Food

I loooove me some coffee. I look forward to my morning coffee in my Disney mug enjoyed on my way to work each day. Granted, half of my cup is filled with french vanilla creamer, but it’s still a treat that I enjoy once and sometimes twice a day (sometimes I want an evening treat too). I’m usually pretty relaxed about my coffee, the only thing that is a must for me is french vanilla creamer. I don’t really need crazy flavors or super fancy coffee (except when I go to other people’s houses and they want to make it for me!). I’ve only been drinking coffee a few years, so I’m always willing to try new varieties and brands to see if I’ll like it more than what I currently drink.

I recently had the opportunity to try Green Mountain Coffee’s Fair Trade varieties.

 

 

From Green Mountain:

There’s no finer way to start, enjoy or end your day than with a great cup of coffee. Every delicious sip is a reminder to live better. It’s such a fantastic feeling, you probably thought the experience couldn’t get any richer. But now it can! When you drink Fair Trade Certified^™ coffee from Green Mountain Coffee^®, you aren’t the only one benefiting from your great-tasting cup of joe.

With flavorful Fair Trade Certified^™ Green Mountain Coffee^®, you’re ensuring a better cup of coffee for yourself and a better quality of life for farmers. Your purchase doesn’t just impact farmers — it benefits the surrounding communities, too. How so? Fair Trade:

• Helps farmers get a fair price for their beans
• Improves working conditions
• Assists in protecting the environment
• Supports community development with projects resulting in new schools, roads, health clinics and safer drinking water

In the end, all this enables farmers to invest in better quality coffee for – who else? – you! Who knew that by preparing to conquer your day, you’d be helping so many others conquer theirs?

Green Mountain Coffee^®:

• Provides a great cup of coffee packed with good vibes
• Has a delightful, quality selection of Fair Trade Certified^â„¢ coffees available for everyone’s taste and enjoyment, including Colombian Fair Trade Select and Sumatran Reserve
• Offers a delicious assortment of seasonal Fair Trade Certified^â„¢ flavored coffees (such as Pumpkin Spice and Spicy Eggnog), to perfectly balance your coffee with the weather
• Is the leading brand in K-Cup^® packs for Keurig^® brewers
• Is readily available in most grocery stores, at stores like Target and Wal-Mart and online at GreenMountainCoffee.com and Keurig.com
• Includes one of the largest selections of Fair Trade Certified^â„¢ coffees in the U.S.

I tried 4 flavors:

Wild Mountain Blueberry

Sumatran Reserve

Vermont Country Blend

Colombian Fair Trade Select

 

 

The flavor I was most interested in trying was the Wild Mountain Blueberry. Yep, I said Blueberry. Definitely not a flavor I’m used to seeing on my coffee containers.

 

 

By the way, my Keurig stopped working a few weeks ago, but that doesn’t mean it stopped me from enjoying my K-cup coffee! I simply cut open the K-cup…

 

 

and poured the coffee into my regular coffee maker and it brewed it as usual.

 

 

I put a regular coffeemaker on my Amazon wish list, but I’m still debating if I’d rather ask for a Keurig instead. I like the Keurig so I don’t have to deal with coffee grinds, but a regular coffeemaker is better when we have family and friends over. Decisions, decisions.

Sooo back to the coffee. As soon as the coffee started brewing, the blueberry aroma filled the air, but the blueberry taste was surprisingly light. I could taste the blueberry, but it wasn’t overwhelming. While I enjoyed my cup, it was still a little strange to me and so I’ll be sticking with regular coffee. Maybe it could be a dessert coffee!

The other flavors were good, as well. I felt like they were a little weak at times, but that could be because I didn’t brew them in a Keurig and may have put more than one serving’s worth of water in the coffeemaker, essentially making the coffee weaker. The flavors were good with no bitter aftertaste.

With Fair Trade coffee, you can feel good that you are helping to promote environmentally friendly and ethical trading. While I may not rush out to purchase Fair Trade coffee specifically, I do like the Green Mountain brand for K-cups and will continue to consider them in the future.

Disclaimer: I received this product for free as part of BzzAgent campaign in return for my honest, hype-free opinion. All opinions are my own and I was not compensated in any other way.

