Duck..... Duck......

GOOSE!

I spotted this beauty on the road today near school. The only logical conclusion I could reach was that this is related to Easter. Otherwise, I have no idea.

The Milk Update

Just wanted to give a brief update on the search for the next milk. I know you've all been waiting breathlessly for the results.

I tested out the soy creamer and it was no good. It just tasted like soy milk, which, as I've said, I really dislike. I opened the coconut product I had bought and it was ok. Kind of neutral but nothing fabulous. I then bought the So Delicious brand of coconut drink ( unsweetened) and it's not bad. It's not nearly as good as the creamer was, but it has some potential. The consistency is a bit gelatinous, for lack of a better term. Not that it's like pudding but it has that bounce to it a little.

It wasn't bad in cereal, but unlike with milk I don't want to drink up the last bits of it sans cereal at the bottom of the bowl. It was even decent with a cookie, but again, more to provide moisture and less as a tasty treat. Still, it's definitely beating all the other candidates as a viable for multipurpose usage. I really need to go back and find the creamer again since that was ideal, but I'm glad I gave the milk version a try too. So for now, So Delicious Creamer is the winner!!

I can't say I've been doing a good job of going dairy free though. I've still had half and half in my coffee when I buy it instead of making it, and I've been having cream cheese on bagels, however, I've pretty well stopped eating cheese, which is impressive. I have sinned on occasion, but I'm doing much better! Even at Chipotle ( which I frequent far too often) I've been getting sour cream but no cheese. It's a work in progress. In other news, gas prices are insane and that makes me sad.

PEEPS SEASON!!!

Walking down the grocery store aisle with the Easter candy and St. Patty's stuff absolutely destroyed my willpower to eat well. When peeps come to town, and I'm talking about the original, not weirdly shaped or covered in something or whatnot, then it's time to celebrate.
Chocolate is always great, but Peeps are an age old Easter tradition. I succumbed to pressure and bought a pack of yellow and a pack of orange. They are currently hardening up with open air, although I already are some before the air had a chance to get to them. Who can resist those brightly colored beauties?
I also indulged in a pack of Cadbury Eggs- the original of course. The next section that got to me was the demo area where they were giving out samples of Irish soda bread with Irish butter. Of course, I had to buy that since it's a special treat only for this time of year.

So all I'm saying here is, it's a great season for sugary foods! So get excited!!!!

Oh Snap!

Yesterday I discovered a new super snack! I was on the road for work, dying for lunch at 2:30 when I finally found a Subway. Got a relatively  healthy sandwich and I was going to indulge myself in some chips, possibly sunchips, when I can across Snapz, crunchy premium apple crisps.

I was intrigued, although I suspected that like most fruit snacks they would be either loaded with sugar or loaded with fat or both. But lo and behold, neither!

Snapz are fat free, cholesterol free, only have 45 calories in a pack ( though yes the packs are a bit small) and only 8 grams of sugar, which isn't much in the scheme of things. The only ingredients are apples and lemon juice. The process is to dry them, not fry them.

The best part of all though, is that they actually taste good. Better than good actually. I may have to reevaluate when I'm not starving, but still, they are pretty awesome. They have the crunch of a chip but a nice appley flavor.

Good texture + good flavor + healthy = 3 for the win!!

The problem is, where do you buy these things besides Subway? The company seems to be pretty new and their website  offers information about purchasing them online or how to become a vendor. The website also states that besides Subway, they have products at some Target stores. There are also other types of chips made by Snapz, including beets and carrots. The website notes that more vendors will be coming aboard in 2012 so I guess it's time to wait. No Target store in NY carry them although some in PA and NJ do. The problem seems to be that this company is based out of the UK, so they haven't gone mainstream into America yet. So my friends, it's up to us to bring this product into the mainstream. Goooooo apple chips!

Milk and Creamer ... the Saga Begins

So I promised you updates about our milk contestants and so far I haven't delivered. Life has been busy and milk free ( but not really dairy free). I actually owe credit to my  mom for restarting the fuel for this post.

So, here is round one. So far I've only tried the oat milk and the hemp milk, but as my room mate K, pointed out, the hemp milk is actually "hemp drink", so it's not actually what I wanted.

I have not been impressed by hemp drink at all. It's not really bad, but it's not particularly good either. In the straight-up test it wasn't very impressive. I couldn't bring myself to use it in cereal. It will probably end up in the trash tomorrow since it's been open for a while. K gave it a negative rating too.

Oat milk has been going quite well. It has a pretty good flavor  that definitely has an oat taste to it and nice thick consistency. I've used it successfully in cereal and it's decent on it's own. It can be ok with cookies, but it's got nothing on milk in that arena. The problem though is that the lowfat, non vanilla type still has tons of sugar in it. It doesn't taste sweet, but I bet it tastes a lot better than it would with no sugar.

I haven't opened the other candidates yet, however on Sunday my mom brought me a few more things to add to try out. Since I mentioned coffee and creamers she brought me two types of non-dairy creamer alternatives, which I've seen but haven't attempted to try yet.

