Rowntree's Randoms

My thanks to the great Cinabar of Foodstuff Finds for once again sending me some yummy U.K. candy to try.

Amongst all the wonderful things Cinabar packed into my latest box of goodies was this little pack of gummies (or "jellies," for those of you on the other side of the pond). What caught my attention -- besides the bright colors -- was how soft the gummies felt through the package. Also, the shapes on the package reminded me a lot of some of the fun Asian candies I have seen online at sites like J-List or at stores like Ranch 99 or Kam Man. My package also had this little gnome guy on it (has to do with a contest the company is running) that reminded me of the Travelocity "Roving Gnome." I was really hoping there would be a gummy gnome in the package because I liked the idea of posing him Flat Stanley style next to random objects.

Part of the fun of the candy is that each bag is a random mix of gummies and you never know what you are going to get in any given bag. Sadly, there was no gnome in mine.



There were lots of fun shapes and several different flavors. I picked my favorite shapes to represent each flavor:



Purple: This one had a taste that was sort of grape, sort of raspberry, sort of...currant, maybe? It's a good, juicy, fruity flavor even if I couldn't pin it down entirely.



Green: I was hoping for green apple -- but instead, it's lime. I give Rowntree points here. It's a completely artificial lime, but they still manage to avoid that industrial cleaner taste most fake lime has. Instead, it's like a gummy version of green doctor's office lollipops.



Orange: Zesty, but a little bit sour. Sort of like a gummy version of unmixed orange juice concentrate. That probably doesn't sound great, but it tasted really good.



Orange/White: This one is a combo of gummy and "foam" or cream base.



It has the same great flavor as the orange in the orange part (big stretch there). The white foam/creme has no taste as far as I can tell.



Yellow/White: The yellow is lemon. This may be the best gummy lemon ever. It's fresh and vibrant.



Granted, it's not quite natural, but it isn't completely fake either. Once again, the white base is tasteless.



Red: This was the lone flavor I didn't like. It was cherry, and it tasted like cough syrup and "red." But the color was quite pretty.



Lighter Red/White: I think this was supposed to be strawberry.



The strongest flavor was simply "red" from the food dye, but it didn't have the same cough syrup taste that the plain red had. The white base, again, is tasteless.

The texture on all of the gummies, regardless of flavor, was a very soft, chewy gel. The only difference with the gummy/cremes is that the creme base is harder and less chewy.

As a whole, this is a really fun candy. The shapes are cool, and they're very well molded. The flavors (besides the red) were really good and the texture was perfect. Hey Nestlé, we need our version of these!

Be sure to check out Cinabar's review here.



PURCHASED FROM:
Gift from Cinabar of Foodstuff Finds.

CALORIES:
164 calories per bag.

ADDITIONAL INFO:
Contains gelatin, and may contain traces of dairy.

OFFICIAL WEBSITE:
rowntrees-randoms.co.uk

Manischewitz Concord Grape Wine

This may be the post that finally causes my mother to board a plane from Atlanta to Los Angeles, for the sole purpose of coming to my house so she can slap me upside the head...

Wine is an important part of many meals, and the Seder dinner is no exception. The beginning of the meal starts with the kiddush, and during that a blessing is said over wine. The wine itself must, of course, be not only kosher but -- you guessed it -- kosher for Passover.

There are many, many kosher wines out there, and from what I have heard, some of them (I cannot say which, as I have not actually had them) are quite good. I went with Manischewitz because it is the brand that is most commonly found in American supermarkets, and also it's the subject of many a bad joke (which appeals to my warped sense of humor). It is also the wine that was used at my family's Passover dinners...and here's where my mother pulls out the whacking stick...



I should mention that my mother is not Jewish. Her roots are Italian and Albanian, and her religious affiliation -- on paper, at least -- is Roman Catholic. But she married into a Jewish family, and for her first big Passover Seder she decided to go with a combo of yummy homemade items, which naturally included our favorite honey-baked ham!

No, I am not making that up just for shock value. Yes, she really fed pork to Jews, and on Passover, no less. And no, she didn't do it out of some sick sort of latent anti-Semitism, either. She honestly figured that since she loves honey-baked ham so much, why wouldn't everyone else?

To be fair, though -- and thank G-d! -- that side of the family is very secular. They're pretty much the Jewish equivalent of the "holiday Catholics" that our side is, really only doing the bare minimum of observation, and even that just for the Jewish holidays. None of them keep kosher, and rest assured no one was offended. (Although my mother's embarrassment was...well, I can only leave you to imagine.)

The family's then-rabbi was invited to the next Seder the following night. (I don't know why exactly, but my mother did Seders two nights in a row.) For obvious reasons the ham was kept off this dinner's menu, but the Manischewitz wine was in attendance -- as was my then six-year-old stepbrother, who was raised Jewish.

Unnoticed by the adults, said stepbrother had grabbed of one of the many bottles of Manischewitz on the table. You see, he really loved grape juice. And he had been drinking a lot of the also-plentiful Kedem brand kosher grape juice...which looks just like wine when poured into a glass...and of course the Manischewitz has those gorgeous Concord grapes on the label...well, you can see where this is going, can't you?

It became clear when he passed out in front of the rabbi that he had been drinking something other than the Kedem. Yeah, I know it probably should have been more obvious, but when you have a pack of rowdy, loud, giggling six-year-olds running wild in the house, it can be hard to notice when one of them is a little more "off" than the others -- especially if that one tended to be the ringleader anyway. It has been something we have brought up ever since. And no, my mother has never again served ham at a Seder -- I think more out of hoping to hear the eventual end of it, rather than adding a second helping, so to speak.

Anyway, now that I am clearly out of the will...

