Strauss Energy Morning Cookies Line

Strauss Energy has a new line of cookies they are calling עוגיות דגנים לבוקר which can either be translated as Morning Cereal Cookies or Morning Grain Cookies. The cookies are made partly with whole flours so maybe that was part of the reason they used the word דגנים . I think the name is most likely because breakfast cereals are called דגני בוקר  and Strauss is trying to pull these off as a substitute breakfast, like all of their granola-type bars on their “Energy” label.

שטראוס ENERGY סדרת עוגיות הדגנים לבוקר...טוב

I saw 3 items in this new Morning Cereal Cookies line; A Chocolate Cream filled Cookie Bar, A Whole Flour Mixed Nut Cookie & A Whole Flour Blueberry Cookie. I don’t tend to care for cooked/baked fruit so I got the first two options to try.

Meir Beigel’s “PetieBagel”

מאיר בייגל פתיבייגל

When I first read about this new product from Meir Beigel I could not imagine what it would actually taste like. The thought of combining pretzels and Petit Beurre tea biscuits into one item seemed odd and farfetched to me. I do enjoy mixing salt and sweet snacks but I couldn’t work out how a tea biscuit pretzel would taste.

זוכי מוצר השנה ישראל Product Of the Year 2014

מוצר השנה ישראל 2014

I was unable to attend the 2014 Product Of The Year bloggers event that took place recently, yet Amit, Product of the Year Community Manager, was kind enough to send my way the signature red bag full of winning items for me to tryout.  
 
To read about previous Product of the Year winners and how they go about picking the winning products you can click on my past blog posts Here , Here, Here and Here. 

Since I mainly review food products, on this blog, I will focus most of my attention on the winning food and drinks.

To see all the winning products for 2014 you can checkout the Product of the Year website Here.

Tivall Broccoli Muffins

מאפינס טבעול

Tivall; known for ready-made food items like Schnitzel and vegetable patties among other; foods you can just pull out of the freezer and reheat, to have a fairly healthy meal in a matter of minutes, have added vegetable “muffins” to their ever growing lines of products.

These savory muffins are available in four flavors; Corn, Tomato ‘n Olive, Onion ‘n Leek and Broccoli. I chose to try the Broccoli one.

Strauss Magnum Black Ice Cream Bar

מגנום גלידה טריפל, בלאק ופינק

If I understood the press release correctly, a few months ago Magnum Strauss released an ice cream bar they called Triple. Then not too long ago, they added two more Magnum bars to the Summer 2013 line; one is called Black and the second Pink.

The Magnum Triple sounds very elaborate since it has a combination of white, milk and dark chocolate all in one ice cream bar. It’s a chocolate ice cream with a ripple of dark chocolate then covered in both white and milk chocolate.

Magnum Black Espresso is a Vanilla Ice Cream with a coffee swirl coated in dark chocolate. 

Strauss Energy Bite-Size "Rice" Cakes

פריכיות ביס של אנרג'י מקבוצת שטראוס

Strauss Energy who I know best for their cereal bars have a new product on the market. They came out with a line of bite size puffed “rice” cakes. I put the word rice in parentheses because they are not made solely of rice, they are technically 5 grain cakes. Along with the rice flour they also have whole corn flour, whole oats flour, wheat and barley. Since I wasn’t sure what the right word to describe these “puffed 5 grain cakes” was; I thought most people call them rice cakes, even if they are not made of only of rice.

Yotvata Choco Chocolate Milk and Vanilla Milk Drinks

משקאות קיץ של יטבתה שוקו שוקולדי וונילה

Yotvata Dairy, which is half owned by Strauss Dairy, came out with two new milk drinks for the summer of 2013. One they are calling Choco Chocolate and the second they called Vanilla. I tasted both flavors.
 

First I drank the Yotvata Choco Chocolate Milk drink which I got in the smaller 250 ml bottle (I did not see that size bottle for the vanilla drink I only found it in the 1 liter bottle). The reason they called it Choco Chocolate milk is because they supposedly added real chocolate to the drink and not just cocoa powder; or whatever they use to normally make chocolate milk. 

