Tag: product reviews

Cooking with Jake, Products, Mary

“calzone” pita bread and mini naan pizzas with bonsavor flatbreads

Flatbreads, naan, pita breads, tortillas and more arrived at my doorstep in a big old box not too long ago. One look at it made me think, “Oh god, will I be able to use all of this before it goes bad? What am I going to make?!” I took a bunch of it over to Jake’s so his family could partake in the goodness from BonSavor. And then… something strange happened. The stars, the moon, the planets and the sun all aligned and Jake volunteered to cook and to make something with the flatbreads!

Oh my stars.

[BonSavor Pita Bread]

Jake has cooked instead of me maybe a handful times in our whole five year relationship. Once he made sloppy joe with ground pork and well… let’s just say that I still rib him about it from time to time.

Funny thing is that he was the first one of us to cook for the other. He made me a chicken dinner and I remember being impressed that he wanted to cook for me in the first place. I had never had a boy cook for me before!

The other funny thing? The first thing I ever made for him was some awful pasta salad and I absolutely hated it. Was embarrassed by it. Was convinced he only ate it to make me feel better. I had never made the recipe before and the flavors came out all weird.

To this day he still insists that it was good. Bless him.

[BonSavor Naan]

Imagine my surprise then when Jake not only wanted to cook but he didn’t want my help at all.

He was getting all serious on me. It was so cute!

He got the idea to use the pita bread as like an open faced “calzone”. He wanted to do something else with the naan, but at the last minute decided to use them to make mini pizzas since he couldn’t think of anything else. No problem with me!

[mini meatball pizzas on naan flatbread]

Jake made his own from scratch sauce and made little meatballs. He did a few variations – one with just cheese and meatballs (ricotta and mozzarella), one with both cheeses, sauce and meatballs, and one without ricotta.

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Normal Heights, Products, San Diego County, Mary

viva pops / normal heights – san diego, ca

Hot summer days demand cool and refreshing treats. The frozen treats made at Viva Pops in Normal Heights is definitely a good option for any warm day with their mix of creative flavors. I don’t know of any other place that puts goat cheese into a frozen treat. That right there is reason enough to swing by and check this place out.

Here’s their menu from the day that we visited. The menu changes and rotates and frequently, considering everything is made fresh at the store and depends on local produce to create their frozen treats. Some of the flavors that really caught my eye were the Lavender Lemonade, the Tri-Color Melon (which is made with three different types of melon) and the Key Lime Pie bars.

I was also impressed to see that they make dog pops so your pup can also have a treat! The dog pops are sold by donations, which are donated to Second Chance Dog Rescue. Tugged at my heart strings a little to hear that. Sadly I didn’t have Maya with me that afternoon, otherwise she would gotten a dog viva pop!

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Miscellaneous, Mary, Products

honest tea

I got the opportunity to try a handful of Honest Tea flavors this summer.

Honest Tea makes its products with all organic products – focusing on the tea and the flavor.

Among the flavors I got to try (from left to right): (Not Too) Sweet Tea, Half & Half, Pomegranate Blue , Orange Mango and Cranberry Lemonade.

Regular sweet tea has always been too much for me – to me, it just tastes like really sweet sugar water. Honest Tea’s version of “sweet tea” is much better. It’s sweet without being overbearing. It’s sweet but still drinkable. Sweet, but you can still taste the tea!

The Half & Half is organic tea with lemonade. This was one of my favorite flavors of the five I tried since I love the lemonade and tea combination. The lemonade adds just the right amount of lemon and sweetness to this flavor of tea. It’s not quite as strongly flavored as other teas, so this one is much better if the bottle is cold, rather than pouring it over ice.

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Products, Mary

gluten free baked goods from butterfly bakery

I was recently sent samples of gluten free baked goods from the Butterfly Bakery. No, no, I’m gluten free or anything. I had actually asked if I could try the sugar-free goods, but I guess that just wasn’t going to happen and a few weeks later I got these gluten free baked goods in the mail.

I’m very skeptical of gluten free products and if they’ll taste good or not. Since I’m perfectly okay with eating up glutens, I really tend to shy away from gluten free stuff since well, I don’t really need or want to eat them. But hey, I’ll still try things.

I was sent two products to try:

The sliced plain vanilla creme cake and…

banana walnut mini muffins.

[Vanilla Creme Cake Facts & Ingredients]

Both products are made with 100% teff flour – which is a very small grain, about the size of a poppy seed.

[Banana Nut Muffin Facts]

I’ll admit now that I know nothing about teff flour. Or about gluten free products. Let’s just consider this a taste test from a non-gluten person to you.

I had a furry little helper with me while I was taking photos and taste testing the products. I guess this was a sniff test. Sniff test was approved and I was able to move on to the next step.

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Recipes, Products, Mary

homemade mashed potato pizza with cholula

Over the weekend I told Jake I was finally getting around to writing my post on URBN with their crazy mashed potato pizza. He casually suggested that I should try and remake that mashed potato pizza. He also hinted that he thought I could do a little better.

He is definitely a keeper.

One of the things I remember from our outing at URBN is that our waitress wisely suggested the addition of the Cholula sauce as a topping on the pizza. She was so right – it had given the pizza the extra “oomph” it needed and I ended up devouring a few slices. Not long after I was contacted by a rep asking if I’d like to sample their line of Cholula sauces. It all came together over the weekend when I received the samples and tried my hand at creating my own version of the mashed potato pizza.

[There’s more than one kind! From left to right: Original, Chili Garlic, Chiptole and Chili Lime]

A) Before being contacted, I had no idea there was more than one flavor and B) I had never had Cholula before we went to URBN.

I always thought Cholula would be “too hot” or “too spicy” for me, but actually it’s not that bad. It doesn’t have the kind of heat that lingers and then beats you up – it’s a gentler heat, more of a spice and kick of flavor than anything else.

Jake and I both tried each sauce with a spoonful of mashed potatoes to see what flavor we liked best. I balked a few times at the amount of sauce he poured on. He’d give me a look that said, “You’re kind of a wimp.” But he’d eat half of it so there was less sauce and then I was amiable to eating it again. Of the four, I like Original and Chili Garlic the best. The Chili Garlic has a good punch of garlic flavor mingling in with the original spice, making it one of my favorites. The Chipotle was a little too spicy and bold for me while the Chili Lime was just okay. Not being a huge fan of lime to begin with, I might have been a little biased against it.

[unbaked mashed potato pizza, ready for the oven]

Onto the pizza making! I bought my pizza dough from Trader Joe’s. I am determined to do my own dough soon, but it was not this day.

It’s best to let the dough rest for 20-30 minutes before handling (I do it while the oven is coming up to temperature). Spread a bunch of flour over a cutting board and just let it rest out of the package. It’ll be easier to work with once it gets rid of a bit of the chill.

I slowly flatten the dough once it’s been rested and then use my hands to gently spin it in the air. I don’t toss it around or anything, I just use my knuckles and keep moving it in a circle until it stretches out nicely. I find that doing it in the air is the easiest way, letting gravity do most of the work.

[mmm, pizza]
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