Review: Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia Ice Cream

I've spent so much time reviewing the "bizarre" Ben & Jerry's flavors that I figure I should taking it upon myself at some point to review some of what I'm going to call their standard flavors (Americone Dream, etc.).  I'm going to call these their standard flavors because they are so mainstream that they offer them in mini cup form, ice cream bar form, etc.  Cherry Garcia is one of those flavors as I've seen it in both bar and mini cup form in my stores.  For reference purposes, I picked up this pint on sale for $3.00 at CVS and each serving of the four serving pint consists of 240 calories, which puts it at the medium to low end of the calorie scale when comparing it to other Ben & Jerry's ice creams.

Review: LUNA Peanut Butter Cookie Nutrition Bar

Despite the fact that they are for women, I've found most of the LUNA bars that I've tasted to be quite good.  In fact, I'd say that I enjoy the majority of them, so based on that, I was anxious to try out this Peanut Butter Cookie nutrition bar and see how it stacked up against some of their other products.  I picked this one up at Meijer for $1.09 and it weighs in at 1.69 ounces with 180 calories and nine grams of protein.  As with all LUNA bars, it's all natural and 70% organic.

Review: PowerBar Roasted Peanut Butter Energy Bar

Sometimes you just need a snack and don't want to eat chips or something unhealthy, so that's where something like this PowerBar Roasted Peanut Butter energy bar comes in.  It's big enough that its more than a nibble (1.23 ounces), but smaller than something that feels like it is a "meal" that is going to ruin your upcoming lunch and/or dinner.  So, needing a mid-morning snack to get me through, I grabbed this bar out of my refrigerator and decided to do a review.  Weighing in at the aforementioned 1.23 ounces, it's about 33% bigger than a Quaker Chewy bar and has about 33% more calories than your standard Chewy bar as well as it packs 140 calories.  It's also all natural and for such a small treat, it packs five grams of protein and surprising 10% of your daily fiber (based on a 2,000 calorie diet).  All told, it's "Pure & Simple Energy" just like the wrapper says.  FYI, I picked it up at Meijer for $0.69.

Review: MorningStar Farms Chik'n Strips Meal Starters

It's been a bit since I've either eaten or reviewed a MorningStar Farms product.  Recently, I had some tortilla wraps in my refrigerator that I had to use prior to the expiration date, so I figured that grabbing one of the bags of MorningStar Farms Chik'n Strips Meal Starters that I had in my refrigerator would be the perfect way to come up with a base starter for the filling in my wraps that I was making.  I picked this one up on sale at Marsh for $3.00 and it's an eight ounce package proclaiming it has roughly 2.5 servings of these veggie "Chick'n" strips.  Each serving has 140 calories and a whopping 23 grams of protein.  It's also cholesterol free, so this really is a fairly healthy product and as I read more and more of the packaging, I was exceptionally surprised by that.

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Review: Balance Bar Chocolate Craze Bar

When I walk through the "healthy" aisle at the store, it always amazes me how many products CLIF Bar puts out there.  I think the only company that may compete with them in terms of flavor varieties (at least in my stores) is Balance Bar.  They have a seemingly endless amount of flavors and lines and in my half-hearted quest to add to my Balance Bar review collection, I'm going to review the Chocolate Craze bar in today's review.  This came via my free sample shipment from Balance Bar and it weighs in at the standard Balance Bar weight of 1.76 ounces.  Packed into those 1.76 ounces are 200 calories and fourteen grams of fun...I mean protein.

Review: Dannon Light & Fit Toasted Coconut Vanilla Yogurt

Time for another review of Dannon's Light & Fit yogurt product line.  I've previously reviewed the giant 32 ounce containers as well as doing a couple of reviews on the smaller six ounce single serving containers as well.  As you can tell by the picture above, this is another single serve container review and this time, I'm focusing on the Toasted Coconut Vanilla flavor.  I picked up a four pack (they call it a Super Saver pack) of these single serving cups at Meijer on sale for $1.99 and each cup is 80 calories and zero fat.  After going most of my life genuinely not liking coconut, I've recently developed a serious love of it, so I was definitely anxious to dig into this.

