. I like the trend toward less ingredients that they’ve made with these bars.

The roasted nut flavor is excellent - I was expecting nuts that were over or under roasted, but I didn’t detect any. The balance of salty and sweet is pretty good. It’s a bit heavy for me, but I suspect that it’s just right for almost everyone else. It’s a bit like eating caramel corn or cracker jack if you substituted the popcorn with nuts. Actually, it’s even more like peanut or almond brittle minus most of the brittle. Basically, if you don’t like nuts (or are allergic in any way to them) you want to avoid this bar at all costs. If you like nuts, this is going to make you pretty satisfied.

At about 57 cents a piece retail, it’s about the same price as a candy bar though probably better for you (well, it does say 22% of Total Fat - 14g so I guess it’s not something to eat if you’re trying to lose weight? Don’t ask me, I’m not a dietitian or nutritionist). I would probably buy these again, especially if they were on sale.

However, while you’re eating this you’re probably going to have this thought: Couldn’t I just buy some trail mix and get basically the same ingredients without the fancy packaging for cheaper? Sure, it’s individually packed and convenient to just grab and go - but the mess it makes while consuming it sort of negates the convenience. Also, I’m sure you could cut out some of the sugar and salt from this by just eating unadorned trail mix. I’ve also wondered if you could just pour some trail mix into a cupcake pan and drizzle that with some sort of melted sugar (or corn syrup) mixture in order to make the exact same thing.

I dunno, maybe I’m being too hard on them. It’s a decent snack, especially when you compare it to a lot of the other energy bars out there that contain a lot of junk. I like the transparency in the ingredients and they’re certainly tasty, but I wonder if at some point a bag of mixed nuts will provide exactly the same result.

Price: Free (MSRP: $3.39 for 6 1.2 oz bars)
Found At: Sent in for review
Cheap Eats Score: 7/10

Whee… some extra Cheap Eats coverage before you head off into the weekend. This is a Pineapple Moon Cake from this past Tuesday’s Moon Cake Festival (or Lantern Festival, or Mid-Autumnal Festival) which occurs near the Autumn Equinox.

The mooncakes, which have a thin outer pastry-type crust or wrapping, also come with a variety of different ingredients including lotus seed, duck egg, mung bean, red bean, and dates. They are often pretty sweet (I haven’t really tried the savory versions yet), so I usually cut it up into quarters (or eighths!) and just eat one or two pieces.

One thing - these cakes are NOT Cheap Eats. They can be quite expensive, depending on the quality. I got this one from my mother-in-law - we usually don’t buy the boxes of cakes that they sell.

Hello Carbonated Yogurt.

You read that right: carbonated yogurt tubes appeared on my doorstep the other day. Boxed, of course. Wow. I guess adding carbonation to candy, gum and other kid foods isn’t anything new (Pop-Rocks were pretty neat when they were first released when I was a kid).

Still, I never really thought they would seriously try out carbonation in yogurt. Yoplait seems to think that kids will dig it. Interestingly, I was told that the other demographic this is being marketed to is “undergraduate males on tight food budgets.” Why am I not surprised?

First, I have to admit that I’m a covert virgin. Excuse me, I mean a go-gurt virgin. I’ve never found the need to eat yogurt out of a tube - I’m not orbiting earth after all. Still, I have to admit that I was intrigued with the idea of it being carbonated. The product is called Go-Gurt Fizzix and is made by Yoplait, and comes in boxes of eight 2 1/4 ounce individual tubes. They’re currently selling six flavors - boxes have two flavors each. Mine was Wild Cherry Zing and Strawberry Lemonade Jolt. They also have Blue Raspberry Rage / Strawberry Watermelon Rush and Triple Berry Fusion / Fruit Punch Charge. I sort of wished I got the blue raspberry flavor - a nice Reptilian Tongue is such a blast to stick out at friends.

The tubes are skinny plastic with a riptop so that you can easily suck out the innards. I haven’t had food in a tube like this in awhile, if you don’t count popsicles. Regarding popsicle tubes - I have some really good memories of eating Otter Pops when I was a kid. And as for the most interesting tubed food I’ve had: there’s this Cheese Kamaboko (fishcake) in a tube that I had 7 years ago. Enough said.

Strawberry Lemonade Jolt was the first one I tried out. I figured that the yogurt itself would pretty much taste like normal Yoplait, but I seriously didn’t know what to expect as far as the carbonation went. I was a little bit disappointed at how mild the “jolt” was. I mean, I wasn’t expecting it to be like soda but I thought it would tingle a lot more. The fizz in the yogurt is a bit like the low level fizz you get from the carbonation in a drink like Orangina. To be fair, it’s called “fizzy” yogurt which to me seems to imply a weaker amount of carbonation.

The carbonation does seem to stay around for quite awhile, however. It was still there in pretty much the same strength after I got through taking the pics. You’re supposed to eat this right out of the tube, but I wanted to show the yogurt itself so I scooped it out. Turns out the strawberry lemonade flavor is pretty good. Nothing to write home about, though. Average yogurt, a bit on the sweet side.

