A List of Things You Should Get

 In this special episode of Junk Fud on the Road, Chris asks Allison about all of her must have treats, snacks and meals in all of the countries they've visited before.

Check out what Chris and Allison are up to right now on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Also be sure to follow them on Patreon for all kinds of bonus content.

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Everything You Need To Know About Treats and Beasts

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Kit Kats Till Thursday

I recently got my hands on 4 new flavours of Kit Kat bars from Japan, and I've decided that I'd review them all this week. The plan is to eat one every day till Thursday. I'm always amazed at all the variety of Kit Kat flavours out of Japan, and even more surprised when I discover a "new" flavour that seems like it should have already been a flavour. This first variety is the perfect example. It seems like cheesecake and Kit Kat bars would make for an obvious team up. So obvious that I'm surprised that we haven't even seen cheesecake Kit Kat bars in North America already, after all, there are plenty of Kit Kat flavoured cheesecakes out there already.

Check out my full Kit Kat cheesecake review right now.

Make sure to follow me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to keep up with this week's Kit Kat bar candy review-a-thon.

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Ice Cream Makes Everyone Happy

 This is pretty close to how I react when I hear the music from an ice cream truck. Too bad they make me pay for mine.

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Don't Miss Out On Treats and Beasts

 Make sure to pick up your own copy of Treats and Beasts.

You can also get all kinds of fun Treats and Beasts merch.

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Custom Kit Kat Bars

 Check out this new episode of 10 Second Kitchen where you get to watch them make custom Kit Kat bars.

Check out all of the 10 Second Kitchens on my candy map.

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Almost The Original, But Not Exactly

 

This candy made me think once again about the power of authenticity. I always find that authenticity in food, particular candy, is a strange battle. Just because a company did not invent a particular candy, doesn't mean that their version is less superior... right? The problem with this argument is that the original companies often do make the more superior version of most treats. I've had hundreds of variations of classic treats, but most of the time the original seems to be the better one. My only guess is that the original company has a reputation to uphold. The copycat companies can always move onto the next popular snack and make a copy of it instead, while the original company needs that treat to be the best it can be.

Check out my latest review where I taste a generic copy of a classic candy.

Don't forget to follow me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter because I'm posting lots of extra content there as well.

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The Origin of Your Twinkie

I was always under the impression that Twinkies were just born.

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Eating Everything I Can When Traveling

 So I recently went on a pretty big flight. I traveled from Canada to South East Asia, with many stopovers along the way. As a side note you'll probably notice a few more Asian treats appears on this blog as well as on my social media and reviews. As an experiment I decided to document every thing I ate along the way for this trip that took almost two days. I also accepted almost every single thing given to me, even if it meant eating dinner at 3 in the morning.

I started at the Ottawa airport with a bag of potato chips, Miss Vickie's to be exact. I got these in the lounge while waiting many hours for my first flight to the other side of Canada (British Columbia). This is not going to be the last bag of Miss Vickie's I'll be eating on this trip as I believe Air Canada has some kind of deal with them.

My first full meal was a dinner I believe. I picked the cheese tortellini. Most notable about this meal is the fact that the cheese cake was super dry and on the menu the salad was said to have "a Brussel sprout" and it did. It has one single Brussel sprout sliced thinly.

This photo does not tell the truth. While pictured above is one bag of almonds, I think I had at least 3 of them over the course of this flight (about 6 hours). While I miss peanuts on airplanes, almonds aren't that bad a replacement. I much prefer them over weird snacking crackers that are also common on some flights (see below).

My second bag of Miss Vickie's potato chips came before leaving the first of 3 flights. I was only offered either a bag of chips or a chocolate bar, but I asked if I could have both and the wonderfully patient flight attendant agreed that I would need it for the rest of my long journey.  As an FYI, I saved the Kit Kat bar for later and it melted in my bag. I'm sure I'll post about it on my social media real soon.

We landed in the airport in British Columbia and headed straight for the lounge again. We had a very long (6 or 8 hour) wait ahead of us for our next flight. The lounge had a nice range of food including a constant supply of spring rolls and samosas. I came back to this several times, and it was a good warm up as the place we were going also has a lot of these available.

I couldn't leave Canada without one more bag of Miss Vickie's chips. This time I went for the salt and vinegar, probably my favourite flavour of chips in the world (you can read my full review of these right now if you like). I also had several cups of tea while waiting for this next flight, there were a few flavours to choose from with varying levels of caffeine.

There was also a large jar of cookies available throughout our wait in British Columbia. I did indulge a few times, but I ate far fewer cookies than you would expect from a guy who writes about candy for a living. I was probably just really tired and out of my mind.

