minxeats - recipes, recaps, and restaurant reviews: sea salt

Showing posts with label sea salt. Show all posts

Monday, August 24, 2015

Annie B's Caramels

Caramels are a homey sort of snack that makes one think of a simpler time. One that we never actually lived in but that we all like to romanticize about, like looking at a Currier & Ives painting. There's something about the rich, buttery texture and pure sweetness of a caramel that makes you pause to savor the moment. Every Christmas, I help the Minx make dozens of caramels of various flavors that we give away as gifts to our family and friends. They are always a big hit and makes all the trouble of boiling the caramel, cooling the trays, cutting up the sugary slabs into bite-sized morsels, and wrapping them in wax paper well worth it.

As for the rest of the year, going through all that difficulty doesn't seem quite as worthwhile. Thankfully, Annie B's sells a line of tasty caramels that can be had with just a few clicks of the keyboard. Annie B’s is a small family-owned caramel and popcorn company based in Kellogg, Minnesota.

They take pride in using natural ingredients, free of gluten and high fructose corn syrup. Each individually wrapped caramel is made using local products including brown sugar, water, corn starch, butter, corn syrup, sweetened condensed milk, and inverted sugar. Annie B’s caramel is slow cooked in copper pots using a small-batch method. Each piece is hand crafted with the exception of cutting and wrapping of the caramels.

There's over a dozen flavors from your traditional caramel to exotic concoctions like amaretto, huckleberry, black licorice, and coconut. The pieces are quite large, so one caramel can satisfy a quick sugar pang, and they are creamy and soft.

As I mentioned, Annie B's caramels can be purchased from their web site, but they are sold at hundreds of locations throughout the US. Take a gander at the retailer locator on their web site to find a location near you.

* Any products in this post that are mentioned by name may have been provided to Minxeats by the manufacturer. However, all opinions belong to Minxeats. Amazon links earn me $! Please buy!

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Friday, July 31, 2015

Peas Please Snacks

Peas seldom get any respect. They were the vegetable you pushed around on your plate when you were a kid. They are almost never a featured player on a restaurant menu like kale or Brussels sprouts. They tend to be tossed in with other vegetables as a "medley" or in a casserole like an afterthought.

The people at Peeled Snacks are giving peas the spotlight with a line of new snacks called Peas Please. Using organic whole green pea flour and organic brown rice flower, these pea-pod shaped snacks are baked and enhanced with seasonings. The effect is something like puffed Cheetos or a similar snack, but without the overpowering fake cheddar flavor. Or the thirst-provoking amount of salt. Or corn.

Peas Please come in three varieties: Sea Salt, Garden Herb, and Southwest Spice. Sea Salt is the most subtle with just enough salt to bring out the flavor of the peas. Garden Herb tastes of vegetables and herbs with a strong hit of garlic. The one with the most kick, of course, is Southwest Spice, but unlike some of the other crunchy snakes out there, Peas Please is not a raging salt bomb. The cayenne, paprika, onion, and garlic stand on their own with just a hint of saline. Any flavor works well as an accompaniment to a lunchtime sandwich (even on a salad), or as a snack eaten directly from the bag (our favorite way to eat them).

Completely organic and gluten free, Peas Please snacks provide 5 grams of protein and 4 grams of fiber per serving. They're also relatively low in fat compared to other snack foods with only 4.5 grams of fat per one ounce serving. Peeled snacks are available at major retailers around the country like Target, Whole Foods, and Wegman's. In the Baltimore area, Peeled products can be found at MOM's Organic Markets, Wegman's, and some Giant stores. (Starbucks also tends to carry Peeled dried fruit snacks.)

* Any products in this post that are mentioned by name may have been provided to Minxeats by the manufacturer. However, all opinions belong to Minxeats. Amazon links earn me $! Please buy!

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Friday, July 24, 2015

Authentic Italian Pasta Chips

For too many years, snack foods promised more than they could deliver. The bag might say, "spicy salsa flavor" or "rich caramel goodness," but they would usually end up being a giant salt bomb or sugar bomb with little actual flavor. Recently, however, a growing number of entrepreneurs have been putting some real effort into creating snack foods with unique flavors that taste exactly like what they're supposed to taste like. One such product is Authentic Italian Pasta Chips.

Made with Durum wheat semolina flour like real pasta, these thin, square crackers look like dried out pieces of ravioli dough. But don't worry, it doesn't taste like dried pasta. The crackers are light and crisp. Pasta Chips come in six flavors all classically Italian in origin: Mediterranean Sea Salt, Garlic Olive Oil, Spicy Tomato Herb, Marinara, Alfredo, Spinach-Broccoli-Kale and Sea Salt. Okay, the last one might be a little New American, but they're all quite tasty.

If you're looking for a good dipping chip, I would recommend the mildly flavored Mediterranean Sea Salt, Garlic Olive Oil, or Spinach-Broccoli-Kale and Sea Salt. Since they taste exactly like the flavors they purport to be, you can match each one to the flavor of dip you have so they will compliment each other. The other flavors are best eaten on their own. Although I didn't think the Marinara tasted much like marinara sauce, it does have a really addictive flavor, like a low salt version of Doritos (I mean that in a good way). Spicy Tomato Herb actually reminded me more of a tomato-based pasta sauce and was really delicious. Parmesan and Romano cheese are the primary flavors of the Alfredo chips with a hint of parsley in the background.

All six flavors of Authentic Italian Pasta Chips are well worth trying, and since they are made with non-GMO ingredients, you can feel good about eating them.

* Any products in this post that are mentioned by name may have been provided to Minxeats by the manufacturer. However, all opinions belong to Minxeats. Amazon links earn me $! Please buy!

Posted on Minxeats.com.