REVIEW: Sour Patch Kids Lemonade Fest

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Since Sour Patch Kids are famously “Sour. Sweet. Gone,” it only makes sense there would be an entire pack devoted to lemonade, that spectacular drink that perfectly balances sour and sweet. (Seriously, I think we take lemonade for granted.)

Sour Patch Kids Lemonade Fest consists of four lemonade flavors:

  • Strawberry lemonade (pink)
  • Blue raspberry lemonade (blue)
  • Lemonade (yellow)
  • Cherry lime lemonade (red)

Strawberry lemonade has a lovely fake strawberry flavor. Look, this is a candy, so I don’t care if it tastes fake. It tastes just as I hoped it would! I’m not sure if I can detect lemon per se, but it’s hard to notice something that’s known for being sour in a candy that’s already sour.

Blue raspberry lemonade is good, but I’m not sure I would guess it was raspberry in a blind taste test. It’s more generically sweet and sour.

I think plain lemonade is the sourest of the bunch. It’s just regular lemon, but sometimes you just need the simple classics, and I’m glad it’s in the mix.

Cherry lime lemonade is fascinating. It has a hint of bitterness like you would get from actual limes. Whatever cherry is in there takes a backseat to the lime. This is the closest to something you would find in nature.

Honestly, if I were just mindlessly eating these, I think the cherry lime flavor is the only one I would notice is different from the others. If I eat all four at once, it’s very sour, but no flavor sticks out. Even though they are all similar, I think I like these four flavors more than I like most Sour Patch Kids mixes!

While many candy mixes have fan favorites, I don’t think there’s one flavor I look forward to more than the others in this case. I might have favorite Starbursts, favorite movies, or favorite children*, but I don’t have a favorite of the Sour Patch Kids Lemonade Fest mix.

*Note: I don’t actually have children. Which means I get to keep these all to myself!

Purchased Price: $2.75
Size: 8.02 oz bag
Rating: 8 out of 10
Purchased at: Dollar General
Nutrition Facts: (12 pieces) 110 calories, 0 grams of fat, 25 milligrams of sodium, 27 grams of carbohydrates, 23 grams of sugar (including 23 grams of added sugar), and 0 grams of protein.

REVIEW: Popeyes Classic Bacon & Cheese Chicken Sandwich

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Will you ever catch a rainbow? Will you ever get within whispering distance of Taylor Swift? Will you ever watch everything available on Netflix? Does adding bacon and cheese make Popeyes’ already great chicken sandwich even better?

The answer to all of these questions is no.

Popeyes’ new Classic Bacon & Cheese Chicken Sandwich combines the chain’s original Chicken Sandwich (with barrel-cured pickle slices, mayo, and buttery toasted brioche buns) with a few bacon slices and some Havarti cheese. Oh, and to make the others on the menu feel included, bacon and cheese are also available on all Popeyes Chicken Sandwich varieties, even the returning Blackened version (which is now a permanent item).

I’ve never had bacon from Popeyes, but after peeling a small rogue piece off the bun and tasting it, I have to say that it was the most memorable piece of fast food bacon I’ve ever had. It was smoky, meaty, salty, and slightly crispy. Unfortunately, most of the flavor characteristics get lost when eating it with the rest of the sandwich. There’s a hint of smokiness, but the bacon’s texture is more noticeable than its flavor.

While the bacon doesn’t provide much taste, the Havarti is pretty much like a ghost, opaque and flavorless. I don’t know how Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man do it. Even when eating the cheese on its own, I couldn’t detect any flavor. Although, if it did have some, I imagine it would be hard for the mild tasting cheese to compete with the mayo, pickles, and the chicken’s Cajun spices.

With that said, I’m not in any way, shape, or form saying this sandwich is terrible. It’s just not worth the premium. It still pretty much tastes like Popeyes’ Classic Chicken Sandwich, and biting into it confirms that Popeyes’ offering continues to be my favorite fast food chicken sandwich. There’s a very slight smokiness from the bacon, but that doesn’t make this better than the original and it’s not enough to convince me to repurchase it. If I want a Popeyes sandwich that tastes like the chain’s Classic Chicken Sandwich, I’d just buy the original, which is also a dollar cheaper.

