I have a weird relationship with food. I get into moods where everything has to be just right. When I eat, I never mix my food together. I judge each next bite against the qualities of the previous bite. Example: If I’m eating rice and stir fry and I just had a bite with alot of sauce and vegetables, I make sure the next bite I take has more rice and meat. I also have this thing about eating in front of the TV. I can’t eat if something good isn’t on. Seriously, I’ll let my food go cold while I’m flipping through the channels. Hopefully, I find something- or at the very least, something in the next time block! I also ABSOLUTELY hate taking the last piece of food while eating with a group. I’ll stare at it while my stomach gurgles but will rarely go for it.
Wow! In my random interweb surfings, I ran across an article about craving and chewing ice being related to health problems. Not frostbite or chipped teeth as you might expect, but iron deficiency anemia! It’s not sure why they crave ice, but studies show it’s true!
I used to chew crushed ice every day in high school. Not sure if I had any related health problems. I loved doing it and was always disappointed if they ran out of ice that day. I used to hear that people who chew ice are sexually frustrated. Did I mention I used to chew ice in high school?
We picked these up at World Market for $2.29. If you’ve never been to World Market, it’s kind of hard to describe. They’re a big store sell stuff from around the world. Well, I guess it wasn’t too hard to describe after all. They stock things from rugs to packaged foods to vases to toys. It’s a fun place to waste some time in. Or pick up candy with little English on the package!
I’ve never tasted currants before but I have seen them while watching food network. Not sure what they actually taste like but surely didn’t expect to find candy that’s currant influenced. Here’s what good ole wiki has to say about redcurrants:
Redcurrant fruit is slightly more sour than its relative the blackcurrant, and is cultivated mainly for jams and cooked dishes, rather than for eating raw. For example, in Scandinavia it is often used in fruit soups and summer puddings, and in Germany it is also used in combination with custard or meringue as a filling for tarts.
And apparently as German gummy candy! They have a VERY strong flavor to them. The taste is kind of like a sour artificial raspberry flavor on steroids. There’s almost a medicine-y taste to it. Or maybe a fruit rollup rejected flavor. And yet, they’re oddly addictive. At least once I got past how strong the flavor was. It’s a pretty different flavor than we have here in the states.
So next time you have a craving for artificially flavored sour cough syrup fruit rollups(and you know you will) give these Katjes Sour Red Currant Gummies a shot!
I always go to Neighborhood Grill for, oddly enough, their snow cones. I’m in love with the “sour head” you can add to any flavor. I used to be a sour freak as a kid and sour head is probably the most sour substance I’ve ever put in my mouth if you don’t mix your snow cone beforehand. And that’s a good thing! They also boast about being named one of the cleanest restaurants in Arlington, always a good thing! I’d only once eaten food there(chicken philly cheese) and it was great. Since we’re running a segment on finding the best two dollar burger in Arlington this month, I figured I’d give them the first crack at it.
I went with their cheeseburger for $1.79. As always, I went “all the way” with the veggies. This includes lettuce, tomato and onion with mayo and ketchup. I brought this one home since it was almost closing time. I love the picnic table pattern on the wrappers, it really reminds you that this is not a McBleh burger. It’s a nice big burger for the price. I actually measured it to be 5 inches wide. The bun is grilled on both sides which is a nice touch. The beef patty was a nice size, but somewhat average in taste. Just a little on the dry side. What makes this burger is the flavor. The mayo looks to be a little bit peppered and gives it a really satisfying flavor. There are just enough veggies on there, not skimpy but also not falling out of the bun(which I hate). All of this gives it a great flavor and a great price!
They have a great menu and really good prices. And if you go, make sure to get a snow cone with some sour head! And tell Sammy we said hi!
Neighborhood Grill in Arlington, TX gets a 4 out of 5 on the awesomeness meter!
Keeps you yodeling all night long? We’ll see about that! This is actually a sample I picked up from the food show I went to recently. Free stuff always tastes better! They were being handed out by a couple blonde models in Austrian gear. Pretty out of place at a food show, but I’m not complaining. A little bit of searching shows that most of the news around this drink comes from Gene Simmons endorsing it. Oh, and also having sex with one of the models. On tape. With a background like that, we’ve got to try it! Oh, and it’s from Austria and junk.
