Survival Sunday 202: Trying New Things

New years tend to bring resolutions and planning and excitement. Sadly, I'm garbage at resolutions. I am, however, pretty good at keeping up with trying new things!

Here's what I've tried recently, after a quick trip to our local co-op.

I'm a big fan of Chocolove bars.
They're good chocolate with good poetry. Great combo!
This one is made with the newly discovered Ruby Cacao beans.

The bar itself is not dyed, to my knowledge.
That's just what milk ruby chocolate looks like!

I'm a chocoholic. It's a known fact amongst my friends and family that if you want to cheer me up, ply me with the bean bricks. Or the bean juice, since a good cup of cocoa is the best way to start the day. Especially when you combine it with coffee...

I digress.

This ruby chocolate bar was delicious. It had the kind of mellow smoothness you get with really good milk chocolate, with that silky feeling in your mouth as it melts. And the flavor! Oh man! There really is subtle fruity flavor to the chocolate, which doesn't appear to be added in the production but native to the cocoa itself. It's a little like the smell of raspberries, but the chocolate flavor overwhelms. The fact that Chocolove tends away from oversweetening their bars means that the milk chocolate flavor really shines here.

If you're a chocoholic or you're in love with one, get your hand on this stuff. It's amazing!

I'm kind of cheating here.
I've had Primal Strips before.
And Teriyaki is one of my favorites.

It tastes a million times better than it looks.

I'm a big fan of meat substitutes. I love me some meat, true, but I'm pretty much just as happy with fake meat products (especially chicken substitutes because I have the worst luck with chicken). Primal Strips are vegetarian or vegan jerkies with interesting flavors and various non-meat bases. The Teriyaki flavored strip is made with seitan, which is a wheat-based meat substitute which I love. It's got a great texture, it holds flavoring really well, and you can make it pretty much any shape you want with very little effort.

So I've had the teriyaki strips many times, and I love them. This time was no different, though I finally took pictures. Delicious. I will, however, say that it's not much of a teriyaki flavor as I'm accustomed to from other dishes. It's not sweet (at all). In fact, it has kind of a bland, mild soy-sauce flavor to it. If I were to make any suggestion it would be to try and add some pineapple juice to it so it had more of a sweet tone to it. It's still good, I just feel like it could be better.

I also love the weird spongey texture that seitan jerky has.

I'm not doing a great job of selling you guys on these, am I? :P

Alright, that'll probably be all from me today!

Go Enjoy Something!
FC