Product Of the Year Community Event 2013 אירוע קהילת מוצר השנה 2013

מוצר השנה 2013

Last week was the 2013 Product Of The Year community event. Like last year, I had the privilege of being invited. As a blogger who writes about new products on the local market I was thrilled to be invited. Since my blog is mainly about food and drinks I will focus most of this post talking about the winners in those categories but I will touch on other products as well

 If you want to see a full list of all this year’s Product Of The Year winners  here is a link to the page where you can see all the winning products 

Nature Valley Thins

I'm a fan of many Nature Valley Products, including the THE OATS 'N DARK CHOCOLATE CRUNCHY GRANOLA BAR and the Nature Valley's Dark Chocolate Soft Granola Bars so when I saw these Nature Valley Thins on the shelf I really wanted to try them. They are available here in Israel in two flavors; Whole Oates and Whole Oats with Peanuts. Both have a layer of chocolate at the bottom. I bought both of them to try.

מנייצ'ר ואלי THINS חטיפוני גרנולה דקים

Grape Flavor Fuze Ice Tea

Fuze Tea Israel, which is owned by Coca-Cola Israel, has a new ice tea flavor on the local market. Actually I think this is their first new flavor since they changed their name from Nestea to Fuze Tea last May (as I wrote about in this blog post). Since Fuze Tea was the old Nestea all the flavors that the old Nestea had are available under the Fuze Tea name but now that they seem to be settled into their new name they are ready to come out with a new flavor.

פיוז תה ענבים

Just by the way from what I gather, Fuze Tea Israel is not the same as Fuze Tea in other parts of the world. Here in Israel it really is the same exact product as the old Nestea was. They taste exactly the same whereas the new Nestea here in Israel tastes very different to me and I did not enjoy it. On the other hand, I have read and heard from friends in the USA and Europe that they hate Fuze Tea and it tastes nothing like the old Nestea.  So my conclusion is that Fuze Tea outside of Israel must not be the same product as the Fuze Tea made by Coca-Cola Israel and sold here.

I can’t say I ever remember tasting a grape flavored ice tea so I was curious to taste it. I thought it was refreshing and somewhat enjoyable but ever so slightly too sweet for me. Then again, I don’t really enjoy things that are even a drop too sweet. Since I think I’m not really the right person to go by regarding sweetness in many cases, I gave a glass of the Grape Fuze Ice Tea to my friend as well. She did not think it was too sweet whatsoever.

Ben & Jerry's Banana Peanut Butter Greek Frozen Yogurt

The day before Shavuot I was in the supermarket picking up some last minute items for the Holiday and I noticed they had a new line of Ben & Jerry's Greek Frozen Yogurts. There were three flavor options to choose from; Blueberry Vanilla Graham, Banana Peanut Butter and (I think) Strawberry Short Cake.

בן & ג'ריס יוגורט יווני חמאת בוטנים ובננה

Since dairy products are “the name of the game” on Shavuot I thought it would be the perfect time to try one. Then I saw the 2 for 40NIS sign so I picked two. I got the Banana Peanut Butter and the Blueberry Vanilla Graham.

The Banana Peanut Butter combo instantly made me think of Elvis’s famous sandwich, which always seemed like an odd combination to me. Still, it kind of intrigued me and, as I mentioned in my review of Ben & Jerry’s Peanut Butter Cup Ice Cream, I usually enjoy when they mix sweet and salty flavors but the banana kind of worried me. As a whole I normally don’t like banana flavor in products. I very much enjoy fresh bananas but I don’t like when bananas are used as a flavor, so I was skeptical about this frozen Greek yogurt flavor .

Milky Chocolate Pudding with Crunchy Wafers

מילקי וופל

In their continuous effort to come up with something NEW and DIFFERENT Milky Strauss has a new gimmick on the market just in time for Shavuot; the “Dairy Holiday”. It’s called Milky Wafer Crunch. With each Milky chocolate pudding topped with their signature whipped cream you get 2 (individually wrapped) triangle shaped crunchy wafers.

