What I'm nomming- cheese plate

 We've had some hot weather last week so I  like to make a simple, no-cook dinner like a cheese plate.
 Here is a particularly nice one I made  this past weekend.

Featured cheeses:
Cowgirl Creamery Red Hawk- In the 1:00 position. This is a local California- made triple-crème, aged, cow's milk cheese with a brine-washed rind.
Aged Mimolette-  In the 6:00 position.  This  cheese  from Northern France is made in a ball shape and the rind looks so much like a cantaloupe rind , and then the cheese itself is the exact orange color of a cantaloupe.  It's really delicious and reminds me of an aged cheddar mixed with gouda.
Vintage Irish Cheddar  with Irish Porter -  In the 3:00 position. This is a nice sharp aged  white cheddar, marbled with a dark smoky porter beer flavor. I saw it in the store  and I was like, beer and cheese? Together? SOLD!
This is relevant to my interests.

Featured crackers:
 Original plain Triscuits.  In the center. Good old triscuits- still the best with so many cheeses.
Blue Diamond pecan thins- In the 10:00 position.  These are a gluten-free cracker made  with nut meal instead of flour. They have  an almond version too, but I love these pecan thins the most.
Wild California fruit and nut crisps in the 9:00 position.

Extras:
Abate Fetel pear slices
 Local California- grown  Strawberries
Marcona  Almonds- In the separate bowl. these are a Spanish almond that is blanched (skinned) and then fried in olive oil.

What I'm nomming

 Time for another snack review.

Whisps Parmesan cheese crisps
These are delicious and crispy  and light, almost melt in your mouth.

La Mere Poulard French Sables
These  are very simple  buttery cookies,  but so perfect.  I like them with ice cream. They are  similar to shortbread but crispier.

Smashmallow root beer float flavor marshmallows
They really do taste like root beer. It would be interesting to try them toasted.

Cheetos Sweetos  caramel puffs
I love salted caramel  anything, but these were just listed as caramel puffs, not as salted caramel, so I was not sure if they would be good. I was worried they might just taste like super sweet kids breakfast  cereal. But they are nice and  salty,  almost equal parts sweet and salty like kettle corn,  so they are really delicious and  perfect for snacking.

Mike's harder blood orange 
I'm including this not as a favorite, but as an anti-fave.    Luckily I just bought one can at 7-11 to drink at the beach.  I  like  every other blood orange soda I have tasted, it's one of my favorite flavors,  and I like Mike's hard lemonade, so I thought for sure I would like this. But it was a huge disappointment.  It is TERRIBLE. It tastes like you mixed artificial cherry flavor cough medicine with artificial orange flavor cough medicine. So freakin nasty. I drank like 3 sips and threw the rest away.

What I'm nomming

These are some snacks I actually bought a couple weeks ago and enjoyed,.
 Right now I am  on a no  grocery shopping challenge, which is not to save money or anything, I am just trying to use up what I've already got in my pantry. I don't know if anyone else does this, but I tend to  do a thing where I   buy things to try them, and they are okay but not my favorite, so  instead of finishing them, I just go  buy something else. And it ends up with a lot of stuff that just kind of  accumulates and gets ignored. It's not bad enough to throw away, it's not really 'bad' at all, just not my favorite.  So right now I am only shopping for perishables like milk and eggs, but when it comes to  shelf-stable   pantry items like cereal, chips, cookies, dry pasta,  nuts,  granola bars, etc, I am not buying  anything like that until I really empty out my pantry. And like, if I want chips and there are no chips, I will make popcorn. If I want cookies and there are no cookies, I bake some (using up some nuts and chocolate in the process).
So I've been doing that for a couple of weeks but here are some things I bought before I started this challenge.

Icelandic Provisions Skyr- peach and cloudberry  flavor
This is like a thick yogurt but has more protein than normal yogurt. it's really good.  I  had a Finnish friend who  used to always rave about cloudberries, which are a  rare type of berry from Scandinavia.

Cadbury Wispa cookies
These are  shortbread cookies covered in chocolate, but they also have a filling layer of  fluffy chocolate similar to an Aero bar.

