Drink Your Gum

I think there's a subtle art to the candy crossover. Not every company can pull it off. Those who do pull it off fall into one of two categories. Either you spend a lot of time crafting the perfect crossover, balancing the flavours and textures of the original in order to try cross them over with a different kind of treat. The other are those who have a treat that just naturally works with other treats. Kool-Aid has a lot of options when it comes crossing over since they have simple yet iconic flavours. I'm hoping this is only the first step towards more Kool-Aid themed treats in the future.

Check out the first of 3 Kool-Aid gum reviews that I'm posting this week.

If you want to check out the other Kool-Aid gum reviews that I'm posting later, make sure to check out Facbook, Instagram or Twitter.

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Ring My Bell

 Every year I watch this commercial and every year it makes me smile.

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Finally You Can Get A Copy Of Treats and Beasts

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A Simple Grocery Store Bulk Candy

I want to give a little bit of context to this candy. It's Ukrainian and was purchased (and consumed) before the events that happened there. More relevant to this story, it was purchased at an average grocery store in the bulk candy bins. The bulk candy bins are a place that most of us, myself included, often pass up unless we're looking to get a certain amount of a treat we love. However, when traveling it's rare that I stop at bulk bins in grocery stores, and I'm not really sure why. This amazing chocolate treat is a perfect example of why I should stop doing this, because this turned out to be one of the best chocolate's I've ever eaten in my life.

Read more about this amazing chocolate treat, found in a bulk bin.

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Blow You a Kiss

 With a name like Kiss, you'd think that the process of making them would be much more magical. Not enough pixy dust and magic wands in my opinion.

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Cereal Innovation or Waste of Packaging

 I recently came across a new cereal. It's likely not new to the world, but it's very new to me. It grabbed my attention because it offered some new fruity flavours that I'd never had in a cereal before, papaya and pineapple. The package implies that the fruit is also real, which makes sense given how common these fruits are where this cereal is made, which is Myanmar. The panda is also very cute, so  since I needed something for breakfast, this seemed like the perfect fit.

Upon opening the box I was even more confused/surprised by what was inside. It's not often that the format of how cereal is delivered is surprising to me. Rather than give you one giant bag of cereal, they've portioned the cereal into 5 separate bags. Better still they've separated the fruit and portioned that into another 5 separate bags. I wasn't sure if this was a brilliant idea at first, or an extreme waste of packaging. My first guess was that they split the cereal into separate packages to help it stay fresh and keep bugs out. South East Asia (where this cereal sells) is known for being very humid and also having a lot of bugs. Both of these are due to the constant warm weather in the area, so it makes sense as a way to keep your cereal fresh.

I took my single portion of cereal and I was truly excited by the cute little packages.

The writing on the bags of cereal was a little weird.

The cereal portion was a little strange. I was expecting something like corn flakes, but instead got what looking like tiny little squashed circles. They also had some kind of sweet coating on the outside. Frankly I would have been satisfied with just these, but there was more.

I opened up my little bag of dried pineapple and papaya and they were nicely chopped into tiny little cubes. I definitely felt like the ratio of cereal to fruit was pretty good. Too much of either would have ruined this cereal experience. Adding the milk however proved to me another reason why one might break this cereal into individual portions in particularly with the fruit.

The second I added my milk, all of the fruit sunk to the bottom. It made me think that the same would have happened in the box, had it not been portioned out in little separate bags. I had to dig down to the bottom of the bowl for each bite, however my bowl had a perfect proportion of cereal and fruit. I'll be honest, I wasn't totally blown away with the flavour of this cereal, it was fine. The little disks did stay very crunchy in the milk however, almost too crunchy as they didn't seem to let any of the milk penetrate at all. There are a few other cereals made by this company, and I think I'll probably attempt to try them all. 

At a certain age you don't really expect to be surprised at the way cereal is packaged, but as it turns out, you never know.

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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

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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.

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

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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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