Frozen Food Review: Wellsley Farms Artisan Appetizers

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Details: More information can be found at https://www.bjs.com/product/wellsley-farms-artisan-appetizers-244-oz/3000000000000289569

Score: 6.9/10

Artisan Appetizers are part of BJ’s own Wellsley Farms brand of products that they exclusively sell in their own stores. The quality of these products are usually pretty good and the prices reasonable. This applies to this item as well.

Worth mentioning is that this — like with most of these frozen appetizers — requires an oven. Microwaves are not able to prepare this the way it was intended. Toaster or convection ovens are also not useful.

As with most baking, you need to decide whether it’s done by looking at it. Not all ovens are the same and if you rely solely on the recommended baking time, it may end up over or under cooked.

The product itself comes with three baking-safe trays, each filled with a different type of appetizer: apple fig brie; cheese and caramelized onion; and chicken pot pie. Each individual appetizer is comprised of filling set in puff pasty.

The onion and cheese one is mostly just cheese. It tastes like a cheese ball with little to no onion flavor. This was very easy easy to overcook. I recommend following the stated bake time strictly.

The apple fig brie is pretty good in that you can really taste the apple/fig and the brie. There’s a tiny bit of apple, more fig puree/jam, and a lot of brie cheese. It’s a good combination as the tanginess of the brie goes well with the sweetness of the apple/fig. When I followed the baking time, it came out a little under cooked. I recommend overcooking past the recommended time for a few minutes.

The chicken pot pie was the plainest of the three. It just taste like a slightly under seasoned chicken pot pie. Nothing above average and nothing terrible about it.

Overall, this was pretty good, but I’m not sure I would purchase it again. It is certainly convenient if you’re having a small party, especially considering that it comes in ready to bake trays. The taste just isn’t amazing. I could eat may be one or two of each flavor before not wanting to eat anymore. On the other hand, this may be exactly what you’d want as an appetizer. You don’t want something your guests will go to town on. You want something they will lightly snack on before the main course.

Fast Food Review: Burger King Sweet & Sour Sauce

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Details: More information can be found at https://www.bk.com/

Score: 6.8/10

When I was younger, I remember trying Burger King’s sweet and sour sauce and hating it. It was a transparent, orange liquid that wasn’t very good. I don’t know how accurate my memory was or if they changed the recipe, but I tried the sauce again recently and it was actually pretty good.

Normally, most sweet and sour sauces are mostly water, sugar and vinegar. The distinguishing characteristic is what else they add to it. In Burger King’s sauce, the primary additional ingredient is pineapple. There’s also a little apricot, but there’s more pineapple. You can taste the sweetness the pineapple offers, but you wouldn’t know it unless you looked at the ingredients.

Overall, the sweet and sour sauce was pretty good, but McDonald’s still has the best fast food sweet and sour sauce in my opinion. I don’t know what the ingredients are in McDonald’s sweet and sour sauce, but the taste and the consistency are just more appealing to me.

Fast Food Review: McDonald’s Mighty Hot Sauce

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Details: More information can be found at https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us.html

Score: 7/10

The last time I tried to get my hands on this sauce, they were sold out for weeks. I eventually tried to get this stuff again and was finally successful.

McDonald’s Mighty Hot Sauce is a hot sauce served specifically with their spicy chicken nuggets. I’m not entirely sure, but I think you can only get this stuff if you order spicy chicken nuggets. In any case, I ordered some spicy chicken nuggets and got this stuff too.

The most unique thing about this sauce is the sweetness. It’s a lot like McDonalds other spicy sauce, the sweet chili sauce. I looked at the ingredients and the sweetness comes mostly from apricots. Additionally, the sauce is much hotter than the sweet chili sauce. I don’t know if the sauce itself is very hot, the spicy nuggets are very hot, or the combination of the two was very hot, but it was pretty spicy for me (though I have a relatively low spice tolerance). It was so spicy, that the spice lingered and turned my Big Mac into a spicy Big Mac (which wouldn’t be a bad idea for future McDonald’s products). I think that’s a good thing, as there already are a lot of spicy fast food sauces. Making a spicy sauce that is substantially hotter than comparable fast food spicy sauces is a good idea and distinguishes McDonald’s. Of course, it is spicier only in my opinion. I wonder how other people who are more accustomed to spicy food will feel about it.

Overall, it a good sauce, but a not a good justification for ordering the spicy nuggets (I’ve reviewed the spicy nuggets in the past and basically feel that they are not worth it). If you can get the sauce with some regular nuggets, it’ll still be good.

Manga Review: $1,000,000,000,000 Game

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Details: Currently ongoing. I’ve read about four issues. Also known as Trillion Game and トリリオンゲーム.

Score: 7/10

I’ve only read about four issues, but I already know that this is going to be one of those stories that I will keep up with. This story is from Riichiro Inagaki, author of Eyeshield 21 and Dr. Stone of more recent fame. $1,000,000,000,000 Game is a story about two very different people and their quest to obtain one trillion dollars.

The protagonists are two young men who are very different. One is a person who lacks any interpersonal skills, but posses impressive computer programming skills. The other only possesses interpersonal skills and can lie and speak his way through any situation. The two decide to combine their talents and we watch as they pursue their dream of being filthy rich.

What I like about this story is similar to what I enjoy in other heist movies or movies with schemes/scams, which is we get to watch our protagonists use clever, unorthodox means in order to achieve their objective. In the case of this story, we get to see the protagonists create a business and do their best to fund raise investment for it, even though they don’t really have a business plan or idea in the first place. This is a scheme that commonly takes place in real life, which lends some believability to the story. If you know anything about Silicon Valley and how many of the tech giants of today became so large, you’d know that it was from raising investment, not through providing goods or services. All this is to say is that the story is, so far, well thought out and well researched enough to keep me very interested.

The art is also very interesting. It’s and older style of art, but with the detail you’d expect of more modern works. The artist is actually well known and has worked on a number of well known manga in the past.

Overall, I’m interested. I want to see what tricks they employ and a truly clever, believable plot that leaves me in awe at how much research and planning the author did in order to produce such a story. It’s still very early, but I’m eager to see where this story goes.

Fast Food Review: Dunkin’s Donuts Caramel Flavor Swirl

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Details: More information can be found at https://www.dunkindonuts.com/

Score: 6.5/10

The caramel flavor swirl is by far the most obscenely sweet flavor swirl/shot in Dunkin’… and yet it’s the one I prefer. I just like sweet stuff. Also, the other flavors simply don’t taste good or aren’t sweet enough. Coconut doesn’t taste great and I’m not always in the mood for chocolate mocha. The caramel flavor swirl tastes decent enough and is very sweet. You can request how many flavor swirls you want to control the level of sweetness you want. I usually get around three or four. Dunkin’s default amount is four I think.