Review: Skinny Cow Milk Chocolate Heavenly Crisp Candy Bar

As I've written in my previous Skinny Cow product reviews, I certainly appreciate Skinny Cow's efforts to make lower calorie versions of decadent desserts.  Often times, I find them quite tasty.  What I don't appreciate in some of these instances is the amount of product that you get back in return for the price, especially with their candy products.  That said, I've reviewed Skinny Cow Heavenly Crisp candy bars before when I tackled the Peanut Butter flavor, so now I'm going to tackle the other flavor in their candy bar offering, Milk Chocolate.  I picked up a box of six of these on sale at Meijer for $3.99 and each candy bar in the box has 110 calories and weighs in at 0.77 ounces.

Review: Zone Perfect Dark Double Dark Chocolate Nutrition Bar

I've done a lot of Zone Perfect bar reviews on the blog, including a review of their "Dark" line of bars that include dark chocolate (clever naming there).  So, this review leads me to another review in the Dark product line with this Double Dark Chocolate Nutrition Bar.  As usual, these bars are all natural and I picked this one up at Marsh on sale for $1.25 and it weighs in at 1.58 ounces.  In terms of the science stuff, it has 190 calories and is packed with 12 grams of protein.

Review: Walden Farms Grape Fruit Spread

I've reviewed several of these Walden Farms fruit spreads here previously and now we are onto another, the Grape Fruit Spread.  There's not a whole lot to these, so I'll dispense with the long intro and get to the cold hard facts:  I picked this up VitaCost.com via Amazon.com for $3.69.  Each 12 ounce container is calorie and sugar free and is made with "Natural Flavors."  Hmm, well, who am I to argue.

Review: Good 'n Natural Chocolate Bar

I admit that I treat this blog as kind of a side job.  What I mean by that is that I'm clearly trying to draw income from this blog, albeit a small one, by putting ads up on the sides and in my posts.  In order to increase page views, I often times check the search terms that people have used to get to my blog and when I saw that people were doing searches on Good 'n Natural bars, I knew I had to do another review to compliment the two that I've done already.  The funny thing is that I wouldn't ordinarily do a review of a bar that was just named Chocolate since it is seemingly boring, but I'm clearly pandering to the masses with this one.  Anyway, I picked this up at Kroger for $0.99 and it comes in at two ounces with 230 calories and ten grams of protein.

Time Waster: Candy Math Equations

Much like my post a while back about Cereal Math Equations, this could just as easily be applied to several candy products out there that have "kin" under the same brand name as well.  Some manufacturers make a wide variety of products under the same name like Snickers, M&M's, etc.  So, without further delay, here is another list of equations, this time focusing on candy.  Obviously I'm missing some flavors, on M&M's seasonal flavors especially, but one guy can only eat so much!

Candy Math Equation #1:  Mars M&M's
Peanut M&M's > Almond M&M's > Original M&M's > Pretzel M&M's > Peanut Butter M&M's > Dark Chocolate Peanut M&M's > Dark Chocolate M&M's > Coconut M&M's

Candy Math Equation #2:  Mars Snickers Bars
Peanut Butter Squared Snickers > Original Snickers > Almond Snickers

Candy Math Equation #3:  Mars Twix Bars
Twix PB > Original Twix Bar

Candy Math Equation #4:  Reese's Peanut Butter Products (kind of a stretch, but bear with me)
Reese's Pieces > Reese's Sticks Wafer Bar > Reese's Fast Break Bar > Reese's Peanut Butter Cups

Candy Math Equation #5:  Hershey's Kisses
Hershey's Milk Chocolates with Almonds > Hershey's Milk Chocolates filled with Caramel > Hershey's White Chocolates > Hershey's Milk Chocolates > Hershey's Milk Chocolates filled with Cherry Cordial Crème > Hershey's SPECIAL DARK Mildly Sweet Chocolates

Just like cereal, this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to candy.  One thing you'll notice too is that all of these involve some sort of chocolate as I mostly only eat candy that has chocolate, nuts or both, so I kind of limit myself.  I'd love to see some other suggestions on chocolate/nut products and/or sweeter candies like Nerds, Twizzler, etc. if anyone wants to chime in.  I'd especially love to hear the thoughts of some of the candy bloggers out there as they are the subject matter "experts."

