How Many Fake Kit Kats Can One Person Eat

 It appears that I've eaten so many fake Kit Kat bars that they might get their own category on candycritic.org.

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I'm Obsessed With Kit Kat Bars

Every so often I think that I should stop posting any more reviews about Kit Kat bars, or in the case of this week's reviews (more to come later) copycat Kit Kat bars. It's odd that a bar that has been my favourite candy bar for many years, is also a bar that produces so many varieties, as well as so many copycats. I've said to myself before, this is the last Kit Kat bar that I'll review, then something is presented to me and I can't stop myself. 

Check out the Kit Kat clone bar that I reviewed, and stay tuned for more Kit Kat clones all this week.

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A Movie About Spicy Snacks Is What The World Needs

 I love the idea of telling the stories of how snacks were invented, there's a lot of people out there who built you snacking memories and deserve all the credit in the world.

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McDonald’s Options Gone Wrong

 

As technology moves forward, the fast food experience is evolving. In the future I'm pretty sure we'll have restaurants operating with no human intervention, and using fancy algorithms they'll be able to predict what you're going to order. For now we still have people working the front counters and behind in the kitchens (I'm thankful for that), but we are starting to see some interesting automation. McDonalds is probably one of the places leading the way right now with their automatic order stations. While other fast food places do offer these order stations, I find that many McDonalds locations are starting to make it hard to order any other way. 

The thing that makes these kiosks interesting to me is the ability to custom order your meal, without having to face the disappointed gaze of a human being. The kiosks will not judge me if I order so many extra pickles that it seems like an unhealthy addiction. The thing I'm finding about these modifications available at the McDonald's kiosks is they seem to differ from country to country, and sometimes even restaurant to restaurant. Because of this, and because of my unhealthy addition to pickles, I always check what my options are every time I place my order. As it turns out, in Qatar at least, they have some really strange options to choose from.

On this particular day, Allison and I ordered our regular choices. I got a Big Mac.

Allison got the Quarter Pounder with Cheese. While there were a few options that seemed pretty standard, we also noticed a few that seemed a little bit odd, or at the very least new to us. I was super happy that extra pickles was an option.

We'll start with Allison's Quarter Pounder. While there are a few regular items she added on, like the extra pickles (although extra pickles are not available everywhere). Two of the addons were pretty interesting. In particular the mayonnaise and shredded lettuce. In fact both of these options were available for every burger (as you'll see later). The really fascinating thing here was the fact that Allison could not only add lettuce to her Quarter Pounder, but she could add a double serving of lettuce.

I'm not sure if this photo does it justice, but Allison actually got a small salad wedged into her Quarter Pounder. They did not skimp on the lettuce at all. It's a strange addition available, and one that they really delivered on, but I don't think it's the strangest.

I too went for the extra lettuce and extra pickles (I'm only human after all). I was not offered the choice of adding two extra helpings of lettuce, I assume that's because the Big Mac already comes with lettuce and two extra servings would just be silly. The very peculiar option is the one word found under the shredded lettuce on my order, "cut". When I ordered my burger, under the options it only said "cut", with no explanation at all. I simply couldn't pass up this opportunity so...

I too received a ridiculously large amount of lettuce. My container was pretty much filled to the top and overflowing. But as you can see, my burger was in fact cut in half, right down the middle. It's not that I find cutting your burger in half to be problematic. Maybe you have kids that are going to share one burger, or maybe (as is the case) you find it less messy to eat one half of a burger at a time (particularly if you have a ridiculous amount of lettuce and pickles). The part I found odd is that there was no explanation as to what "cut" meant on the options, and they never asked how I wanted it cut. While I didn't mind it being simply cut in half, I would have preferred a pizza style of cutting into four or maybe even six wedges.

When I picked up my order, I did hear some conversation (in a foreign language) and some giggles. I'm not certain that this order is very common, or if they knew we were being a little silly, so they added a ridiculous amount of lettuce. Lucky for them ridiculous is one of our favourite ways to have our burgers.

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Just A Carrot?

 

With all kinds of state and provincial fairs going on right now, weird food flavours comes to mind. This week's featured review falls in to the category of candies that I wish tasted really bad. I even go off on a bit of a rant about it. It's strange how I crave weird foods, yet at some state fairs right now they're making crazy concoctions that I really have no interest in trying at all. In some ways I feel like there's a difference between ice cream that tastes like a cheeseburger and gummies that taste like carrots. In some ways I feel like it's okay for gummies to have strange flavour, but maybe certain flavours should be left alone when it comes to ice cream. Fortunately I also feel like my mind can change, and I hope it does each and every day.

Check out my disappointment at these orange flavoured gummy carrots.

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Go Bananas!

 This is a fun little video that might teach you about some of the many varieties of bananas available in the world.

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I'm Cheesed, But in a Good Way

In my snack eating world, Combos are one of the most underrated snacks out there. I always enjoy eating them, but I don't get them that often.

Find out what else I'm snacking on by following me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

If you want some fun reading material, pick up Snack Facts, a comic all about the candy and snack history and facts.

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The Classics

While I'm sure not everyone in the world would agree, Wine Gums are a classic candy where I come from. I think just about every person my age or younger has not lived in a world where this candy has not existed. How much you like it may vary (I like them a lot), but it's no doubt that it's been around. It makes me think about younger an older generations than myself. For the older generations, what's a candy that's not a classic to you, but seems like a classic now. To the younger generations, what's a candy that's truly a classic, that's not a classic for me.

Read my latest review of a classic treat I should have reviewed a long time ago.

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Relax and Watch Them Make Jelly Beans

 This is probably the most chilled out video I've ever seen of candy being made. It's like watching Bob Ross painting.