I got my own bottle of Manischewitz. They make Concord grape, white grape, cherry, and black currant versions. We always had the Concord grape, so that is what I am using. (Though Googling has shown me that the Black Currant may actually be more popular.)

I also went with it chilled. Yes, it is a red wine, but that's the only way I have ever had it. I don't know if that is how it is best served, or if it is simply a preference that I have gotten used to.



It looks more like grape juice than actual wine to me. I am by no means a wine expert, but it seems thinner in body and more frothy than, let's say, a glass of Pinot Noir (my red of choice).

It smells vaguely wine-like. I say "vaguely," because it smells too sweet; more like store brand made-from-concentrate grape juice, or maybe a very cheap wine that Kool Aid mix was added to.

So how does it taste?

It tastes like purple! And what I mean by that is that it's like every other purple grape juice on the planet. Then add Dimetapp to it and toss in a healthy cup or two of sugar. If you have ever tasted Drank, you've got the idea. As a wine, it's perfectly dreadful. But as just some sort of a sweet grape drink (albeit with alcohol), that's another story. In fact, if you take the concept of the drink actually being wine out of the equation, it's really not horrible at all. It's one of those things that are so bad they're kind of good.

Again, I will be the first to admit that there are far more sophisticated kosher wines out there. But it would almost be a disservice to ignore this old and popular holiday staple.



PURCHASED FROM:
Gelson's Market

PRICE:
$4.50

OFFICIAL WEBSITE:
manischewitzwine.com (Cookies must be enabled.)

First Blush: Cabernet Juice

I have tried First Blush juice before (somewhere in the archives is a review of the Chardonnay juice) and I liked it. But sadly, they are only sold at one store in my area -- and wouldn't you know, it is not a store I go to very often. And unless First Blush is on sale, I'd rather get a bottle of "Two Buck Chuck" from Trader Joe's that's actually wine, instead of spending $2.99 for an 11.5-ounce bottle of grape juice.

But every now and then, they do go on sale...and I snapped a couple up.



First Blush juices are made from the juice of wine varietal grapes. Hence the juice contains some of the same qualities that the wine of the same name would have -- but with no alcohol. They also are caffeine and gluten free. They have no added sugar, no artificial colors or flavors. And there's a ton of antioxidants as well.

But how does it taste?

Well, the juice smells more like regular old grape juice than it does a glass of Cabernet wine. The color is dead-on identical to the wine -- but it forms that little foam around the rim of the glass that juice does and wine doesn't.

It doesn't taste like your kid's grape juice. It's very smooth and sweet. But it's a natural sweetness, rather than that slap-you-in-the-face HFCS sweet that many commercial grape juices have.



The best way I can describe the flavor is to say that it tastes like raisin juice. Yes, I fully realize that raisins are grape mummies -- but still, raisins taste different than grapes do. Just imagine that someone somehow juiced some raisins and made a drink out of it. I know that doesn't sound too appealing, but it actually does taste good. It's like a super concentrated grape flavor. It's very smooth and there's no acid burn. The aftertaste is kinda like black cherry and molasses.

Honestly, if I didn't know that this juice was made from wine grapes, I wouldn't have put the two together. But it is seriously good juice in any case.


PURCHASED FROM:

Vons Supermarket

Kit Kat: Muscat Of Alexandria

Why do the U.S. Kit Kat bars never get the treatment their Japanese cousins do?

Japan, in addition to being the land of the rising sun, is also the land of a million special editions. Between the ever-rotating flavor roster of popular products like Pepsi, Pocky -- and yes, even Kit Kats -- I think I could easily review nothing but local Japanese products and never be bored. And sadly, while the American Kit Kats are good, they tend to be boring. Luckily, we can easily get cool things imported.

On my last trip to New York City I picked up this muscat (fancy name for grape) Kit Kat bar at one of my must-visit Asian shops: Kam Man Foods on Canal Street. I put the Kit Kats on my candy shelf and sort of forgot about them...hey, I review a lot of candy and it happens sometimes. Anyway, today I thought it was time for the Muscat Kit Kats to have their day.



When you open the box, the first thing that hits you is a very strong artificial fruit/flower smell. It doesn't exactly smell like grapes, or even raisins. It smells more like the lingering post-love aroma from the afternoon tryst of a dozen roses and a box of Fruity Pebbles -- only less appealing. And unlike its U.S. cousin, whose bar is one solid four-fingered piece, the Japanese version is broken up into two individually wrapped two-finger bars.



The fingers are a very, very faint sea foam green (quasi-albino grapes?) and are made with white chocolate. It's a pretty bar, I have to give it that much. And that's a good thing, because I really can't give it much else. You know those hot but not-so-bright girls that every workplace seems to have one of -- the ones who not only have no personality at all, but absolutely no clue what they're doing -- yet manage to keep their jobs simply because they look good? This is a candy version of that girl.



The wafers were perfectly crispy. The chocolate was smooth. It's the flavor that will knock you on your butt. I don't even have to stretch for a way to describe the flavor. I can tell you EXACTLY what it tastes like: Super-concentrated grape juice and really strong roses.

At first it's the grape that you taste. There is almost even the slight acidic tang that you would get with a cheap Chardonnay. Then the rose kicks in -- and it is not subtle. The actual chewing experience was just a bit much for me...but I have to say that once the grape and rose flavors mellow, the aftertaste is actually quite pleasant. Like a less powerful version of Fuwarinka Rose Gum. But honestly, I would just as soon get the gum. At least with the gum, you don't have to wait for the aftertaste to kick in before you taste something good.

Interesting, but...



PURCHASED FROM:
I purchased mine from Kam Man Foods in New York City, but my friends at J-List also carry an ever-changing selection of the various Kit Kat flavors...so be sure to check them out!