Frank’s Energy Drink comes in four different flavors: classic, sugar free, pineapple and lime. All I got was the classic but I wish that I could taste the pineapple and lime. Somewhat out of the box flavors for energy drinks which is definitely cool with me. The classic flavor I got comes in your average slim can that many energy drinks do. Key ingredients include Taurine, Niacin (Vitamin B3), Pantothenic Acid (Vitamin B5), Vitamin B6 (Pyridoxine Hydrochloride) and Vitamin B12 (Cyanocobalamin).
It’s lightly carbonated and tastes… well… like an energy drink. Not the fruity sweet stuff we have today. No, I mean the old school energy drinks that didn’t have real flavors. You drank it for the caffeine content. If I had to describe the flavor, it’s like red bull but sweeter at the end. Almost a syrupy bubble gum flavor. Not unpleasant but not much to brag about either. It scores some bonus points for high school energy drink nostalgia though! I’d really love to try their other flavors though- no idea where I can get some besides ordering online.
Sorry, no yodeling but it did wake me up so I could get some work done for my management class today. And sometimes, that really is quite a feat.
We’re going to start a new running theme. Every month, we’re going to choose a new food and find out who makes it best in Arlington. Whew, a break from snack food reviews! We’re not getting paid to do this(yet?) so each segment will also be affordable to the average college student(ie- me). Throughout the month, we’ll visit local restaurants that meet the criteria and review their foodwares. At the end of the month, we’ll crown a winner!
April is burger month! We’re going to scour Arlington Texas for the best cheap burger. With the price of gas everything going up, it’s good to know where you can still get a great burger for cheap! Here’s the criteria:
Must be under 2 dollars(before tax)- this will limit our selections to the basic burger and keep it affordable. Sorry, no triple bacon Kobe beef burger with truffle butter here!
We will review the burger closest to 2 bucks without going over(price is right rules!)
All burgers will be reviewed with “all the fixins”(veggies and condiments)
Must be in Arlington or the immediate surrounding area.
We’re going to stay away from the big guys: McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Sonics, etc. We love indie restaurants here!
Stay tuned or follow this link to check out our quest for the best burgers in Arlington!
If any ArlingtoniansArlingtonitesArlingtonauts?local folks have any suggestions, please comment! Where is the best place to get cheap burgers in Arlington?
Must be boring in Wisconsin… but still I commend these kids for standing up for a cause. Apparently, their buddies were suspended from playing sports because they were drinking out of red plastic cups in a picture. So theses kids decided to throw a root beer kegger. Their little protest was to prove that not all teens drink alcohol at parties. The cops showed up and made everyone take breathalyzers. Take that, the man!
Here’s the video from youtube. Notice that most of them sound high. I’m not sure if that’s from the sugar/caffeine rush or that’s what Wisconsin kids sound like. I love their Wisconsin accented gangsta speak.
Ok, I want to first point out that I only knew of one definition of pasty before today. A pasty, to me, is a little adhesive patch that is used to cover nipples, for sheer clothing or often used in strip clubs. So you can imagine my surprise when I saw this banner hanging on a building in south Arlington:
Did they leave the ‘r’ off of pastries?! No, they wouldn’t have missed that. Is it a meat product made to cover nipples? Hmmm….
No, that would be way too messy. I don’t even know what kind of glue you would have to use. It must be something else. Teach me, oh internet gods.
So apparently, pasties are also meat filled pies. Pssh, take the easy way out why don’t you. Still these things sound/look delicious!
I can’t wait to review these for you guys! No word as to when they’re opening, but when I hear something, I’ll post it up meat pie style!
Ok, so they’re not actually called Pervert chips. There’s really not much English on the bag at all. But the picture says it all:
I can honestly say, these are the most homo-erotic snacks I’ve ever eaten. I’m not even sure what the pictures have to do with chips. If anyone could give me a rough translation, that’d be awesome!