The Wild Cherry Zing will probably be a flavor you want to avoid if you don’t like that artificial cherry taste. It’s very strong in this Fizzix yogurt, but I actually am OK with artificial cherry flavoring so it didn’t bother me.

For some reason, the carbonation seemed to “feel” stronger in the Cherry flavor. I ended up eating several of each and noticed that each time the Cherry Zing seemd more zingy. One thing about the Go-Gurt is that they are quite small (although perfect for lunchtime) so I was easily able to eat 2 or 3 of them without trouble.

Ok, so I wasn’t all that jazzed up about this product beyond its novelty, and even a little disappointed with the carbonation. However, I suspect that the miniscule carbonation will provide that “extra something” which might convince an otherwise yogurt-adverse kid to eat it. The manufacturer takes great pains to point out that Fizzix has the “same great nutrition as Yoplait Go-Gurt.” So I guess if I was getting it for kids, and they were both the same price (need to check on that) then I’d choose the Fizzix over normal Go-Gurt. The price isn’t horrible for a kids novelty item, but normal yogurt would be much cheaper to get.

I guess that would be the end of this review, except that I decided to try and freeze the Fizzix just to see what would happen. The tubes swelled up and expanded, but didn’t break (at least the 3 that I put in the freezer did not explode). I was pleasantly surprised with the frozen yogurt treat that emerged. The carbonation seems to become even more muted, but as a snack it tasted much better this way.

I guess you could get a tub of yogurt and freeze it yourself (or just buy frozen yogurt), but the fact that these were already packaged in a tube made it very convenient. Because it’s yogurt and not completely liquid, it’s a bit more difficult to “push-up”. The frozen yogurt tends to stick to the plastic. Still, I gave the frozen version a bit higher score.

Price: Free (MSRP: $2.50 for 8 2.25 oz)
Found At: Sent in for review
Cheap Eats Score: 4/10 (5/10 frozen)

I probably could’ve given this post a more tabloid-ish title like “Dumpster Diving 101″ (Note to self: see if this book exists and if not, start writing it). But Cheap Eats isn’t about controversey, is it? Nevertheless, this was a sort of interesting little tidbit that I’d like to share that occurred over the Memorial Day holiday.

First off - I’m going to be taking a little “vacation” so I’ll be resuming Cheap Eats coverage in about 2-3 weeks. Just a warning for the droves of fan boys and girls who flock to the site every day hoping for an extra update. Haha.

So, you might think I’d been sent this jumbo variety 50-pack of chips from Frito Lay or something. Or that I’d scored it from the folks for free after they mistakenly bought two of them at CostCo (and let me tell you, that happens often).

Nope, I got this package of chips out of the TRASH CAN.

Here’s what happened - I play roller hockey at a slightly secluded park that has very good amenities, including a snack bar. This weekend when we finished with the pickup game we had commenced starting a little mini-BBQ complete with carne asada, sausages and potato salad to celebrate Memorial Day. Because the park is rather difficult to find and unknown to most outsiders, we were nearly the only ones there near the snack bar. The bar wasn’t even open, but there were people working inside on other things. We saw them come out of the snack bar, walk over to the trash cans where we were sitting and dump an enormous plastic bag full of these chips right into the trash can.

Someone asked what they were doing, and they said they couldn’t sell the chips any longer because they had expired, but we were free to take them out of the trash. I guess they couldn’t legally give them to us, maybe because of the possibility of lawsuit from eating bad chips. However, once they were in the trash, they weren’t liable. They later just put the remaining packages with the chips still sealed in plastic right on top of the trash can so we wouldn’t have to pick them out of the can.

I think they dumped at least four of these boxes in the trash cans, perhaps more. Someone actually pulled the entire plastic garbage bag out of the trash and we started going through the chips. (The bag was a brand new garbage bag, by the way). Needless to say, I felt sorta weird digging around in the trash - not that I look down on homeless people and others who do that on a regular basis. It’s just that I haven’t really done that for food - I’d dived in the dumpster many a time at my old work place where they’d throw away perfectly good office supplies, software and computer manuals. I literally climbed inside and just sorted through the stuff. It’s just amazing what big corporations will throw away.

All of the chips were fresh and tasted perfectly ordinary. They’re about one and a half months beyond the date. I ended up carting off the one 50-pack in the picture because no one else wanted it. I guess everyone’s watching their weight nowadays, though it seemed like a waste to leave them behind.

I’ve often thought about posting about things like this that fall in a sort of “gray” area on Cheap Eats, but have mostly stuck to reviews and recipes. Surprisingly, there have been many people who have written in who I think are really under tough times and REALLY need to eat cheaply. And I don’t mean just starving college students eating ramen either, although I fell into that category long ago. I might try to make a few more of these type of posts in the future. We’ll see… I’m not 100% sure these issues are the type of thing that I want to post on a regular basis.