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Travel With Fruit

I have a theory that's probably very unpopular. I believe that fruit is more often than not, bad for road trips and hiking. Don't get me wrong, I really like fruit, but it often gets a reputation for being the perfect road trip or travel snack, and frankly I disagree. I've decided to make a collection of common fruits, and give it a score based on how well I think it travels. I'll also give a short write up and justification about why I think it doesn't travel well.

Each fruit will get a score out of 10 1 being horrible for travel 10 being slightly inconvenient for travel. Keep in mind that this is an argument that all fruit is hard to travel either hiking or road trip, and no fruit is going to "win". The thing that I'm most excited about writing this is the fact that I get to eat all this fruit... for science.

Watermelon - 2 out of 10 - This is probably one of the worst fruits for traveling. If you want to keep watermelon in good shape, the best thing one can do is not cut it. I've kept watermelons in my fridge for over a month uncut and it still tastes great. However, after I cut into a watermelon it feels like you have at most a week before it starts to go. It's even more so if it's out of the fridge. 

Let's also not forget about the trash left behind with a watermelon. This includes the rind and all the seeds. The seeds also create a problem as picking them out can make a mess. Even if you're some kind of watermelon seed ninja, in general watermelon is a fruit that requires a shower after eating it. This is not only a horrible road trip fruit, it's like the worst road trip fruit with one exception (see below).

Orange 5 out of 10 - The peel is the first and most obvious problem with bringing an orange on a road trip. If you happen to be driving the car, you'll have to pull over and peel the orange before you can even think about eating it. Even if we assume that you've pulled over and thrown away the peel, even if you're willing to lose that much time to get a little extra vitamin C. Then you have the stickiness. 

Orange stickiness is no joke. There's two dose of sticky to contend with too. There's the obvious juice that you'll have to deal with when eating the orange, sure sometimes it's contained in the wedges, but that's pretty rare. Even if you have a lucky orange, you'll probably already be sticky because the peel releases a stealthy sticking liquid that I contend is worse than the juice on the inside. This ninja spray that comes off the peel is even a pain to wash off your hands, so you're probably looking at more wasted time scrubbing your hands at the next truck stop.

Banana - 6 out of 10 - Bananas are deceptive, because they may at first appear to be a great road trip or hiking snack. They're self contained in single serving packages and they taste great. But let's start off by looking at this self contained package. Banana peels have the ability to go brown and rot faster than any other fruit by-product. I feel like the banana peel starts to rot before you even finish the banana. If you're on a road trip your trash bag is going to smell like rotting banana very quickly. This is even worse if you're hiking and have no place to dispose of the peel. And don't go throwing that peel on the ground either, I've seen enough black and white comedy movies to know that's a lawsuit waiting to happen.

The other thing about bananas is the fact that they go bad really quickly too. Even if you leave the peel on, I feel like bananas have the ability to go from just ripe to a sock full of mush in minutes. And god forbid you happen to bump it in any kind of way. A bruised banana will be a sack full of liquid in no time.

Apple - 6 out of 10 - I think we can agree that the core of the apple is the worst thing about eating any fruit. Even in the perfect environment when you have a cutting board and knife, the core is going to be the biggest challenge you'll have with an apple. You have to make one of two choices when eating an apple, either go in deep and try to clean the core off running the risk of eating a seed or those sharp seed pods, or agree to waste some apple and leave a little extra room. No matter which you choose, you'll still have a core to deal with, and similar to the banana peel, the core of an apple rots at breakneck speeds.

There's also the juice problem. Some apples are very juicy and you'll find beads of juice running down your fingers for sure. Other types of apples may not bleed juice, but all apples will likely give you a light misting of sticky juice. Maybe a baby wipe or a stop at a roadside rest stop might help you, but I feel like that spray of stickiness will likely find a way to stick around.

Grapes - 7 out of 10 - I'm going to be honest, I think grapes might be the best fruit to bring on a road trip or hiking. They're not perfect, but I think they're as good as it gets. The thing is, there are very particular stipulations to make these an acceptable road trip fruit. First of all you have to get rid of the stems. This means that you have to break them into a bunch of very round and easy to lose pieces. If you have a container than you might be okay (but then you're carrying around an empty container all day). 

If your grapes have seeds than consider the advise above null and void. I understand that seeds are the key to life when it comes to plants, but if there could be some way of outlawing seeds in grapes that are sold to the public as food I would not disagree. Seeds in grapes have been something that has made me sad many times.

Honorable Mentions - I just want to mention a few other of my favourite fruits that are also not great for travel. Dragon fruit is a terrifying looking fruit that actually might be one of the better road trip fruits. I've peeled a dragon fruit by hand and feel like you might be able to enjoy it while on a road trip. It'll likely be kind of messy, but not nearly as messy as the last fruit I want to mention, the mango.

Fresh mango is probably one of the most amazing fruits one can buy. If you live in a colder climate you might not understand what I'm talking about, but a quick visit to Pakistan or India will teach you how great this fruit can be. The problem is getting into it, particularly on the road or hiking trail. We once decided to pick up a mango while on a road trip in India. It was an amazing looking mango, super soft and ready to eat. The problem is we did not have a knife or cutting board to deal with it. We did some research and only came across warnings about how intensely messy it is to peel and eat a mango by hand. We ended up in the shower, in our underwear, covered in juice enjoying one of the tastiest fruits we'd ever eaten. In a car this would have been disastrous. Having said that, there are two fruits I can think of that are just no goes at all...

Pineapple and durian.

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A Pez Movie... Sort Of

 This looks like a really interesting story of a man that brought Pez into the world... possibly illegally.

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The Best Skittles?

 It's a rare occasion when the OG is not the best, but when it comes to Skittles they're not even the second or third best.

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