They taste surprisingly sweet and toasty at first, followed by a very strong fishy aftertaste. It tastes nothing like perverts. Or bi-curious teenage boys. Or so I would imagine. I’m not much of a seafood lover so I couldn’t see buying these again.
Peacock brand Fish Flavored Snacks get a 2.5 out of 5. They taste like a 2, but the bag art earns them an extra half point!
Quoth the roommate-”They taste sweeter than I thought, just like little boys.”
Don’t like you’re name? Well today’s you’re day! Apparently, on March 27th anyone can change their name to Joe for one day. The great part is that this is a unisex name. It could be short for Joseph or Joanna. It’s fun for everyone! And don’t stop there, if you’re going to lie about your first name today, make up a last name too! Here are some fun Joe names, including a couple culinary ones:
JoJo(great if you’re a 15 pop sensation!)
Bazooka Joe
Joe Blow
Cuppa Joe(sounds Italian!)
Joe Mamm(old school!)
So get up, chew some Bazooka bubble gum, go to your favorite coffee spot, introduce yourself to the barista as Joe, order a cup of joe, and relax listening to your ipod playlist of JoJo, Joey McIntyre, and K-C and Jojo.
We’ve all been sampling. On a Sunday morning(2pm), what’s better than strolling through the aisles of your local discount warehouse market or Whole Foods store and getting tiny tidbits of free food on frilly-topped toothpicks? It’s a true American pastime! But how many of you can say that you’ve been “sampled out” before. Can you say you’ve ingested so many bite sized morsels of food that you can’t take any more? We here in the netfoodie household can honestly say we did just that today.
Strike superhero pose. Cue wind machine.
Today, we went to our first food industry trade show, the Ben E. Keith Food Show at the Fort Worth Convention Center. We stumbled across this event as a tip from my Entrepreneurship prof at UT Arlington- Thanks Steve! I had no idea what to expect, so I dragged along my wife Angela and roommate James. We had a quick lunch at Jimmy John’s Gourmet Sandwiches and headed off to Fort Worth.
The entrance to the Food Show. Our sincerest apologies to the worker with the wedgie. This is seriously the best picture we have. All of our pictures have varying degrees of wedgie. Great photos James!
Next year, we’ll skip the lunch. We thought that there’d be some sampling to be had. “Some” turned out to be a gross understatement. Turns out “food show” is industry jargon for “sampling smorgasbord”. There were booths upon aisles upon rows of vendors begging you to try their products. You could not wipe the smile off my face with a brillo pad when I walked into the entrance.
We start off with a couple of your average toothpick-style samples before we hit the Maple Grove Farms table. “Do you like pancakes at home?” the man asks as he hands us a gallon jug of maple syrup. No, not just to look at or as part of a sales pitch. This man just gave us 128 fluid ounces of maple syrup. That’s when we knew we were in the right place. We simultaneously unbuckled our metaphoric belts. Now all we had to do was find a free pallet of pancakes.
This is not even a quarter of the free samples. The rest was stored as energy for the upcoming winter. Wait… it’s March. Crap.
More coverage of the Ben E. Keith Food Show to come. Must sleep off tummy full of samples.
I ran across these Skwinkles at Fiesta mart for 50 cents. They were awkwardly positioned next to the dog food, so I had to make sure I was eating people food. Check! These Skwinkles are these little inch long gummy worms with a chili dipping sauce. Hungry yet?
Lucas is a candy company out of Mexico that makes all sorts of Mexican treats. They’re headed by a cool duck with sunglasses. Maybe if I eat more candy, I could be as cool as him! I mostly remember them from their Lucas Limon Salt- basically a shaker of really sour salt. And you eat it straight up as candy. What the hell was I thinking when I was a kid?! Actually, they were really popular at my school and actually garnered a news station to have them test. The results showed them to have an unhealthy acidic level for kids. Yum! Who would have thought ingesting super sour salt was bad for you?
