I know my readers sit around believing I live the glamorous and fast-paced life of a small-time snack food reviewer. While you may believe that I'm showered with freebies from companies who are grateful to have their products displayed on my puny blog and that I'm sitting around in an evening dress and heels delicately ingesting delicious tidbits, the reality is quite different.* I am constantly torn between my desire to just eat what I buy and the need to take pictures of things and write a review as I enjoy something. Because of this, I often take a few crappy pictures (ample evidence of that on this blog), enjoy my food or drink and then place my garbage in a discreet location until I'm actually ready to write something. I have to keep the packaging until the review is done in such cases because I may need to refer to it. Also, it reminds me that if I want to stop attracting flies and roaches, I'd better get a review written before too much time passes.**
I found this for 160 yen ($2.02) at Sunkus convenience store. Cherie Dolce is their line of fresh snacks and drinks. It's something which I have little experience with because I tried some cheesecake type sweet from that line a long time ago and there were tiny little stale croutons at the bottom of it. I'm not exaggerating.*** This caught my eye on one of the many sweltering days we've been experiencing. I thought a cold coffee sounded good and was won over by the fact that a 190 ml. cup has only 106 calories. That makes it similar to what I'd make at home on the calorie front, though quite a bit more expensive.
This was quite sweet with a good strong, but not overbearing coffee flavor. The soy flavor seems fairly indistinguishable from milk-based lattes offered by other companies. Only at the end of a sip could I detect it rather slightly. All of these coffee drinks in Japan (and there are a lot of them) are either unsweetened or very sweet. This one was made with both maltodextrin and sugar as well as "creaming powder", soy milk, and coffee (of course).
I'd buy this again, though not often. This isn't because I didn't like it, but mainly because I tend not to buy cold coffee or tea beverages much and this wasn't spectacular. The packaging on these really makes me feel guilty, though you'd think that anyone in my line of low-paid work (snack reviewing) would be better at quelling her cognitive dissonance about the waste created by consuming processed foods. This is a decent enough cold coffee, but I wouldn't recommend anyone go out of their way to choose it over any other.
*That's all a lie. I know no one thinks that.
**That's also a lie. I have to wash trash before I can throw it away so it's actually clean.
***Really, I'm not. They were actually regular croutons like you get in a salad and they were stale.
I think companies should start sending you freebies, you are ranked the highest in google.
ReplyDeleteOMG you wash your trash???
I don't, and I'm such a bad, bad girl about it. I hide it (the cans and glass). If they made it easier to recycle, I would, usually they supply you with the plastic bins (in the us). I'm thinking of doing it at our house, because I don't want the neighbors to think or get caught by the neighborhood watch nanny's (it was kind of hard to hide all the wine bottles and beer from guests though) so I had no choice but to recycle those. Been looking ad some nice bins, but all that requires me to still rinse it. UGH .. I need to a rhythm to it. who has time these days. right?
i love cold coffee and while I didn't try this one I found most of the ones I tired in Japan (I had enough to be able to quantify) to be adequate or better than expected.
ReplyDeleteElle: I do wash it, because I have to. I don't exactly want to, but I think the trash cops (aka old people with nothing better to do than snoop through trash to make sure you followed every sorting rule) will harass me if I don't.
ReplyDeleteIkkin: My favorite is the Mt. Ranier Cafe Latte brand. I've had better than this, though it was still fine.
Thanks for commenting!