#1 So Delicious, Coconut Creamer
#2 Organic Valley, Soy Creamer

Rich consistency

I opened the Coconut cream tonight just to give it a quick taste test straight up. I was actually shocked to discover that it was amazingly delicious. It's thick, creamy and really smooth. There's definitely a mild coconut taste, but it's not overwhelming. I want to just drink the stuff. It even has the right color.  The best part? There's literally nothing bad about it! It's got no fat, only 1 gram of sugar in a Tbsp and 10 calories! I know it's supposed to be creamer, but might have to start just drinking this stuff! Good call mom! You can check out other So Delicious products here. They have a line of coconut milk products, soy products, almond milk and some other oddities. This makes me more inclined to try the coconut milk drink I have, although it's a different brand. Thankfully they do sell this in stop and shop so it shouldn't be hard to get, unlike some of the other options. Stay tuned for the soy creamer update and others to come.

THE BATTLE FOR THE NEXT GREAT MILK!

In the tradition of Iron Chef, the Next Food Network Star, The Next Great Baker, American Idol, America's Next Top Model and so on, I'd like to announce the beginning of a new contest here at Road Raging Foodie which will be known as:

THE BATTLE FOR THE NEXT GREAT MILK!!!

This furious competition will be a battle between only the best of the best non-dairy drinks as they compete to replace milk in my diet.

Let me explain the background of this competition. First, let me say, that I'm not giving up dairy altogether. I simply love it far too much to do that, however, I am attempting to cut down on my dairy intake. I've also done a bit of reading on milk and the negative impact of the hormones etc. Even buying organic milk, there's only so much you can do to counteract the fact that you are drinking another animal's milk and no other animal does that. There are a lot of people who claim that we should not be consuming milk after we are babies. Many sources say that it actually has damaging effects on bones and instead of building up the calcium it actually depletes it. Our bodies shouldn't be processing the animal proteins. I need to do some more research to see what the difference between animal proteins in meat and animal proteins in milk are. But regardless, milk has fat and it definitely clogs up my sinuses so I think  it wouldn't be a bad idea to cut down on it. I do love cheese, and cheese is worse than milk but I'm making an effort to make some changes.

In light of this, we begin the competition for a new milk product! Let's meet the competitors:

First up we have Oat Milk. I saw this in Stop and Shop believe it or not, while I was looking for hemp milk. I like the flavor of oats and it seemed like it would have good body. I chose the original flavor, with no vanilla.

Next up, Hemp Milk. Again, I chose the original flavor, no vanilla, which was hard to find. This was courtesy of Trader Joe's ( who did NOT have oat milk by the way). I tried a different brand of Hemp milk at my parent's house recently and it was pretty decent.

Finally we have Coconut Milk. This one is kind of a throw away because I'm expecting it to taste like coconut water, which I hate. I'm hoping that it doesn't taste like that but it was by far the cheapest so I figured it was worth the experiment. This also was courtesy of Trader Joe's.

Certainly there are other milks that could be added to the competition, and perhaps at stage two they will be, but I have reservations about the others. I've never been a big fan of soy in past, nor do I really want to get into drinking soy milk as it also has a lot of adverse hormonal effects and I don't want those.  I've had almond milk before and don't really love it, although it was better than soy. Rice milk doesn't really impress me either, though still better than soy. Maybe I will try them again if I'm unsatisfied with these three.

In this competition, the milks must pass several tests to be considered a winner:

Test 1: The Cereal Test: How does the milk taste in a bowl of cereal, or several different kinds of cereals?

Test 2: The Cookie Test: How does the milk hold up against a delicious cookie?

Test 3: Straight Up Test: What does the milk taste like by itself?

Test 4: Presentation Test: What is the consistency like? Does it feel like drinking milk or is it like drinking white water? How does it appear? Is their body?

Test 5: Coffee Test: How does it taste in coffee, tea, etc? ( This is a really a sub-test because I'm still using creamer or half and half in my coffee and I doubt that will change... but you never know)

Test 6: The Nutrition Test: What is the fat content, sugar content, calorie content, protein etc? 

These are the challenges! Stay tuned to see my reviews!

Al Dente

My room mate and I recently had a slight disagreement over cooking pasta and what it means to properly cook pasta. As all my Italian relatives will know, I've been raised with the expectation that pasta should be cooked al dente, from the Italian, literally meaning ' to the tooth'. This means the pasta has a little resistance, some spring still left in it.

We often share food, particularly pasta because it is easy to cook a large amount of it and silly to cook a very small amount. It's pretty much impossible to mess up pasta so for a while I was trying to figure out why something wasn't quite right when he made it. I finally realized it was just a bit too soft, a point he emphasized when he complained to me last week that I hadn't cooked it enough. I argued it was al dente and that's the way it was supposed to be, but he insisted it was undercooked. I suppose it's a matter of taste and what you grew up with. Eating some pasta he cooked tonight reminded me to write about it. We could also argue over sauce, but I admit I'm somewhat of a sauce snob so that's not even worth it.

For those who insist on getting their pasta just right, there's even a device to tell you when time is up. I'm not sure if anyone actually uses this but it's good for a laugh. Apparently this singing al dente timer will play opera for you after 7-9 minutes of cooking your pasta.

Yes, his name is Al and sadly he seems to no longer be available. Sad days.