Limited Edition Foods

In the grocery story today I also saw these Andes Fall Harvest Limited Edition chocolates. Unlike the McGraw Spicy Jalapeno Fritos, which I passed up, the Andes chocolates I quickly decided to purchase. It was also on sale and well I love chocolate and have been impressed with Andes in the past, so it was not much of a risk to buy these.

The Fall Harvest is a mix of three flavors in one bag. The bag is very seasonal with its orange color and leaves on the front. The three flavors are Toffee, Orange, and Cocoa. The chocolates have different harvest designs on the small chocolate bars. This includes a Cornucopia design and pumpkin designs. It seems the pumpkin design with falling leaves is a popular one or at least in my package it is, as I opened six of them and five of them have that design. It appears the design is random and not specific to the flavors.

I have not tried the chocolates, yet, so I am not sure how they taste. I plan to try them out and review them later this week when I get a chance. The Orange one did stand out to me when I opened it, though, as it really looks like a classic Andes chocolate (i.e. the mint ones). This is because the Orange ones have three layers with the middle one being orange colored and the top and bottom layers being brown. Both the Cocoa and Toffee ones look the same being entirely brown.

I saw the Limited Edition McGraw’s Spicy Jalapeno Fritos in the grocery store today. They were on sale even, but I passed them up because I do not like spicy anything and I assume these are at least somewhat spicy. I do like the Limited Edition packaging aspect of them, though, with a photo of Tim McGraw on the front. That and it is nice to see something with a country musician, i.e. a musician I actually have a clue who they are. I probably would not have even noticed it if I was not a country musician on the package. The little signature scrawl on his shoulder is also a nice touch that I almost missed, but noticed when my dad lifted up the package for me to photograph it with my phone (boy am I loving now having a camera on my phone!).

Back at home I did some searching on the web about these chips. It appears they have been out for at least a few months, although at first the release was quite limited. One of the reviews I read that they were not that spicy, so perhaps they are not all that bad, but I sure am not brave enough to try them for myself. I also read a review that said they were really spicy, but that person loved them and hoped they become a regular flavor (and perhaps a regular version without the McGraw name might be in the future). Thus I really think I will just not try these, but if spicy is something you like these sound worth hunting down.

The other day my dad took photos of the current limited edition Dreyer’s (Edy’s is the same brand) ice cream flavors available at our local Safeway. They have quite a selection and I noticed Pumpkin and Peppermint are new additions this week. The other flavors are Apple Pie, Banana Split, Mango, Banana Nut, and Root Beer Float.

Pumpkin, in particular, is one of my favorite seasonal Limited Edition flavors, although I do like the Pumpkin Pie ones with the pieces of crust slightly more than the just plain Pumpkin ice cream. Apple Pie is also listed on the Dreyer’s website along with Pumpkin and Peppermint as being September through December flavors. As for the other flavors, they may be remnants of the summer Limited Edition flavors.

Not so sure how I feel about the Mango as an ice cream flavor. I just do not usually like fruity ice cream flavors because they are too creamy to be fruity. Basically I think fruit flavors are better as sherbet and sorbet flavors. As for Banana Split it may be a decent flavor, but I am thinking I would still want some fresh bananas to go with it or perhaps those Limited Edition Banana Split Oreos would go good with this and make them worthwhile.

There were also two Limited Edition Slow Churned flavors. They are Girl Scouts Thin Mint Cookie and Girl Scouts Samoas. The Samoas flavor has pieces of Girl Scouts Samoa cookies mixed in vanilla and caramel ice cream. The Thin Mint Cookie flavor includes pieces of Girl Scouts Thin Mint cookies in white mint ice cream. According to the Dreyer’s website these flavors are both available September through December.

Miller High Life is often promoted as an outdoor activity beer. To go with this persona the Miller High Life and Miller High Life Light beer will be packaged in Limited Edition camouflage packaging and cans. They are set to be released on October 1, 2008 and be available until the end of 2008. The Limited Edition packaging with the camouflaged cans inside will be available as 24-packs and 30-packs.

The Limited Edition camouflage packages will include points redeemable in the Miller High Life Extras program, which sounds similar to the Coke and Pepsi rewards programs. To tie in with the camouflage cans the program will include things like camouflage hats.

I am not into drinking alcohol, but I will admit these cans look kind of cool in the brown camouflage designs. Oh, and they are being released on my 21st birthday. Now that is kind of cool, but I still do not plan on drinking alcohol.

Haagen-Dazs is releasing the Limited Edition flavor Caramel Biscuit & Cream to help boost winter sales, which apparently need some help because it just is not the time of year everyone enjoys having ice cream. This flavor is only available for a certain amount of time, but the time period is six months, so it really is available for quite some time as far as most limited edition foods are concerned. I only know for sure that it is being released in the UK market, but perhaps it will reach other Haagen-Dazs markets, too.

The flavor sounds interesting if you like caramel at least. The base is Haagen-Dazs caramel ice cream. Added to it are caramelized Belgian Speculoos biscuits. In case you are not familiar with the British English use of the word biscuit and are thinking this sounds disgusting as an ice cream flavor, biscuits are cookies and not the bread like thing you may serve with gravy.

