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Today was “Goodies” Day!

We were awoken to the sound of a pummel on the door. The parcel postie had arrived with a box of goodies sent to us by my mum. A rude awakening, but a welcome one!

And WHAT a treasure trove! Mr T Goodiness 🙂

Full of lovely surprises as well.


4 x Cheese Twisties

4 x Chicken Twisties

3 x Soya Chips

2 x Cadbuy Snack block

2 x Cadbury Caramello block

2 x Cadbury Marble block

1 x Cadbury Top Deck block

1 x Cadbury Dream block

2 x Whittaker’s Dark Chocolate 50% cocoa Rum ‘n’ Raisin

1 x Whittaker’s bite size coconut slab bag

1 x Whittaker’s bite size Almond Gold bag

2 x Twix share bags

2 x Snickers share bag

2 x Bounty share bags

1 x Raspberry liquorice bag

I have been particularly hankering after some raspberry liquorice of late, so to see a bag in the box was brilliant. The raspberry flavour of liquorice is harder to source over here than the standard aniseed flavour for some reason.

The goodies didn’t end there. My mum had sent a second, smaller box over. It arrived later in the afternoon. It contained a book I had bought on my last visit to Oz back in 2007 – which I had desperately wanted to bring back home with me – but I just had NO room to pack it in my luggage. My Oz booky wook 🙂

But wait, there’s more! (as Tim Shaw from the Demtel  ads used to say).

My mother-in-law Mozzy (real name Rita, but family call her Mozzy, a nickname) knows I’m a Whovian and collects things for me from the papers and stuff and had got these for me… 
Goodies!!! Goodies!!!! Goodie, Goodie, yum, yum!!!



 via Osfoora for iPhone




Our local chippy is in the Guardian newspaper’s list of the 50 best fish and chip shops. You can get fish bites (for the Aussies amongst you – fish cocktails) and chips before 4pm for £2.50 a serve! View the rest of the list HERE




Peanut butter just hasn’t tasted like peanut butter should for me for some time.

In recent times I hadn’t been so concerned as ASDA had been selling an ‘Extra Special’ variety made with cashew nuts which was SUPERB! But earlier this year ASDA stopped selling the ES chashew nut version. Damn you ASDA!!! So then my search began for an appropriate peanut butter replacement. There just isn’t one!! Due to FSA regulations or some other inherent crap, I am no longer allowed to buy sweet peanut butter! Most to me taste like (for want of a better description) peanutty butter – bland, not sweet and just…nutty. To compensate this I would spread a thin vaneer of honey onto my toast/muffin before adding the dour peanut butter. On a recent visit to a Morrisons supermarket I discovered Reese’s Pieces. I knew of the Peanut Cups and had had them several times but the pieces sounded like fun! Like peanut butter filled Smarties or M&Ms! I bought a packet and LOVED them! Next Morrisons shop I bought several more. Then during our last trip to Morrisons I couldn’t find them. Not ONE pack! I came away forlorn and heartbroken. Not to worry, there are plenty of online specialty shops selling U.S. sweets, I’ll track some down! Morrisons sold a 43gm bag of pieces for 27p. The cheapest I found a bag from a specialty shop? EIGHTY NINE PENCE, my friends!!!! I found an online shop that did larger bags so I got the price of a 43gm serve down to about 67p – the best I could find. While at this shop I saw they sold several other Reese’s products, including variations of the peanut cups, nutrageous bars, etc. On the list were jars of Reese’s peanut butter. I thought “Hang on a minute! If the peanut butter tastes the same as what’s in the chocolates, it’ll be deliciously sweet!” Squee!!! I took a gamble and ordered two jars. And oh my word! What a great choice I made! Reese’s have saved me from unsweet peanut butter hell! Now having peanut butter on an English muffin or toast once again feels like the treat it should be! No more adding honey – it just isn’t the same. Hershey’s maybe poo but Reese’s are the BOMB (irony is Reese’s is MADE by Hershey’s, WTF?!)! 



For those that love them, they’re a halcyon taste of childhood. But that’s not everyone. Will you be making a special trip to buy Hershey’s Kisses? 
New chocolate is one of those things (like new cheese, new restaurants and, I am told, new shoes) which cannot fail to pique the interest. However cheap, sweet or low in cocoa solids it may be, a frisson of curiosity accompanies each innovation. New shapes and variations must be tasted, if only to be tossed, barely chewed, over one’s shoulder on the way to Paul A Young’s. Until now. Hershey’s Kisses are coming to the UK and that is something I absolutely cannot get in bed with.

The fact that the diddy conical filth-bombs are on a list (as yet unconfirmed) of Hershey’s products expected to be sold exclusively by Asda next year may explain, finally, why Mum’s gone to Iceland. They have a distinctive character, described by Paul Richardson in his history of chocolate as “a piquant background flavour of something faintly sour, cheesy, or overripe, what chocolate experts call a ‘barnyard’ taste.”

As anyone who has plunged their hand excitedly into a crackling bagful brought back from America (or a posh UK food shop with a penchant for kitsch) will know, there is nothing like the disappointment of discovering that a food which boasts an impressive amount of cultural glamour has all the flavour notes of regurgitated milk.

It’s not just the taste of ming, though powerful, which is objectionable. Given its innocent moniker, the Hershey’s Kiss, introduced in 1907 and trademarked in 1924, can pose a surprising threat to our physical and emotional wellbeing. They are the source, of course, of some NSFW innuendo. But more importantly, as a child our own Lucy Glennon drew blood at the sharp end of one. And there is an episode of Supernanny US in which a family, ripped apart by grief, misguidedly offer the children “candy” if they kiss a picture of their recently-departed grandpappy. I have a distinct feeling that that candy was a Kiss.

Richardson also notes that tastes in confectionery set up cultural barriers as rigid as religion, and we wouldn’t argue with that. Homesick Brits eager for a taste of home have been disgusted to find that our own Cadbury’s Dairy Milk has a foreign taste and texture in Ireland, America and elsewhere (the betrayal is compounded, of course, by the fact that Hershey makes Cadbury’s products in the US). But just as many of us struggle to see what is wrong with a Terry’s Chocolate Orange, Americans (even gourmet ones) brought up with Hershey’s Kisses seem unable to know the taste that dominated every Valentine’s Day mini-gift and Halloween treat for what it is.

Iron Chef Judy Joo, erstwhile of the Saveur magazine test kitchen and the Gordon Ramsay empire, was brought up in New Jersey, where she fell in love with Hershey’s Kisses. “They’re totally an American nostalgia thing for me,” she says. “When I was little we used to let them melt in our mouths and lick our lips with the chocolate and give everyone chocolate kisses. I love them. I used to make peanut butter and kisses cookies with a little Hershey’s Kiss snuggled in the middle.” She doesn’t know when she last ate one, but remembers, “I had a special way of eating them.  I used to rub the pointy top against my tongue in a circle until it was gone and then eat the round sphere that was left in one bite. Maybe you’ll like them more if you eat them that way!”

Nice try, Judy, but in a chocolate-based game of snog, marry, avoid, Hershey’s ain’t getting no kisses from me. Is anyone prepared to defend these tapering terrors?

The story bore this comment which gave me the giggles. Many refered to Hershey Kisses tasting of sick/vomit but this one was the best! via americansweets.co.uk

Sooooooooo want!!!


 

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