Golia Caramelle Respira

One of the good things about moving back home to SoCal is that I have been able to revisit many of my old foodie stomping grounds.
One of which is a long standing chain of Italian groceries in the L.A. area called Claro's.

Claro's has a rather impressive candy selection at my local store and I picked up a bag of what I thought was licorice.

The small semi-hard lozenges are indeed made with licorice but imagine my surprise when I realized they were very, very strong to the point it made me think they were mentholated!
What I didn't notice on the bag until I had one in my mouth is that it also says "respira" Yes, my lovely bag of licorice was actually a lovely bag of cough drops!

The thing is a mentholy licorice is oddly addicting. Oh, sure I had a pretty big "WTF?!" moment at first but once you get over the shock the licorice it's self is dark and has a deep molasses note to it (yes, once again it reminded me of Panda) there is a little anise working around in there as well. As best I could tell from my limited Italian and the help of Babel Fish there is no actual menthol in the drops but it does have licorice juice (which accounts for the strong flavor) and once you are used to it, it actually reminded me a lot of Sambuca or Anisette. Minus the fact that it stains your tongue a lovely dark brown it did leave my mouth feeling tingly and clean. And while I had no cough to start with I would certainly prefer these over a standard drop any day.

Even if they weren't what I expected I am going to keep a stash of these on hand,

PURCHASED FROM:
Claro's Italian Market

Ritter Sport- Rotwein Truffle

Who could resist a red wine truffle?

I couldn't which is why I snapped this up on a recent visit to my local German deli.
This deli has a truly impressive assortment of Ritter Sport bars imported directly from Germany. I had no idea that they had so many flavors!

The red wine truffle bar immediately caught my eye because it seemed so different to the rest of the line.

When you open the package if you take a good whiff you can tell right away that this is flavored with red wine. It's sort of reminded me of the smell of cheap table wine meets Raisinettes- which is actually more pleasant then it sounds.

The truffles are made with a creamy milk chocolate that is on the sweeter side. In different circumstances it would be a little too sweet for me. But with bitterness of the wine it works really well. The truffle filling is a soft creme- based on the smell I had been worried that there would be a more liquid center. The initial flavor of the center again reminded me mostly of raisin. The after taste however is all red wine.

I am not going to tell you that you would be able to pin down the type of red wine it is supposed to be, it reminded me most of the cheap jugs of Carlo Rossi table wines my Grandmother kept on hand (truth be told the Paisano is a perfectly serviceable cheap table wine) but there is no doubt that it is a red wine filling.

I liked it enough that I would buy it again!

PURCHASED FROM:
Upland German Deli