Rold Gold White Dipped Honey Braided Twists

Rolo Gold. For the past four years, that's what I thought "Rold Gold" was. I thought it said Rolo. I'm not the only one; googling "Rolo Gold" actually yield pretzel results too. It's funny, because Rold Gold makes so much more sense as a brand name ["Rolled" Gold, it rhymes, it sounds swanky...]. In fact, I've been eating the Honey Braided Twists since November-ish, and I never noticed it said Rold on the package.

I decided to buy these white covered ones [note that there is no mention of "white chocolate" covered twists, since there is no actual chocolate inside it. In fact, I was going to buy the milk chocolate version, but that one had PHOs and probably didn't contain much chocolate either.

I'm not really into pretzels. I like them, but I'm not super obsessed. The Honey Braided Twists are pretty good, especially if the edges are a tad burnt. Actually, the pretzels that I enjoy the most [solely because of the flavouring, so I might as well buy the flavouring in bulk, right?] are the honey mustard and onion ones from Snyder's of Hanover.

These pretzels are basically the honey braided twists that are covered in fatty sugar. The coating is super saturated and sore-throat-inducingly sweet. However, it also tastes creamy and smooth, which is a really nice change and contrasts with the malty crunch of the pretzel. There was a bit of waxiness directly after consumption...but it's not too noticeable.

The pretzels are difficult to snap into halves, and it can't fit into my mouth at once, and the white coating melted quickly, so I suppose it's an annoying snack to eat while typing.

Overall, it was a typical snack with no real nutritional value. Should've bought noodles...

Peanut Butter Filled Pretzels.

It is terribly trying to take pictures without sunlight. In my opinion, the best light in which one should take pictures of food is definitely bright sunshine. There is no better way to highlight each crevice and every crumb.

However, sunlight rarely filters into my room since the sun sets to the left of my window and rises on the right side [I think? I really don't know, but I do know that sunlight never streams into my room].

Maybe I should clarify.

Light from the sun comes into my room through a crack called a window, but beams of beautiful, bright, sunlight does not enter my room. So, my room is always a greyish colour, unless my fluorescent light bulb...which is yellow... is on.

This is why it's terribly annoying taking pictures in my room, since I have to move the food to the edge of the table between the hours of 7am and 5pm, and usually I'm sleeping or out [I leave around 9 every day and get back from 6pm to 9pm. Nice life, I know].

So, here is a wonderful picture I took of my newest New Food:

I present you with Peanut Butter Filled Pretzels. And what a sight they are! You can see every grain of salt, every burnt corner, and even the thin layer of peanut butter enclosed by the hard, not-so-flaky pretzel!

The moral of this story is that I should take pictures of food when I get up at 8:30am in the morning and while I'm rushing around trying to leave by 8:45am so I can get to class at 9am. The second moral is that these Peanut Butter Filled Pretzels weren't desirable at all, although they look so inviting.

I eat peanut butter with pretzels all the time. So, what's the issue?

The issue is NaCl.

These pretzel pillows are so cute and enrobe a delicate, purely-saturated-peanut-flavoured [not sweet, not honey, not salty, not sesame, not fake, not waxy] chunk of peanut butter. These pretzel pillows are whole wheat. They're even coloured aesthetically!

The only problem is that they are dotted with chunks of NaCl/salt that shatter your tongue and throat the way glass decimates a piece of silk, or the way ice destroys a ship. These chunks of salt are huge! It's like having sand in a sandwich. It's unpleasant and leaves you wondering why you're stuck in a desert [metaphorically, both for the sand/wich and the pretzel pillows].

Even after scraping off salt crystals with my nails, the pretzel pillows tasted like they were smothered in salt. I sure wish they were salt-less; I would have enjoyed them so much more :(.

This may be why there is a glass of milk on the package, although I really needed to drink a LOT of water to feel as though I was at homeostasis, if at all.

My first meal at Penn

I know that I should've updated this a LONG time ago [read: April] but I was so caught up in school and stuff... plus, the quality isn't great, due to the fact that I was using my camera phone, which does not have flash. On the other hand, my camera phone has served me really well, and is the most useful function on my phone. Honest. [I don't use text messaging]. So, for the Penn Preview Day, we all had lunch at the 1925 Commons place. I'm definitely going to be blogging about this cafeteria a LOT during the next... wow... four years [unless I get expelled or drop out or something...] so this post technically shouldn't be a big deal. It was a Friday, and the garlic bread/toast was really crunchy.

These are vegan wraps, filled with lettuce, tomato, onion, and tofu. The grilled tofu wasn't that great in my opinion, and the wrap itself was really dry. And bland. I suppose this is the cliche "diet" or "vegetarian" dish. It was sorta mediocre... I don't mind eating it, but its lack of flavour is rather disappointing.

The chocolate cookie was dry. I like chewy, soft cookies, so I can't really vouch for them... I suppose those who like dry, crispy cookies would like these, though. I also learned that I don't like pretzel Goldfish crackers. The tortilla chips, were very crunchy and aesthetically pleasing. I wonder if they actually make these from scratch?