Finally we boarded our next flight that would take us across the Pacific Ocean. This was a weird flight for us as we'd already eaten dinner, but because of the time changes we were offered dinner again. Allison decided to sleep, but I decided to go with dinner and I was not disappointed. This flight had a very different method of serving dinner, and it involved table clothes and multiple courses. Dinner started with a small ball of cheese with green and red stuff stuck to it (likely spinach and sundried tomato) as well as a small tart filled with some kind of fish salad.

The next course involved a potato covered in cheese and a steak. I'll be honest I'm not really a big fan of steak, but the alternative was fish and I'm even less plussed about that. I'm sure if meat and potatoes are your thing you would have been totally impressed with this, but I kept thinking about the tortellini I ate on the other flight, and the fact that I should probably be sleeping instead of eating.

For dessert, we had some kind of chocolate hazelnut pie. I'll be honest, it kind of sucked. The best part of the pie was the hazelnuts, and the best part of dessert was the grapes.

After a few hours of restless sleep we were rewarded with breakfast. There are two things worth noting about this breakfast. First of all they offered us a plate of sliced fruit, next to a fruit salad that contained exactly the same kind of fruit. So in some ways we received fruit two ways. The other thing worth mentioning is that bowl of creamy stuff on the top of the tray. I'm not sure what it was, but it was fantastic. I would describe it as some kind of pudding/yogurt with some very tasty granola mixed in.

This odd pile is the second course of the breakfast I got (they kept up the whole fanciness even for breakfast). It's supposed to be an orange and chocolate hazelnut, cream filled crepe. It tasted better than it looked, except for the fact that there was way too much orange zest on it.

We landed in Asia, and made our way quickly to our next flight. It was a tight connection and we had no time for any snacks along the way. Frankly I was so tired and messed up at that point I don't know how interested I would have been in eating at that point. We boarded our third and final flight and the first thing we received was a bag of random salty snacks. It was more in line with the cracker based snacks that I'm not too keen on, but I was happy that the peas were not too spicy with wasabi.

On this flight we received our final meal of this journey. I couldn't tell you if it was supposed to be lunch or dinner as I was pretty tired and totally messed up from the jetlag. It was a very typically Asian airline meal with some random meat served with rice and some bok choy. We also got some more fruit, but this time it included dragon fruit, a favourite of mine. I'm pretty sure I didn't manage to eat everything on my plate at this point, but it was nice to pick through it at least.

Dessert for this meal did not disappoint though. Even better was the fact that Allison was not interested in her ice cream, so I got two. While I had a hard time eating everything on this last meal, I found space for the two servings of ice cream.

We arrived at our destination just as I finished my cup of tea. The menu for this flight offered many different varieties of tea, however the flight attendant's English was not great, and when I asked about the teas she just assumed I wanted the traditional Chinese tea. It wasn't what I was thinking about, but it did hit the spot.

Make sure to check out my social media (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) as I'll be posting a lot of fun discoveries on this new epic journey that I'm on right now.

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Time To Melt My Mouth With Hot Tamales

I'm not sure where my mind was when I made this video. What possessed me to just eat a whole bunch of Hot Tamales at once because 2 of them didn't seem to burn fast enough is a mystery to me.

Make sure to follow me on YouTube to check out all the new and old videos I've made.

You can also follow me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to check out some of the new stupid ideas I might have.

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Can You Imagine How Fun It Will Be To Read Treats and Beasts?

 Make sure to pick up your own copy of Treats and Beasts.

You can also get all kinds of fun Treats and Beasts merch.

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Spicy Candy Changes, Or I Do

I'm having a bit of a mental dilemma lately when it comes to reviewing spicy treats. My problem is that I've grown somewhat since I started this site, and I believe I have a higher tolerance to spicy food than when I started candycritic.org. My problem stems from the fact that I have older reviews on this site from back when I not only couldn't tolerate spicy food, I actually had something against it. I used to believe that it was silly to eat any food that caused your mouth pain, even though for some reason I accepted sour as being okay. So when I look back at my old reviews I see a person that just couldn't accept spicy food as an option, and maybe didn't even give it a chance. I'm glad I've grown, but I'm not sure what to do about my past.

Check out my latest spicy review where I didn't actually mind it at all.

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Fancy a Sip of Coke?

 If you love the idea of a 14 minute art film about various ways to open a bottle of coke, have I got a treat for you.

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What's Ottawa Food?