 Cherry Limeade Peeps
These are a nice sour cherry flavored peep with a coating  of lime candy coating on the bottom.  I LOVE lime flavored things and it is not a very common flavor, so these are my favorite of the limited edition 'dipped' Peeps.  I once wrote a letter of complaint to Starburst when they replace lime starburst with strawberry, in the 80s. They wrote back and told me lime was the least popular flavor.

 Lays Poppables in white cheddar flavor
These are new, they taste similar to  Pringles, they are made with potato flour and remind me of like a giant chex cereal piece.Sort of a mesh pillow  shape. It's  very light and  crunchy, because each one is filled with air. but that also means that even a big bag of them doesn't have that many servings. You can easily eat the whole bag if you aren't careful.

 

What I am nomming

Recent favorites snack foods

Wild California twice baked Fruit n' Nut crisps. These are so crunchy that it's easy to eat the whole bag in a sitting. They are also   great with a soft cheese.

Kettle Chips New York Cheddar flavor.
 My all time favorite potato chip was the  Cheddar Beer flavor from Kettle Chips, but it was a limited edition flavor. This New York Cheddar is the closest to it, although it is still missing that subtle malty sweetness of the beer. The large bags of this are hard to find in grocery stores, I  mostly see the small bags at deli counters and stuff, so I just ordered 6 bags from Amazon.  That sounds like a lot but damn they are so good it might not be enough.

Haagen-Dazs Bourbon Pecan Praline Ice Cream
You can really taste the bourbon in this. So good. It's limited edition so as usual when I find something I love,  they stop making it and  I can never get it again. WHYYYYYY?

 


Jules Destrooper Almond Thins -  Super thin and crispy, these cookies are the perfect partner to ice cream.

TCHO Organic Milk Chocolate, Toffee + Sea Salt - This  is a local brand,  made in Berkeley. They have a lot of interesting flavors. Most of their flavors are dark chocolate, this is one of the few that are milk chocolate.

Easter treats reviews

I picked up some Easter goodies. Some of them are new things I've never seen before.

1. Oreos with Peeps marshmallow filling- These are limited edition, the oreo cookie is the golden color vanilla cookie and the filling is bright pink. I generally prefer oreos with the chocolate cookie (and various flavors of filling), but I gave these a try. They are okay but they really just taste like vanilla cookie with vanilla filling, which is not very interesting to me.

2. Cadbury mini eggs  chocolate crunch and creme flavor.  These are your typical cookies & cream flavor with white chocolate and chocolate cookie crispy bits. They are okay but i think not as good as the  original  cadbury mini eggs.

 3. Peeps Filled Delights triple chocolate- These are a new thing, I have never seen  filled peeps before.  The peeps themselves are chocolate flavored,  then they have a fudgy cream filling, and the  bottom of the peep is dipped in chocolate. They are actually pretty decent.

4. Peeps Filled Delight vanilla caramel brownie flavor- The peep is white (vanilla), the filling is caramel, and  it's dipped in chocolate. I  don't really know where the brownie  is supposed to come in, but again they are pretty good.

What I'm nomming- snack reviews

 Just  a few goodies I have been enjoying lately.


1. Moondarra cheese
Flavors Apricot & Almond, and Honey & Pistachio. (those are the only ones I have found  locally)

I'd love to try some of the other flavors but I've only  ever seen the two. It's  like a flavored  cream cheese with  add-ins. I like it on  very crisp crackers that also have some fruit or nut in it.  For example:

2.  Hazelnut and Sultana Pan Forte Crostini
They are  kind of similar  to Thin Addictives , but less sweet and they use raw cane sugar and it has  an almost faint anise flavor to it. I like that they are SUPER crisp and crunchy, which makes a nice contrast to a soft cheese.
I'd love to try the Tart Cherry, Cacao Nib and Almond flavor but I have not seen those around.

3. Clover Hoppy Hour ice cream. 
It's beer flavored!   with Bear Republic Brewing’s  Racer 5 IPA.

 4. Goat milk caramel sauce from  King Arthur Flour
It goes on top of that beer ice cream.  yeah buddy!

5. Lindt Strawberry Cheesecake chocolate  bar.  Pretty self explanatory. It's milk chocolate and strawberry and cheesecake. It's good stuff.