 
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Brett and I got the opportunity to try out a new brand of candy called Unreal.

The Unreal premise is this:

Our candies contain no artificial flavors, preservatives or hormones; no GMO’s (genetically modified organisms); no hydrogenated oils; and no corn syrup. Instead, we use real sugar, natural oils, and real milk. Also, you don’t need to travel to a fancy health food store or pay a premium to buy our candy, it’s only available where junk food is available. Our candies are 100% corn-free. No corn syrup, no corn oil, no corn in anything we make!

Is UNREAL™ a “healthy” candy?

We don’t consider candy to be “healthy” for you. It’s a delicious treat that we love. What we’ve done is give people a better choice, so that when they go looking for candy, they have the option to avoid the junk.

 

I was definitely a little hesitant, not to try it, but to accept the reasoning behind it. I’ve always had the mindset that if you are going to “be bad” you might as well have the real thing and enjoy the heck out of it. I can certainly understand wanting to enjoy something without any ingredients that are considered bad in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle. However, you will often find me sticking a spoon straight into the peanut butter jar and eating it in front of the pantry…I’ll even sprinkle some chocolate chips on top if I have them.

Excuse me for a second while I go throw my scale away.

Ok, I’m back. Time to try something a little healthier.

 

We decided to try 3 varieties:

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups
Candy Coated Chocolates with Peanuts
Chocolate Caramel Peanut Nougat Bar

 

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups

These are similar to Reese’s peanut butter cups.

These were probably my favorite. Although I could definitely tell a difference between these and my usual favorite, Reese’s peanut butter cups, I still enjoyed them very much. You don’t get much better than peanut butter and chocolate merged together in yummy goodness.

 

Candy Coated Chocolate with Peanuts

 

These are similar to Peanut M&Ms.

 

 

These were my second favorite. The only difference I could notice was that the peanut tasted a little more roasted than a typical M&M peanut.

 

Chocolate Caramel Peanut Nougat Bar

 

This is similar to a Snickers bar.

 

 

This was my least favorite, mostly because it tasted furthest away from the real thing. It still tasted good, but I would have opted for the other two varieties over this one.

Obviously, I am a chocolate and peanut butter-aholic, so I didn’t really expect to have a negative opinion on these treats. If I were standing in the store wanting to purchase something chocolatey, I would still opt for the Reese’s, Snickers or M&Ms. However, these would be good options for those that don’t want to consume “junk” ingredients.

I got my Unreal candy at CVS. To find out where to get your Unreal candy, or to find out more about Unreal candy, go to http://getunreal.com/.

 

Disclaimer: I received this product for free as part of BzzAgent campaign in return for my honest, hype-free opinion. All opinions are my own and I was not compensated in any other way.

 

 

 

As I mentioned in this post, I recently participated in my first BzzAgent campaign and enjoyed it very much. I was pleasantly surprised when shortly after receiving an invitation for the first campaign, I got another invite to try Felippo Berio Olive Oil! Yes, please!

In my Bzzkit, I received one bottle of Felippo Berio Olive Oil, a chart on how to appropriately replace butter with olive oil to be healthier, and coupons. I was surprised to find that the price of this olive oil is comparable to the store brand we typically use.

We took the opportunity to make a recipe we’ve made once before and enjoyed. It’s so simple and uses quite a bit of olive oil, as we wanted to make sure the olive oil stood out for our “taste test”.

Broiled Cheesy Tomato Topped Spaghetti

Ingredients:

Tomatoes

Olive Oil (We used our Felippo Berio Olive Oil!)

Parmesan Cheese

Minced Garlic

Basil

Salt & Pepper

Spaghetti

Heat the broiler and prepare spaghetti according to package.

Place a sheet of aluminum foil onto a baking pan and drizzle a generous amount of olive oil.

Cut the tomatoes into slices and arrange on the foil over the olive oil.

Cover the tomatoes with parmesan cheese. We use the shaved parmesan cheese, the taste is much stronger and oh.so.good.

Sprinkle some salt, pepper and basil onto the tomato & cheese slices.

Drizzle a little more olive oil onto the tomato & cheese slices.

Place sheet of tomato & cheese slices into the broiler. Broil until cheese is bubbly and golden, about 3-5 minutes.

