Text 4357, 92 rader
Skriven 2006-08-15 14:40:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: misc. tastes 77
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Other things tasted:

De Kuyper Peachtree schnapps - Dale and Gail needed just a cup
of booze for the bread pudding recipe, so there was a pint left
for toasting and sneaking. The stuff is not very alcoholic (15%),
so I felt comfortable with combining an ounce with my medicine;
it is however extremely sweet and sticky - goes down like syrup,
which I guess it essentially is. Convincing peach aroma, good
peach taste. Almost no alcohol bite. A good child's introduction
to booze, if you will.

Tarragon soda from the Russian store - Dave said that it smelled
just like baby powder; he was pretty close. The taste was slightly
green but thankfully not like baby powder. Neither aroma nor
taste was very much like tarragon.

Choxie chocolate-coated cherries - This is the Target house brand
chocolate, and whoever makes it also makes some of the Trader Joe
products. Manny brought a pound of these, as he is quite an
enthusiast. On popping one into my mouth the first impression was
not chocolate but sugared milk (slightly Hersheyish); I found
the coating not very chocolaty at all. The dried cherry inside
was pretty nice. My impression was of a giant somewhat classier
Raisinet.

Silk chocolate soymilk - as I was being extra circumspect with
the booze, I got an extra half-gallon of Silk to hydrate myself
with and get my vegetable quotient. I must say that it has
improved quite a lot over the years: when it first came out in
the '90s I likened it to chocolate chalk, and it has evolved
from that to a thinnish unconvincing liquid to in fact something
that I could drink with some pleasure - similar body to chocolate
milk, modest sweetness, a little bit of chocolate flavor.

Jell-O butterscotch banana pudding - in one of those amusing
misunderstandings that happens when there are too many cooks in
the kitchen, we discovered that there were 3 extra cups of milk
ready for a recipe; so Dave added another cup and made instant
pudding. He didn't have two of the same flavor and so chose
one each of the most compatible varieties. Instant pudding too
has come long strides since I last tasted it - it has lost most
of that horrid cardboard taste and now, although still distinctly
artificial, is edibly artificial. The banananess is fairly
authentic, but it builds to an estery intensity that hurt my
tongue. I didn't think it worth my pills, but others ate it
without pain. Oh yes, it's made with modified food starch and
thickens without heating - all you have to do is whisk for a
couple minutes, A Walla.

Tums Smoothies Cocoa & Creme - actually fairly convincing; a
cheap brownie texture and taste for the dark one; the light
one was characterless sweet white nothing.

Air Heads - the flavor names were more interesting than the
reality. I tasted three:
Blue raspberry - very mild, less zing than a good blue
raspberry candy;
Burnt rubber cola - a great disappointment, as it was merely
a weak artificial grape flavor; the color, a sickly gray-black,
was kind of cool, though;
White mystery - a floral aspect, acid, strange and unidentifiable
to me at least. There were also watermelon and cherry flavors,
which I didn' bother with.

Kool-Aid blue raspberry flavor - not bad, good balance of
artificial blue flavor and acid; perhaps a bit too much sugar.
Contains 100% of your vitamin C requirement.

Taro brittle - I thought a star anise aroma and foretaste, but
there wasn't any listed in the ingredients; very crunchy, almost
hard, slightly sweet peanut-taro taste. Hard to tell whether it
would be better as a snack or a cracker for use with dips.

Korovka cookies from the Russian market in cream and chocolate
flavors - the cream flavor was fairly buttery (with butter flavor
identical to nature, I think the label said) and with a distinct
coconutty aspect, although there wasn't any coconut anything
listed in the ingredients; the chocolate tasted dirtlike and
unconvincing (not unlike the way chocolate Silk tasted when the
product first came out on the market) - some of the package went
to Zim, which I can't say for the cream flavor, as the latter
was universally preferred.

Excelsior Cabernet Sauvignon 02 (South Africa) - almost black
in color, very plummy, aroma and taste of cooked and/or overripe
fruit, a little thick on the tongue with spices and raisininess.
Some detected maderization, of which I found maybe a touch. This
wine had thrown quite a sediment. Thinking on it, I wonder if it
had always been properly stored, as it showed aspects of a much
older wine.
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