Month: December 2021

Coffee & Tea

After one too many shitty iced coffees at Dunkin, we are officially broken up. Once fall hit they started being really cheap with their flavored swirls by not adding the standard amount (I watched them being prepared and the baristas would not push the pump down fully) while simultaneously charging extra for additional swirls (even though you wouldn’t need them if they gave you the correct amount to begin with)!

I gave Starbucks a go, but their coffee was lackluster as well. Is it so hard to get a decent peppermint mocha iced coffee? Apparently so!

Fed up, I bought some ingredients to make my own drinks at home.

I could do without Starbuck’s peppermint mocha coffee because it’s just meh. The peppermint tea is better, and it’s actually good with the creamer added, which I typically do not do with teas. The peppermint mocha creamer is ok too, but honestly, it turns out a regular vanilla creamer just tastes better overall. I found one at Jewel that is lactose free:

What I love so much about it is that I don’t need to add any sugar to my drink because the creamer makes it sweet enough.

Candy

Did you know that Skittles recently announced that they are going back to their standard flavor for the green Skittle? It’s about time! Green apple just never made sense with the other flavors, but lime certainly did. I spent a lot of time trying to find a store that was carrying the new/old flavor and finally found them at Menards of all places!

I don’t know what they were thinking, or why it took them seven years to wise up, but I’m happy that now there’s only one flavor of Skittles I hate – grape.

I was excited to find this peppermint bark at Costco, but seeing as how I’m the only one who eats it, there’s just way too much and I won’t be getting it again.

Cakes & Cookies

I love Pepperidge Farm milano’s but damn, their peppermint slices are not it. Maybe I just don’t like peppermint as much as I thought I do, hmmm.

Their amaretto hot cocoa flavor rocks, however.

I was lucky enough to snag the very last bag at Target.

We also snagged a cookie tray from Costco for a pending Christmas celebration that never happened and I am not loving the flavors, which are powdered brownie walnut, lemon shortbread, iced ginger molasses, coconut almond chocolate, and holiday candy cookie.

We will not be getting those again.

I decided to try the infamous Little Debbie Christmas cakes and oh boy, they are good! Even better if you freeze them.

Other

The single greatest food item we found, however, is this cranberry jalapeno dip we came across at Costco.

The flavor combo didn’t sound good, but it only took one bite for us to realize how wrong we were. Wow, it is so good we easily ate through the entire tub in less than a month. Sadly, it’s not being stocked anymore, so it must be a seasonal item. I checked the manufacturer’s website and they have a lot of dip flavors but this one in particular is only available at Costco, so I guess I will be dreaming about it until next November.

I cannot believe how disappointed I was back in November that I couldn’t go to Aldi on their advent calendar release day (because Joe had my car due to his accident). I really wanted the cheese, coffee, and chocolate calendars.

When Joe got home from work we took a trip to Aldi but the only calendar left was the cheese one.

I asked an employee and he said they were a one and done thing and no more advent calendars would be available.

He was incorrect, however, because a week later I was getting groceries and they had a bunch of chocolate calendars so I snagged the $10 one since the flavors on the back sounded more appealing than the more expensive version.

Unfortunately, both calendars ended up being disappointing and I lost interest in them about 10 days in. Turns out I really resent HAVING to eat cheese or a random chocolate every day.

I removed all the cheeses and put them in a container in the fridge where they sit today. I occasionally eat one with lunch. As for the chocolate one – we split a few pieces today and will do so with the rest over the next week to get through them.

I’ve learned my lesson and won’t be pursuing any advent calendars next year which will save money and calories. Turns out it’s much more fun watching other people open them on YouTube.