In the meantime, combine basil, pepper, 1/2 tbsp. of minced garlic, parmesan cheese and a generous amount of olive oil into a mixing bowl.

Mix spaghetti into olive oil mixture.

Portion the spaghetti onto a plate and place a few of the cheesy tomato slices on top. Enjoy!

We enjoyed this meal just as much as we did when we made it with our usual olive oil. I love simple recipes! Well, seeing as Brett’s the one that cooks, they are all simple to me!

Disclaimer: I received this product for free as part of BzzAgent campaign in return for my honest, hype-free opinion. All opinions are my own and I was not compensated in any other way.

Last night, we had a very spontaneous, delicious dinner at the Melting Pot.

The Melting Pot is a fondue restaurant. We usually go there for special events, like birthdays and anniversaries, since it’s pretty pricey. If you get all 4 courses like we always do, then you will be there for at least 1.5 - 2 hours, it is definitely not a quick dinner out. For this reason, we thought it would be great to go before the baby arrives.

However, this was not planned whatsoever. We WERE going to have homemade pizza for dinner, but as I was putting on makeup for my 38 week progress photo, Brett came downstairs and joked “Are we going to Melting Pot or something” so I said “Yeah, let’s go!”

Two hours later, we were sitting down ready to enjoy the last spontaneous 2 hour dinner for a while!

The first course is cheese fondue. We got the cheddar cheese fondue with aged medium-sharp cheddar and Emmenthaler Swiss cheeses with lager beer, garlic and seasonings. The cheese fondue dippings include three different types of breads, granny smith apples and vegetables.

The second course is salad. I got the California salad with mixed baby greens, Roma tomatoes, candied pecans and rich Gorgonzola cheese with Raspberry Black Walnut Vinaigrette.

Brett got the Melting Pot House Salad with crisp romaine and iceberg lettuce, aged cheddar cheese, Roma tomatoes, seasoned croutons and sliced egg with Peppercorn Ranch Dressing.

The third course is the main course. We chose the Court Bouillon cooking style, which is vegetable broth hand-seasoned with herbs and spices.

We each chose our own entree and the course comes with various dipping sauces and vegetables. I chose the Land & Sea trio, which came with premium filet mignon, all-natural breast of chicken and white shrimp. Mmmm steak! (On a side note, by this time we started failing at our photo taking - we would dig in so fast before taking the photo - below, I am already missing some steak and shrimp haha!)

Brett chose the Seafood Trio, which came with sesame-crusted sushi-grade ahi tuna, white shrimp and cedar-plank salmon.

Our plan of attack is usually to throw in a bunch of the veggies in the beginning and then gather them out with the search and rescue spoon while we cook the meats. Timing is important so you always have something on your plate and aren’t waiting for each item to finish cooking.

The fourth, final and oh-so-yummy course is the dessert. We decided on the current special, Chocolate Wildberry Crunch Fondue with milk chocolate, crunchy peanut butter with a puree of blackberries, raspberries and strawberries. We usually opt for the chocolate and peanut butter alone, but we decided to give this one a try since they say it’s like a PB&J! I’m not usually fond of chocolate and raspberry together, but this was good!

They brought the melted chocolate with peanut butter already in the pot, and the glass of fruit puree separately so we could decide on the level of sweetness we wanted. We pretty much poured the entire thing into the chocolate after my many failed attempts to get Brett to drink it like a shot.

Time to enjoy!

Dessert dippers include strawberries, bananas, cheesecake, rice krispies treats, marshmallows, pound cake and brownies. Here is our fail photo after we devoured half the plate!

Dessert comes with unlimited dippers, so they ask what items you’d like more of. It’s a tough decision since the only thing we don’t really eat are the marshmallows, everything else is so good. We chose more bananas, brownies and pound cake this time.

One of the things I make sure to do is to only drink water during the meal so I don’t get too full. The one time we had soda with our meal, we felt like we were going to DIE after we ate. I went home and literally fell onto the bed and refused to move for an hour. With water, I feel just full enough.

We sure did enjoy our spontaneous end-of-pregnancy dinner outing. When we first sat down to eat, we joked about what would happen if my water broke or something while we were eating. My answer? Continue eating!