Price: Free
Found At: Dumpster in Park
Cheap Eats Score: 9/10

I fell into a junk food mood again a little while ago. I’d actually had these Lays Cheddar and Sour Cream Potato Chips since near the new year, but didn’t have the heart to open them. Well, I think I actually bought two bags of these and ate one right away. So I didn’t have the heart to open TWO of them at once.

This is actually an enormous bag of chips; I could almost climb into it and use it in a potato sack race. Or I could inflate the empty bag and use it as an air pillow while camping. Or I could put some handles on it and use it as a shopping bag at the mall. Not that I’ve been to the mall in 10 years.

Anyhow you get the picture - it’s an oversized bag of chips. In fact you get 20% more chips according to the screaming words on the bag. Which is a good thing for Cheap Eats, I guess because you’re getting more for less. Still, it took a good amount of time to eat the entire bag - I don’t know if I need this much chips unless there’s a party. Not that I’ve been to a party in 10 years.

Potato Chip makers have gotten hit pretty hard with all the negative publicity over how fattening and bad their chips are for you. So it’s no surprise that they’ve tried to reform their image - 0 grams of trans fat, 100% sunflower oil. I guess it’s better than nothing (right, healthy eats peeps?)

They claim that the taste is still the same. I don’t know about that because I don’t have potato chips too often any more. But I rather liked the taste and texture of these chips. They just seemed chunkier and substantial without being overly oily. I think the Lays I used to get were more “feathery” light and lacy in texture, but more oily. My personal preference is thicker potato chips over thinner ones so it suits me fine.

Continue reading “Lays Cheddar Potato Chips” …

As luck would have it, this product for review that came through the mail (thanks, Charlie) ties in nicely with my new-found determination to eat slightly better. I say slightly better, because the review after this is going to be a fast food one… so old timey Cheap Eaters who are tired of the new healthy fad should stick around for that one.

The first thing you see on the box of these Fiber One Chewy Bars from General Mills is “35% of the Daily Value of Fiber”. Now, it’s pretty easy to get that amount or even more of fiber from various sources, but it ain’t always as pleasant. I have to say that this was a pretty tasty source as far as fiber goes.

By the way, you probably don’t want to munch up on several of these bars at once if you’re not used to having that much fiber injected into your system. Uh, you could be making a one night stand date with the toilet.

So I was shipped the Oats and Chocolate flavor of these bars. They also have an Oats and Peanut Butter. There’s 5 bars in a box. Personally, I already get enough fiber but I decided to give it a go anyhow.

Before proceeding, I took a gander at the ingredients. Now, as far as I know most manufacturers list their ingredients in the order of the amount that is present in the product. I don’t know if they’re legally required by law to do that, but I’ve never really seen a deviation. So, for some reason the first ingredient in the list is not chocolate, not oats, not rice, and not barley flakes. It’s Chicory Root Extract! I’m thinking this must be a mistake… I don’t see how there could be more of that than chocolate or oats (which are the next two ingredients by the way). If somebody knows more about that, please let me know… actually, I wonder if that’s what makes the bar so chewy.

Continue reading “Fiber One Chewy Bars” …

I had been planning on posting this during the week to coincide with the upcoming Halloween candy-fest. Things have a way of popping up to spoil all my well laid Cheap Eats plans. Like my car zonking out - long story; we’ll stick to reviewing instead…

Anyhow, I received some samples of Slammers Ultimate Milk by Bravo! Foods Int’l Corp in the mail from Matt the other day. What they’ve done here is packaged up fairly standard chocolate and strawberry flavored milk with some very popular candy brands. Supposedly, these milk drinks are supposed to be shelf stable for 6 months, more healthy than other milk drinks and fairly decent in price.

But the big sell is definitely going to be the candy names. I got Milky Way, 3 Musketeers and Starburst Slammer drinks. Those are three names that most people know about. The actual Slammers logo on the package is quite small, which is probably a smart thing for them… they want to push the big brands.

And I think it might work for a lot of people. The biggest question for me was: do these drinks actually TASTE anything like the candies in question?

I have to admit that my expectations were way too high. After all, it’s a DRINK. Mr. Unreasonable Cheap Eats editor was planning on having a Violet Beauregarde (from Charlie and The Chocolate Factory) gum chewing experience. You know, the one where she chews a piece of gum an experiences a full turkey dinner (? can’t remember if that’s correct).

I was fully expecting to take a swig of Slammers and suddenly have the sensation of actually eating a Milk Way, 3 Musketeers or Starburst. Yeah, I know. Delusional.

I started out with the Milky Way Slammers. These bottles are the larger ones, by the way, at 14 ounces. They also carry a smaller 8 ounce size. The Milky Way one is actually supposed to be reduced fat chocolate milk.

Continue reading “Slammers Ultimate Milk” …