Review: Quaker Chewy Cocoa Chocolate Swirl Granola Bar

Review number two in the series of reviewing Quaker Chewy's "premium" line of Cocoa granola bars made with REAL cocoa takes me to the Chocolate Swirl granola bar.  My first review took a look at the Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough flavor and came back with a positive review, so I held high hopes for this one as this bar seemed to be quite similar.  I picked it up as part of a box of eight at Meijer on sale for $2.00 and each bar weighs 0.84 ounces and contains 90 calories.

Review: Balance Bar Cafe Chocolate Almond Biscotti Bar

It has gotten to the point where reviewing these nutrition bars has gotten to be boring to me.  It's almost the mindset of "oh well, another day, another bar" but occasionally, I'll have one come through that I'm legitimately excited to try out because just the name and/or description of it gets my interest piqued.  As I've mentioned before Balance Bar sent me a box of bars to try out and as I've made my way though the box with other reviews, I've always held one of these bars out as a way to "reward" myself for trying the flavors that didn't excite me much.  So, it finally got to be time to "reward" myself and that led me to this Chocolate Almond Biscotti bar from their Cafe line of bars.  Just the description alone on this bar got me curious and I've had prior success with their other Cafe bar, so I was anxious to give it a go.  For nutritional purposes, this one comes in at the standard 1.76 ounces with 200 calories and fourteen grams of protein.  Like I said, it's from the Cafe line of bars, so it's Cafe inspired as if it would be something that you'd eat while drinking a cup of coffee and reading the newspaper, I guess.

Review: Larabar Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Bar

Sometimes I think the only reason I keep reviewing Larabar flavors is because I might hate myself.  I've only found one flavor that I actually like, while the rest of been just boring globs of nothingness, some of which border on being terrible.  Still, the optimist in me says that I will somehow open Pandora's box and find a flavor out of their myriad of flavors that actually is one of the best things I've ever eaten.  It's that optimism that leads me to this Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip bar that I picked up on sale at Kroger for $0.99.  Peanut butter and chocolate chips are a wonderful combination, so I could only hope that this carried on to this bar. For semantic purposes, this one comes it at 1.6 ounces and has 230 calories and four grams of protein.

Review: Skinny Cow Slimited Editions Oh Fudge Nuts! Low-Fat Ice Cream Cone

Within the past few months, Skinny Cow has introduced a new line of products to its low-fat ice cream dessert arsenal called Slimited Editions.  Within this line, they have several products including bars, shakes, sandwiches and also cones.  It's the Oh Fudge Nuts! Low-Fat Ice Cream Cone that I picked up for this review to compare to some of the other Skinny Cow dessert options that I have tried as well.  I picked up a box of these cones for $3.00 on sale at Kroger and each box contains four cones.  Each cone is 150 calories and is worth four points on the Weight Watchers Points Plus scale.

Review: Nostimo Strawberry 0% Fat Greek Yogurt

My first review of a Nostimo's Honey 0% Greek Yogurt mentioned that the label of the packaging stated "Nostimo Means 'Delicious'" and after trying it out, I felt a more appropriate tagline would have been "Nostimo Means 'Boring'".  That said, I bought several flavors all at one time, so I've got more flavors to try and that leads me to this Strawberry flavor of their non-fat Greek yogurt (Nostimo has no discernible web presence, so I have no link to a site for them; they are manufactured by a budget foods company).  I picked this, along with the others, up on sale at Marsh for $1.00 and it is six ounces with 140 calories and fourteen grams of protein.  This flavor differs from the honey flavor in that this one has the "fruit on the bottom", so obviously there's intended to be some strawberry chunks in here, which is nice since the last one was just yogurt with a very slight honey taste.