Purchased Price: $7.99*
Rating: 7 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: 830 calories, 53 grams of fat, 19 grams of saturated fat, 1.5 grams of trans fat, 120 milligrams of cholesterol, 1875 milligrams of sodium, 51 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of fiber, 8 grams of sugar, and 36 grams of protein.

*Because I live on a rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, things are a bit pricier here. You’ll probably pay less than I did.

REVIEW: Morningstar Farms Pringles Original Flavored Chik’n Fries

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Morningstar Farms has teamed up with fellow Kellogg’s brand, Pringles, to bring us Pringles Original Chik’n Fries.

You might ask, “What the heck is a Chik’n Fry?” Well, it’s when you take the food that you normally feed TO chickens, mash it together, fry it up, and give it a clever name. In this case, they’ve also taken the extra step to hopefully bring more folks into the fold of plant-based foods by wrangling in the Pringles brand. These pairings are tactful, and the results can be very successful. I tend to enjoy Morningstar Farms’ plant-based breakfast patties and spicy chik’n products, so I was hopeful when picking these up.

(Before baking, banana for scale. I did not bake the banana.)

Upon first impression, I found these chik’n fries to be small and narrow, similar in size to fast food chicken fries I’ve tried in the past. I don’t have an air fryer, so I followed the standard oven instructions. Based on what my in-laws keep telling me, I’m sure these would have tasted better if blessed by the holy burps of an air fryer, so maybe someone else can try that and let us know in the comments.

The fries came out of the oven a nice golden brown and glistening slightly. They smelled great and had developed a crunch on the exterior. Ketchup clung to the side without any trouble and without bending the fry.

Unfortunately, that’s where most of the appetizing attributes ended. If I closed my eyes, you could convince me I’d bitten into a fish stick with years of freezer burn. They were very, very bland. The crunchy coating was fine but definitely under-seasoned. Aren’t Pringles salty? And speaking of Pringles, the ingredient line on these Pringles Original Chik’n Fries lists “potato chips,” but as I’m sure regulars of this site are already aware, Pringles are potato CRISPS. Were Pringles even used? Then again, if they were, and Pringles are re-formed dried potatoes, does that mean they formed Pringles just to crush them back up again and encrust this bland rectangle? The world may never know.

The texture of these plant-based chik’n fries was on par with Morningstar Farms products. They have developed a nice layered matrix that resists when you bite just enough to simulate something close to a chicken nugget. The inside appearance gives itself away as plant-based pretty quickly, but I don’t think that matters as much for some reason.

Overall, I just wish these tasted better. With a co-brand like Pringles, I was expecting some irresistible savory flavors, but I didn’t find it in either the coating or the chik’n. Maybe they’ll do better with the Scorchin’ Cheddar Cheeze flavor expected later this fall. But even as a type that, I realized “Cheeze” is spelled with a Z, meaning it’ll probably be a non-dairy flavor powder. We can hope for the best, I suppose.

Purchased Price: $6.99
Size: 13.5 oz bag
Rating: 5 out of 10
Purchased at: Mariano’s (Kroger)
Nutrition Facts: (about 5 pieces) 200 calories, 10 grams of fat, 1.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 670 milligrams of sodium, 19 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of fiber, 2 grams of sugar, and 11 grams of protein.

REVIEW: Monterey Jack & Garden Tomato SunChips

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I don’t know why I can’t put down this bag of Monterey Jack & Garden Tomato SunChips. It’s as if my body is telling itself that it’s starving for whole grains, which it totally is, thanks to my diet of everything I eat for this site.