I personally do not eat Oreos very often, but the Limited Edition Banana Split Creme flavor did catch my eye as interesting. I have not personally gotten the chance to buy them and try them out for myself. In the end probably will not because I highly doubt the taste will be worth the cost. Basically they sound like they are trying to be a banana split flavored filling inside the normal chocolate outsides of Oreos, but they do not appear to have actually made them to fit the name of the cookies.

From what I have read about them, though, they smell like bananas and taste like those orange marshmallow peanut candies. It certainly have not found anyone say they taste like bananas, vanilla ice cream, and strawberry ice cream with the chocolate of the Oreos making it a true banana split flavor combination, which is personally how I feel they should taste. Since they apparently do not tast like that, then I would probably very disappointed in them and back to why I probably will not be forking over my money on these.

Anyways, I am sure there will soon be some Halloween Orange Oreos hitting the shelf if they have not already. These seasonal Limited Editions have kind of been done so many times that it almost seems wrong to still call them that, but nevertheless I think of them that way. If you are into Oreo cookies, then I am sure those will be more worthwhile then the Banana Split Creme Limited Edition, which seems to be a good candidate to go away for good.

The Candy Corn Kisses are one of three Limited Edition Kiss flavors available this fall. Yesterday, I wrote about trying the Pumpkin Spice ones. Today I set about getting ready to review the Candy Corn ones, but then realized I did not really have much to say just about trying the Candy Corn ones, so I decided to also try out the Kisses Candy Corn Autumn Cookies recipe on the back of the bag.

First, the Candy Corn Kisses taste pretty good in my opinion, which is really saying something because Candy Corn is on my list of candy I hate. My dad thinks they taste the same, but the texture is what makes it seem so different. As for the blogs I read saying these taste like buttered popcorn, well, I just do not taste them that way except they do have a little bit of a saltiness to them. Overall on there own I like them, although they are not that spectacular of a flavor that I will miss when they are not available.

As for the cookie recipe, that turned out really good. The recipe calls for 66 Candy Corn Kisses, but if you read the probable amount in the bag there is only 72. Of course, I realized the recipe after eating about 10 of the Kisses. Thus I just did a half recipe and ended up only needing 19 kisses because I only ended up with 11 cookies instead of the expected 24. The cookie base is a peanut butter oatmeal cookie, which is good on its own. After they cool you drizzle melted Candy Corn kisses on top and then put an unwrapped on on top. The cookies are pretty good tasting even though I substituted regular peanut butter for the called for Reeses peanut butter. They would have been better just leaving them without the added Candy Corn kisses, though. However, they do look very festive.

The other day I wrote a post about the three Limited Edition Hershey’s Kisses released for this Fall. I had my dad try to pick me up some Caramel Apple ones when he was at Target the other day, but instead he ended up bringing me the Caramel ones because he thought maybe I made a mistake. At least he did decide to pick up the Pumpkin Spice and Candy Corn ones even though I did not originally ask for them. Not to mention the Caramel ones are still definitely worth eating.

The first one I tried was the new for this year Pumpkin Spice ones. I totally agree that these are gushy and they certainly are not the same as being able to suck on a hard chocolate kiss and are more like the equivalent of a slobbery kiss vs. a quick peck on the cheek. Anyways, I did not really mind the gushy texture, but the inside is not all that pleasant on its own.

The outside I like with it tasting like pumpkin pie with double the called for spice. The inside, though, is some weird way too sugary to the point of being gritty concoction that is just disgusting. Yes, I am the adventurous one to just stick my tongue in the middle of the kiss and purposely try it one its own. I do not recommend it, though, as it really is meant to be mixed with the flavor of the shell. The sad thing, though, is that oddly enough I keep eating them, so they turned out not that bad once I stopped trying the center on its own. Oh, and I also like them because they made for such a lovely photo as seen above.

In November 2008, Summers Estate Wines plans to release a Limited Edition Bordeaux blend called 2005 Checkmate. This wine is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Petit Verdot, and Cabernet Franc . The Cabernet Sauvignon makes up the largest portion of the blend with it being 74% of what is in the 2005 Checkmate. The breakdown of the other three that make up the blend is 16% Merlot, 7% Petit Verdot, and 3% Cabernet Franc. This Limited Edition release will consist of only 75 cases being released to select markets in the United States.

The title of this Limited Edition release is linked to the Knight logo of Summers Estate Wines, which represents it growing its grapes in the Knights Valley, as well as to its unique blend perhaps creating it to be a grandmaster of wines.

Bowmore has released its second of three Limited Edition Scotches. It is called White Bowmore and it is a 43 year old single malt. For this Limited Edition release there are only 723 bottles priced at GBP2,500 (US$4,000) per bottle. White Bowmore has been maturing in bourbon casks since 1964. There is supposedly going to be a competition on the Bowmore website for a chance to win a bottle of this luxury spirit.

The first of this series of Limited Edition Scotches was released last year. It was called Black Bowmore and was a 42 year old malt. Black Bowmore was named to the top 5 list of most wanted spirits, which I assume to mean that its rarity combined with the time it takes to end up with the malt makes it desirable even if it is not all that great tasting, although it may be good, too.