Okay. The marshmallow and rice cereal square is amazing! As you have noticed...I ate at least three of them. [I actually ate more than that. This reminds me of a day two summers ago, when I ate at least 10 packets of Kellogg's Rice Krispie Treats. In one day. Yes, I was obsessed that one day. I've yet to do such a thing again...] They were soft and gooey, and NOT stale, even though they'd been sitting there for ages...[trust me, stale marshmallow squares, like the ones at Borders, are dry. And not sticky. And lack the marshmallow texture]. These ones were really moist and I could literally "sink" my teeth into them and have them stuck there perpetually... except that sugar is polar and my saliva is polar.

I don't think anyone knows what I'm talking about when I mention the pizza crust from the Pizza Hut pizza [mini, cut into 4 pieces] at Penrith Plaza in 1999, or 2000. However, if you consume the pizza crust at 1920 Commons... you get a nearly identical taste. And texture. And smell. Oh nostalgia...This would be the only reason I'm going to be consuming pizza at Penn. Well, the topping was nice, too :), but the crust was a reminder of childhood. Which is ironic, since I haven't had "American" Pizza Hut pizza, ever.

Couscous Soup!

Because I was too lazy to make pasta today, I decided to make tomato soup and add couscous instead. I've recently become really fond of soups, mainly because soup is basically water, and I've been pretty dehydrated mostly, due to the fact that it's the summer and I've been running more than I have in the past few months. Also, since I'm on a sort of coffee ban [due to the caffeine negatively impacting methimazole efficacy], I've cut down my morning consumption of liquid from one litre to maybe 250ml. No, not one litre of coffee [although that'd be pretty intense]. During school, I used to drink say... 500ml of coffee/tea, 250ml of milk, and 250ml of water, juice, coffee or milk, before noon. Now, it's just 250ml of milk. If I remember.

Anyway, no one else is using the artichokes, so I guess I have to use them for something.

While consuming this soup, I wondered how soggy pretzels would taste like in it, since there ARE oyster crackers for soups, but we don't have them at home. So, I stirred in a handful of pretzels and promptly forgot to take a picture of them. They didn't really enhance the flavour or anything, since they barely absorbed any soup... I suppose this is due to the shiny malty [?] coating that most thin pretzels have. Nevertheless, the pretzels were okay. I should've let them soak in the soup longer, but I was hungry.

Also, at Costco today, they were giving out samples of the "Hollywood Cookie Diet" which is, at first, oxymoronic, but then you realise how truthful it is. The facade of glamour and prettiness and hedonistic lifestyle... yet it is all due to restriction and limitation, since if you point one finger out of that bubble, you collapse all your fame and blah. The same goes for this diet thing. The sample piece of cookie itself tasted artificial, like a protein bar, sans the protein. However, it really looked like a cookie. I'm not kidding. It looked like a legitimate chocolate chip cookie piece. But if you think about it, do you want real or fake? Real love vs. fake love? Real food vs. fake food? Real friends vs. fake friends? Real is way cooler.

Honey Mustard and Onion Pretzels!

At one of the Animal Alliance meetings at school in 2007, I was introduced to something called "Honey Mustard and Onion Pretzels". Actually, they were probably called "Nibblers", because that's what they're currently called. Anyway... I had never had honey mustard in my life, before, and I remember asking, "Are these vegetarian?".
The first bite? They tasted tangy, with a hint of bacon. I honestly thought that they tasted like bacon. That's evidently not the case anymore, since now they just taste onion-y and honey-y with a hint of spice. Anyway, that was the first time I had ever encountered Nibblers. In all honesty, I've never been a huge pretzel fan; I've always preferred other forms of carbs, and pretzels are usually covered in coarse chunks of NaCl. However, these Nibblers are the zesty exception [harhar].
A month or so ago, I bought two packs of Snyder's of Hanover Honey Mustard and Onion Nibblers, and I fell in obsession with them again... [aka I went on a thorough binge]. In the first bag, everything was "standard" shaped. The second bag had two mutants, which I think is pretty cool :) Damn sexy flavour. :P

Random pictures from my phone.

I'm too tired to update much after shovelin' for two hours. 120 minutes. I actually wanted to make snow cream today but it was 5 when I was done and I just wasn't in the mood, and I made pretty crappy mocha today... :(

So here are just some pictures from my phone from around town.

Pumpkin Ravioli at the Ritz Diner... irregularly shaped [speaking of which, Mars hasn't emailed me back yet concering the mutant M&Ms], not very sweet, which was good because sweet ravioli with savour sauce would've been terrible. The sauce was awesome though. I don't think I'm obsessed over ravioli enough to order it again.

My first pretzel in the U.S... for free at Tom's River because we had Sectionals there. A and I just got back into the Bubble after going into the school to get water/bathroom, and there was this tray of pretzels [because the meet was nearly over] and people were taking them... so I took one. I chipped off all the salt though... it was really. Dry. But pretzelly. I was pretty happy about it... so I ate it prêtzelously ["haha!!!" - pretzel/zealously and "prêt" means "ready" en francais.]

First matzo ball of my life. In delicious vegetable soup made by A's mum.

Saw this at Target. Next to all that kiddy stuff - Hello Kitty notebooks, half toxic hand cream... etc.