Review: Ben & Jerry's Mud Pie Ice Cream

I'm going to let you in on a little secret here:  I drink an occasional alcoholic beverage.  From time to time, one of those beverages may be a coffee mixed with Bailey's Irish Cream Liqueur.  So, when wandering through the Meijer ice cream section one day in search of another Ben & Jerry's review topic, I came across this Ben & Jerry's Mud Pie ice cream and seeing that it contained the taste of Irish coffee liqueur, I was immediately interested.  Ben & Jerry's actually describes this one as "Chocolate & Irish Coffee Liqueur Ice Creams Swirled Together with a Chocolate Cookie Swirl" so everything about it seemed appealing to me.  Like I said previously, I picked it up at Meijer and I was able to purchase it on sale for $3.00 for the pint.  The pint, as usual, contains a laughable four servings per pint and there are 270 calories per serving.

Review: Balance Bar Almond Brownie Bar

As you can tell from the many reviews that I've done on this blog, Balance Bar has a lot of products and this plethora of products leads me to another review of a Balance Bar product, the Almond Brownie bar.  I picked this bar up at Meijer for $1.09 and it comes it at 1.76 ounces, 200 calories and fourteen grams of protein.  Based on the name of this one alone, I was highly anticipating trying it out because anytime you can take a brownie and try to make it "healthy", you've got me drawn in for a test by hook, line and sinker.

Review: CLIF Special Twentieth Anniversary Gary's Panforte Bar

For those of you that don't know, this is the twentieth anniversary of CLIF bar and because of that, they're been releasing a special twentieth anniversary, limited edition blend entitled Gary's Panforte bar named their founder and named that way to be reminiscent of his cycling journeys through the mountains of Northern Italy so long ago.  By Panforte, Gary means that this bar is full of fruits, nuts and spices and it's based on an 800 year old recipe from Italy.  I got this one through a free promotion on their Facebook page celebrating this anniversary and it is the CLIF bar standard 2.4 ounces.  This one's a little different though as it has a more robust 260 calories and less protein than usual with only five grams.

Review: Lean Cuisine Simple Favorites Linguine Carbonara

I don't eat a lot of quick, frozen, microwaveable entrees, but when I do, I try to stick to the Weight Watchers Smart Ones or Lean Cuisine varieties of meals.  Since I try to stick to the healthy ones, I might as well review them for the blog, right?  Well, that leads me to this Lean Cuisine Simple Favorites Linguine Carbonara that I picked up on sale for $2.00 at my local neighborhood Meijer.  This one comes in at 9.25 ounces, has 280 calories and scores a seven on the Weight Watchers Points Plus scale.

Review: Kellogg's Special K Chocolatey Peanut Butter Granola Bar

I admit that I'm a big coupon clipper.  I'm not as crazy about it as those people on those couponing shows, but I do find a way to check out the coupons (and clip, if applicable) in the Sunday paper most weeks.  I was going through my paper recently and I saw a coupon for a new product in these Special K Chocolatey Peanut Butter bars and since I'm a granola bar freak, I grabbed my scissors, clipped the coupon and on my next shopping trip to Meijer, put my coupon to use.  Without my coupon, these were on sale for $2.50 that week and each box of these bars contains five bars.  Each individual bar is 0.96 ounces (slightly larger than a  regular Quaker Chewy bar) and has 110 calories and four grams of protein.

Review: LALA Strawberry Yogurt Smoothie

Sticking my nose in the dairy case at my local Kroger, I was looking for a new yogurt flavor and/or product to review and I stumbled upon something that I had never seen before, which was this LALA Strawberry Yogurt Smoothie.  Frankly, I've never heard of a yogurt smoothie in my life, so I was naturally curious and hurriedly grabbed one out of the case, tossed into my cart and brought it home for this review.  As I said, I picked this up at Kroger and it was $1.15 for a seven fluid ounce container.  It is 150 calories, contains five grams of protein and according to the packaging, is made with real fruit, is low fat, has no high fructose corn syrup and no artificial flavors or colors.  Wow, that's a lot to digest (pun intended).