It’s puzzling to me because it’s not as if these chips have a flavor that explodes in my mouth like the gasses in the sun. Yeah, I taste the cheese and tomato, but the seasoning doesn’t pound my taste buds like I’m scraping off the toppings of a cheese pizza with my front teeth. Even after eating almost half the bag, my fingers aren’t even close to being coated in seasoning like they would be if I ate Cheetos, Doritos, or anything labeled Flamin’ Hot.

Basically, if SunChips decided to make a “pizza” flavor, this would be it. But calling it “pizza flavor” probably wouldn’t mesh with SunChips’ healthy whole grain push. Maybe its pizza-like flavor is why I can’t stop shoving my hand into the bag because I love pizza-flavored things that aren’t actual pizza, like pizza-flavored Pringles.

Right now, I’m dangerously close to finishing this bag in one sitting because I’ve started pulling out the small broken chips that settled to the bottom. That also means I’ve probably consumed a meal’s worth of SunChips. Thank goodness this has 30% less fat than potato chips. So eating the whole bag is like eating an entire pint of Halo Top, where it’s okay to eat all of it in one sitting, right?

(Looks at the bag, does math). Nope. Not like Halo Top.

Well, at least I’ll get 133 grams of whole grain.

Purchased Price: $4.99
Size: 7 oz bag
Purchased at: Times Supermarket
Rating: 8 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (about 14 chips/28 grams) 140 calories, 6 grams of fat, 0.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 140 milligrams of sodium, 19 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of fiber, 2 grams of sugar (including 2 grams of added sugar), and 2 grams of protein.

REVIEW: Wendy’s Canned Chili

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Fast food sneaks into the grocery store with varying degrees of success. Taco Bell’s range of products, from shells to sauces, are mostly fine. Arby’s frozen curly fries? Awful. In olden times, before I got sober, it was pretty hard to beat White Castle’s frozen cheeseburgers after a night spent over-imbibing. (The real thing would be the preferable choice, obviously, but we haven’t had them in my market for a couple of decades now.)

I’ve never been a regular consumer of Wendy’s chili. I’ve had it a few times on top of a potato, sure, but it’s never anything I’ve specifically set out to consume. But now that it’s available in canned form, I felt like I needed to have both. And that I should taste them side-by-side. Blindfolded, in fact, to see if I could tell which was which.

Is a blindfolded taste test a little elaborate for a can of chili? No. No, it’s not.

The first one I tried was thick and meaty. There were plenty of beans and a moderate amount of seasoning. It was salty, but not unbearably so. There were no discernible chunks of tomato, but the base was plenty tomato-y with a slight tang. If you’re into heat, this one won’t do much for you; I’ve received kisses from my grandmother that were spicier than this.

The next chili was much thinner than the first. Soupy, even. The meat chunks were few and far between. There were large, acidic pieces of stewed tomato. The base was sweet with just a little hint of heat. Despite nearly everything else being entirely different, the beans were identical to the beans in the first bowl.

So, two very different chilis allow me to say this: if you dislike Wendy’s chili, you might still like the canned version. Conversely, if you love Wendy’s version, don’t necessarily expect to love the canned variety, too. You might, you might not.

But the moment you’re all waiting for — which chili was which? The first chili — the meaty, seasoned one that I enjoyed quite a bit — was the canned version. The runny bland one was the ACTUAL Wendy’s chili.

Is this a shocking revelation? Perhaps not. Handmade chili from a human Wendy’s person is liable to vary in quality; AI chili made by a robot and canned by a machine is bound to be more formulaically standard. But this isn’t a bad thing. I’d definitely buy the canned chili again, but the other one? I feel no such compulsion.

Purchased Price: $4.42
Size: 15 oz can
Rating: 7 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (per 1 cup) 280 calories, 12 grams of fat, 5 grams of saturated fat, 0.5 grams of trans fat, 65 milligrams of cholesterol, 1040 milligrams of sodium, 26 grams of carbohydrates, 7 grams of fiber, 6 grams of sugar (2 grams of added sugar), and 17 grams of protein.

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