Food Club Frozen Pepperoni Pizza Review

Frozen pizza has come a long way! The Food Club frozen pepperoni pizza from Roche Brothers (in the Boston area) is only $3.99 and it's worth it. I prefer to make my own dough but if if I can't be bothered to wait for the dough to mix in my bread machine, the Food Club pizza is actually a great alternative. Recently, I put up a video on how you can add a few extra ingredients to make it even better:

The Food Club brand is Roche Brothers' store brand and that's why the pizza is significantly cheaper than the other self-rising crust pizza brands. I've actually never tried the other brands, so I can't really say whether Food Club's pizza is better. However, I found that the crust had a pleasing soft bread texture and the pepperoni tasted pretty good. I added fresh mozzarella, sliced mushrooms, and a clove of finely diced garlic. You can add whatever you want and make the pizza taste gourmet. Try sliced olives, spinach, and maybe some feta to make it taste like a Greek pizza. Think of the frozen pizza as a basic canvas for whatever pizza creation you can imagine. The important thing is that the dough is good and whatever you add to it will make it even better.

J.P. Licks - JP stands for "Jamaica Plain"!

J.P. Licks started in Jamaica Plain and I feel lucky to live so close to their very first location and flagship store on Centre Street in JP. It might not be the cheapest ice cream in the world but even for a poor student, it's an affordable treat. After going to Same Old Place for a pizza slice, JP Licks is the perfect place to go for dessert, as if the pizza didn't raise your cholesterol levels enough. If you're lactose intolerant, JP Licks actually has lactose-free ice cream and some sorbets. There are usually only a couple of lactose-free flavors and a couple of sorbets to choose from but it's better than nothing. They also have frozen yogurts (soft and hard types), which opens up more options for some lactose-intolerant people because those probably have a bit less lactose in them than regular ice cream. I especially like the peanut butter soft-serve frozen yogurt.



In addition to their ice creams and frozen yogurts, they also roast their own coffees and you can buy the beans too. Since I roast my own coffee, I don't buy their beans but sometimes have a cup there with my ice cream. Try putting a spoonful of vanilla ice cream (instead of cream and sugar) in the coffee. If you're there at the right time, the coffee roaster will be roasting the beans at the back of the store and you can watch the whole process. It smells good for a while but after about 5 minutes, it doesn't smell so good.

Recently, they have introduced some coconut milk ice creams. Um, yeah, I was making those at home last summer. I'm glad they finally figured it out though. :) If you're wondering how you can make your own coconut milk ice cream, check out my blog post from last year on making non-dairy ice creams.

Most recently (May 2012), they've released a few hemp ice cream flavors. I tried the one with peanut butter and it was a bit too sweet for my taste. I could definitely taste the hemp though. The pure hemp flavor was less sweet and pretty good. Maybe I'll try making my own hemp ice cream at home this summer. The thing about hemp products is they're more expensive than soy or coconut products. A quart of hemp milk is usually just under $4, compared to about $2 or $3 for a quart of soy milk or dairy milk. Still, you can make quite a bit of ice cream with a quart of hemp milk.

Cambridge & Thames Viennese style cream wafer rolls - review

Recently, I found these tasty Cambridge & Thames wafer rolls in Jamaica Plain, MA. The snacks are made in Greece and the ingredient list looks pretty good (no high fructose corn syrup or complicated-sounding things). They're very tasty and only $1.69 a can. There are 17 rolls in each package. They are available in two flavors: Vanilla and Cappuccino. Each can has an inner metal lid with a pull-tab so the snacks stay fresh until you open the can. The plastic lid is reasonably tight but it's nice to have that extra seal on the can.

When you bite into these wafer rolls, the texture is very light and flakey. The cream is sweet and complements the wafer perfectly. Of course the cream is not very moist or else it would make the wafer soggy. Ideally, these would go with a nice cup of coffee or tea because the cream is actually quite sweet after you eat a couple of these. They might go well with ice cream too. If you want to get fancy, these could be cake decorations.

Since this blog is for the frugal-minded, I'd like to mention that the can is not only small enough to stash away in a small compartment of your backpack, it's also durable enough to reuse! These cans are probably recyclable but if you need a strong container for storing things, this can is surprisingly well made. There's one in my scooter's cup-holder for putting little things like a small cloth and a pen. I suppose if you had office supplies (e.g. paper clips, pens, etc.) or small workshop materials (e.g. nails, nuts, bolts, etc.), these cans would be ideal for organizing those too.

Cappuccino and Hazelnut flavors

Popeye's Chicken - Crawfish Tackle Box review

Now that I have a scooter, I can get to the Popeye's Chicken that's only a 10-minute scoot from my house. Last week, I went there and tried their "Crawfish Tackle Box," which is shown in the picture below. It includes fried crawfish, fries, a biscuit, and creamy horseradish sauce. For only $4.99, this was a pretty good deal. There's a KFC about a block away but I would much rather go to Popeye's just because their breading is lighter and crispier. The Cajun fries have some nice seasoning making them better than the plain salted KFC fries. The creamy sauce is ok for what it is. Personally, I like to make my own seafood sauce with ketchup and horseradish. Of course the part that I really love about any Popeye's meal is that light and fluffy biscuit. Awesome! I recommend this tackle box deal.

The "Crawfish Tackle Box"

Chinese snacks - Part three (Choco Rolls)

Choco Roll is a relatively new snack from Taiwan. Online, they're $2.41 a box (as of July, 2011). I saw it on the shelf during my recent trip to C-Mart. It was $1.99 for a box (7 individually wrapped rolls) and looked promising. This comes in taro flavor too. For review of that, click here. For the pudding flavor, here's a picture and a review of my first impressions:

My fingers are covering "Product of Taiwan"

The chocolate by itself was not wonderful. However, in combination with the "pudding" and the cookie center, it was ok. Even after leaving it out at room temperature for a day, the center did not get soft like pudding. I guess it tasted a little like vanilla pudding. The best part of this snack is the texture. I liked the crunch of the cookie. However, the chocolate could have been better made. It had an almost waxy texture that wasn't particularly pleasant. Maybe the kids would like it.

The picture on the box really raises one's expectations a little too high for those of us who have had pudding and good chocolate. It's sweet but not in the North American way. I think people who enjoy the lower amounts of sugar in Asian sweets might enjoy this enough to buy it. Overall, I'd give this snack a 3/5. If you want an Asian snack with a good chocolate coating, go for the Japanese snacks.