Today's Review: Pepperidge Farm Chocolate Chip Cookies

Remember when cookies were simple, small, cheap? Pepperidge Farm remembers, but they want you to forget. These big fat square bags of biscuity goodness are certainly pricey, but they promise "melt in your mouth" cookies that are soft baked to perfection. Well, soft perfection. 

There are a few other varieties of these cookies, but I feel I can judge the quality more with the plainer flavour, because once they start adding more kinds of chocolate, and even brownie, into the mix, it's hard to sustain a fair opinion.

Well, these cookies certainly are soft baked, perhaps a little too soft, because they taste a little underdone. Not in the good way, like the heavenly gooey cookie, but like the ingredients haven't been mixed that well. They have an off floury texture that's less "melt in your mouth" and more disintegrate.

Still, they're not all bad. The chocolate chunks are sizeable and generous, and my misgivings about the taste certainly didn't stop me devouring them quite quickly. But I don't think I'll try them again. They're just a bit off, and these are much nicer cookies out there.

My rating: 3/5

Today's Review: Monster Rehab: Orangeade

Yes, it's another entry into the odd range of Monster tea based drinks, meant to both energise and relax you, somehow. Revitalisation is the word I think. This variety blends tea with orange juice, because that sounds like a delicious thing to do. Well, it's not all that bad. The tea is cold, after all. I'm not making it sound any better, am I? 

Once you get over the strange combination of flavours, this drink is actually quite nice. It is a little on the dry side, since both iced tea and orange juice can leave that dry taste in your mouth, but it's not so bad, and actually did well to refresh me. It's a nice smooth, flat drink, and while it is a little tart, it's certainly not as intense as a kick from the regular fizzy Monster. 

My rating: 4/5

Today's Review: Sunburn

We, as humans, have survived on this planet for many thousands of years. We have evolved from primitive beats, gained superior intelligence and ingenuity. Our bodies have been sculpted to be precision made for using tools, fighting illness. We've managed to make the appendix an obsolete organ. But one thing we haven't done is stop the sun burning our skin.

Now, the sun isn't exactly a new thing, it's been around longer than we have. But despite humans building up a resilience to most thing on the planet, if we spend a relatively small amount of time in the sun unprotected our skin is bound to turn red and painful. Not only that, but too much sun can give you cancer, and that's just great to hear. "There's a giant star millions of miles away whose heat and light is keeping us alive, but it will not hesitate to kill you slowly if you lie down in its rays for too long".

I get it, sunburn is the result of radiation, and as far as our human resilience goes, we really still suck at dealing with radiation. That's why there are no superheroes. So in the end, we're stuck with sunburn, and it sucks. The pain, the redness, the social embarrassment the redness can cause, the peeling skin, it all sucks. Sure, we have lotions we can apply to protect ourselves, and they're actually pretty effective, but all it takes is a particularly intensive burst of sunshine or simply forgetting to apply anything, and we all turn into lobsters. Damn you, sun.

My rating: 1/5

Today's Review: Cherry Pits

Cherries are a nice fruit. They're small, juicy, and they're fantastic in pies. I could eat them all day, were it not for one small problem. The problem that lies right in the centre of every cherry, the pit.

I could bite cleanly through every cherry, enjoy popping one juicy morsel after another into my face, but instead every time I eat a cherry I have to gingerly bite around the rock hard centre, leaving some precious residue behind as I fling the cherry's dead soul into the bin.

I know I could probably buy unpitted cherries, but they would most likely be expensive, and it's besides the point. The cherry pit is a cruel joke of nature, a cold hard lump in the middle of a nutritious, succulent treat. Fruit should be enjoyed, chewed rigorously, but instead we are forced to nibble. Cherry pits are the pits.

My rating: 0/5

Today's Review: Tesco Finest Dominican Republic Chocolate With Sea Salt Flakes

Take some exquisite cocoa beans from the heart of the caribbean, and blend it up with some sea salt from a small town in the middle of Essex. That's the idea with this Tesco Finest chocolate bar, a combination of ingredients from across the world. Salt may sound like an odd thing to put in chocolate, but I once made truffles that were topped with a sprinkle of salt, and they were actually pretty nice, so obviously I have an expert opinion on the matter.

Well, this chocolate isn't as nice as my truffles. Yes, the chocolate itself is very nice, smooth, creamy, very tasty. The trouble is that there's just too much salt. It overwhelms the taste buds as soon as I pop it in my mouth, and while the flavours eventually come together to something quite nice, I'm still left with a salty aftertaste that really isn't that nice. Perhaps I just don't like salt as much as the average person, but this bar really doesn't do it for me. 

My rating: 2/5

Today's Review: Bio Green Dairy Lassi

I've had some experience of lasso before, but only because it was the only thing I had ingredients for in the Cooking Guide DS game. It's a yoghurt drink, but pretty much a watered down one, and I finally saw one for sale in the form of this offering from Bio Green Dairy.

It's made in Middlesex, though the description on the bottle left me wondering about the creators' grasp of the English language.This is a "premium traditional-style Lasso with its upbeat take on life. It's the perfect blend of tradition and modern tastes. which is why Edna the cow is leaping with joy on this label!" Well, the cow doesn't have a face, so it's hard to see if she's overjoyed, but those udders sure are looking excited. As for the drink having an "upbeat take on life", I have no idea how to gauge a liquid's attitude towards its own existence. So my only option was to drink it to extinction.

Anyway, this certainly is a nice, fruity, smooth drink, at first anyway. There are some fruity lychee chunks contained within, and they're just big enough as to not hinder the drinking experience. But the lychee flavour leaves a lot to be desired for me. It started off nice, but eventually went the way of the mango and dried out my mouth, which left me pretty unsatisfied and still thirsty by the end of the bottle. So it's good, but not that good. Perhaps with a different fruit it could be better.

My rating: 3/5 

Today's Review: KFC Nacho Stacker Burger

Oh, sorry, that's probably not the best picture.

There. I can never get it to look as amazing as the professionals. You'd think they're sprucing up uncooked meat and meticulously arranging the lettuce. I'm sure that doesn't happen.

But hey, what do I care? It all goes down the same way, right? This is KFC's latest attempt at a new burger, the Nacho Stacker. It's basically a Zinger Tower with a dirty great nacho frisbee stuck in the middle of it. Also some new spicy sauce. I know I've been disdainful towards KFC in the past for constantly slapping a single ingredient into a burger and calling it a fantastic new product, but the original recipe chicken is their selling point, so it has to be there. All that's left is to change the toppings, the sauce, the bun. Sure, most of the time it's quite underwhelming, but one of my favourite KFC burgers is just a Fillet Tower with a bit of bacon shoved in for good measure.

Thankfully, this burger is pretty tasty. The nacho adds a satisfying crunch to the whole affair, and the sauce is fantastic. It's spicy, but certainly not too spicy, opting to be equal parts creamy and flavoursome instead. So while shoving a nacho into a burger is not the most innovative idea, it's certainly pulled off quite well with the Nacho Stacker. Not perfect, but certainly the best new burger they've put out in a while.

My rating: 4/5