I've lived in Ottawa on and off for about 8 years all together. For those that aren't in the know, Ottawa is the capital of Canada. Canada has always had issues when it comes to identifying a national dish. This problem comes from the fact that Canada is a large country filled with people from all over the world. The most prevalent dish in one city will vary greatly from a prevalent dish in another city. Some dishes become popular outside of Canada, like poutine, but often these dishes are very regional inside Canada, and often they have their roots in the immigrant population found in that area. The food you find in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver is all very different, and reflects the people and personality of the region.

This is one of the things that makes Ottawa, the capital of Canada even more complex. Ottawa has a local population, but a majority of the people are from other parts of Canada, most working for the federal government. While places like Toronto and Montreal seem to thrive on collections of outsiders coming into the city, Ottawa seems to suffer. It's not to say that Ottawa doesn't have good food, in fact there are some amazing foods available, I've just always felt like Ottawa doesn't have a personality when it comes to the food. That was until a few days ago.

A few days ago Allison and I where downtown and we decided to hit one of our favourite places to grab lunch in the city, the Elgin Street Diner. This diner has been around for as long as I've been visiting Ottawa, before I moved to Ottawa. It has some great food and a great atmosphere. After enjoying some amazing diner food I ordered the dessert I always get at the Elgin Street Diner, their rice pudding. Every time I go I get the same dessert, and I'm never disappointed.

On our way out the door we talked to the daughter of the owner and she asked if we enjoyed the rice pudding. I told here a meal here wouldn't be the same without it, and as always it hit the spot. She then went on to explain that the rice pudding was her grandmother's recipe and they've been selling it at the diner forever. At that moment I was hit with inspiration.

If I was to define Ottawa food, it would be the consistent diner. Ottawa has a good collection of diners, some more popular than others, but almost all of them are fantastic. One of the key features of these diners is the fact that they don't change. I can go into the Elgin Street Diner and get the same rice pudding every single time. The décor of the diner has not changed at all. The family that runs it has not changed. In many other cities around the world, when a diner becomes the popular hot spot, things start to change. Sometimes these diners turn into fine dining diners. They up the quality, make the atmosphere fancy, and the place just gets classier. Sometimes diners spread themselves too thin and expand to more locations.

I feel like this doesn't happen in Ottawa. Sure new diners open and some close, but so often they don't really change. Some might call this lazy or boring, but I find it comforting. I think that's a good way to describe Ottawa diners, comfortable. Each one of these places is just like the rice pudding at the Elgin Street Diner, I know that if I walk into that place I'll get a dessert that I love. It will be the same recipe that the girls grandmother made a long time ago.

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Be Sure To Check Out Treats and Beasts

 Make sure to pick up your own copy of Treats and Beasts.

You can also get all kinds of fun Treats and Beasts merch.

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Boring Candy Is Hard To Write About

Probably the biggest challenge I have with this website (candycritic.org) is writing about unimpressive candy. Unimpressive candy for me is neither really good or really bad, it's just fine. Sometimes a candy is simple, and kind of boring, but also not that bad either. I will often find myself restarting the writing process several times when writing a boring candy review. I'll try desperately to find an angle or a feature that's worth mentioning, but sometimes it's just not there. What makes it even worse is I don't have any reason to tell you not to eat the candy either. It's average candy, and it's the bane of every candy reviewers life.

Check out my latest candy review of a treat that's perfectly fine, but nothing impressive either.

Be sure to check out my Facebook, Instagram the Twitter right now as I'm going to be posting lots of bonus review over the next little while.

You can also pick up my book(s) all about the history of candy and snacks. It's called Snack Facts.

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Making Some Sour Candy

I'm not a huge fan of Warheads, but I like every Warheads candy I've ever tried.

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Don't forget to pick up Treats and Beasts, it won't leave you sour at all.

A Return To Reviews

This past month, I had one of the most annoying technical problems I've ever had. For almost the entire month of October I was unable to sign into my laptop, the only computer that allows me to post new reviews. This tech problem had to do with two factor authentication, and within a couple of days of this problem happening I knew that I was pretty much stuck for a certain amount of time. The good news is that I'm back up and running with a new review. I decided to review a classic snack that makes me happy.  Knock on wood, I should be find from here on out.

Check out the return review, it's a classic in my books.

Don't forget to follow me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, because I could use the emotional support right now.

If you want to be cheered up yourself, pick up Treats and Beasts, my fun kids book about candy and creatures. 

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A Quick Little Preview of Treats and Beasts

 Make sure to pick up your own copy of Treats and Beasts.

You can also get all kinds of fun Treats and Beasts merch.

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