Anyways, the implied directions are to take the gummie worms and dip them in the dark red chili sauce. The gummie worms look like sour “nightcrawler” worms, but feel firmer. Once you bite into them, though, they’re much softer and have a light sweet flavor. The sauce is super thick: between syrup and a paste. It looks like it’d take some planning to not make a mess before you finish the candy. It has a sour/salty/sweet flavor-in that order- with a low dry heat to it. Not spicy, but definitely chili. Together, you get the sweetness of the gummie worms and the tartness and saltiness of the chili sauce. Overall, they work well together and are super flavorful.Overall, it’s definitely flavorful and definitely different. Not something I’d eat everyday, but not bad. I give Lucas Swkinkles a 3 out of 5 awesomenesses.
Roomate James says, “It tastes somewhere between putrid and sweet.”
I thought it’d be fun to do a little twist on the traditional Easter egg dying tradition. I picked up a dozen quail eggs at Hong Kong Supermarket for $1.19. I boiled them for 5 minutes, let them cool and dunked them in a homemade Easter Egg dye mixture of 4 parts hot water, 1 part vinegar and 5 drops of food coloring. Here’s my result!
They were more for a centerpiece than anything else, but I thought they looked awesome! They have a really earthy texture to them since quail eggs are naturally speckled. As an added bonus, I got to eat the boiled quail eggs later that night. I love boiled quail eggs with rice and a little soy sauce. Yum!
Hot damn! I finally found the Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos that Stephen Colbert has been raving over on the Colbert Report! I’ve been checking every store I go to and could not find a single bag! Today, I was getting stuff for our Easter BBQ and found them at Fiesta Mart in Arlington, TX. If you don’t have one nearby, you could always try to find them online: KatiesKandies has them.
Now are they worth it? Sure! I’ve had Sweet Chili chips before and haven’t liked them much. Usually they’re going for a Thai flavor and everything just ends up too dry tasting if that makes any sense. Too much heat and not enough flavor.
New Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos are surprisingly good. There’s definitely enough flavor to go around. It starts with a sweet cheesiness and gives you a little heat on the back end. It’s almost a BBQ taste. They weren’t very spicy to me, but some friends that tried them thought there was a decent amount of heat on them. They’re not my favorite Doritos flavor, but I definitely wouldn’t mind munching on them at a party or bbq. Or watching the Colbert Report. Gotta love that Colbert Bump!
Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos gets a 4 out of 5 on the awesomeness meter!
We picked these up at World Market for $2.29. If you’ve never been to World Market, it’s kind of hard to describe. They’re a big store sell stuff from around the world. Well, I guess it wasn’t too hard to describe after all. They stock things from rugs to packaged foods to vases to toys. It’s a fun place to waste some time in. Or pick up candy with little English on the package!
I always go to Neighborhood Grill for, oddly enough, their snow cones. I’m in love with the “sour head” you can add to any flavor. I used to be a sour freak as a kid and sour head is probably the most sour substance I’ve ever put in my mouth if you don’t mix your snow cone beforehand. And that’s a good thing! They also boast about being named one of the cleanest restaurants in Arlington, always a good thing! I’d only once eaten food there(chicken philly cheese) and it was great. Since we’re running a segment on finding the best two dollar burger in Arlington this month, I figured I’d give them the first crack at it.
Keeps you yodeling all night long? We’ll see about that! This is actually a sample I picked up from the food show I went to recently. Free stuff always tastes better! They were being handed out by a couple blonde models in Austrian gear. Pretty out of place at a food show, but I’m not complaining. A little bit of searching shows that most of the news around this drink comes from Gene Simmons endorsing it. Oh, and also having sex with one of the models. On tape. With a background like that, we’ve got to try it! Oh, and it’s from Austria and junk.
We’re going to start a new running theme. Every month, we’re going to choose a new food and find out who makes it best in Arlington. Whew, a break from 
I ran across these Skwinkles at Fiesta mart for 50 cents. They were awkwardly positioned next to the dog food, so I had to make sure I was eating people food. Check! These Skwinkles are these little inch long gummy worms with a chili dipping sauce. Hungry yet?
Hot damn! I finally found the Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos that Stephen Colbert has been raving over on the Colbert Report! I’ve been checking every store I go to and could not find a single bag! Today, I was getting stuff for our Easter BBQ and found them at