The idea is similar to the Milky's Whip Cream & Chocolate Spoons, I wrote about in April of 2012. There you had a chocolate spoon to use as a utensil to eat the whip cream, this time you are meant to use the wafer to scoop up the pudding and whip cream and then eat the wafer at the end.

Skittles

This isn’t a review it’s just an FYI … 

Skittles are now widely available here in Israel. Until now I saw them, on occasion, in some select mini markets that specialize in imported products but last week I saw 2 flavors on a huge stand in Mega Bul. Then yesterday I read a press release stating that Wrigley’s has officially bought Skittles to Israel.

The flavors they had were Fruits and Crazy Sour Skittles.

סוכריות סקיטלס

Pizza Toast Maadanot

מעדנות פיצה טוסט

Tnuva has a new product in their Maadanot frozen pizza category. They are calling it Pizza Toast. This frozen pizza is meant to be warmed up/baked in a pop-up toaster for 6-8 minutes on high heat. Kind of like a pizza “Pop Tart”. The outside crust/dough is meant to get toasted and at the same time as it warms up the pizza sauce and cheese inside, to give you a ready-to-eat pizza product in a matter of minutes.

Ben & Jerry’s Peanut Butter Cup Ice Cream

פינט באטר קאפ גלידת בן וג'רי

A few months ago Ben & Jerry’s-Israel asked their Facebook fans which of 5 specific flavors; that had been off the local market, should be reintroduced. Peanut Butter Cup won with 35% of the vote. Creme Brulee got 23%, Cherry Garcia 16%, Banana Split 15% and Oatmeal Cookie got 11% of the vote.

I was happy that Peanut Butter Cup “won”. I really love peanut butter cups and, as I think I mentioned in my review of Ben & Jerry’s Chubby Hubby ice cream, I really enjoy the combo of sweet and slightly salty flavors so adding chocolate covered peanut butter to an ice cream is a real win-win in my book.

Must Sugar-Free “Desserts” Lemon Meringue Pie Flavor Gum

I was never a super huge fan of gum. I always had very specific likes and dislikes when it came to chewing/bubble gum but for some reason over the past few months I don’t care for gum at all. I can’t remember when the last time I put a piece of gum in my mouth, if it wasn’t for the purposes of trying something new and possibly writing a blog post about it. There have even been a few new gums on the market that I didn’t review because I wasn’t interested in trying them. Then when I was at a rest stop in the Negev and I saw this Lemon Meringue Pie flavored Must Sugar Free Gum and I was intrigued I ”had to try it”. At that point I had not seen a press release about this “desserts” line of Must gums and I had not noticed them in any of the supermarkets I usually shop in so I got a pack to try, by now I think they are available all over the country and I even saw an ad for them on TV last night. 

מסטיק ללא סוכר בטעמי קינוחים: פאי לימון ושטרודל תפוחים וקינמון

The other flavor in this Must “Desserts” line is Apple Cinnamon Strudel. I would have gotten that too because I used to really like a good cinnamon gum but the apple part put me off. I really do not enjoy sweet fruit flavored gums and I was afraid the apple part would be dominant and too sweet for my liking so I skipped that option.

Tnuva Chocolate Milk 30% Less Sugar + Coupon

שוקו תנובה
30% פחות תוספת סוכר

Tnuva has a new Chocolate Milk on the market. This Shoko line of chocolate milk is made of 2% low fat low lactose milk, it's low Sodium, and contains 96% milk (leaving very little place for many other ingredients like water; which is added to say Yotvata's popular chocolate milk) but most important to Tnuva, it has 30% less sugar than their UHT Long Life Chocolate Milk.

I was wondering why they made a point to say it was 30% less compared to that specific product of theirs, then I remembered that a while back Tnuva lowered the sugar levels in their “Shock” line of chocolate milk by 20% so they had to point out that is this 30% less sugar than in the UHT chocolate milk and not 30% less than their Shock chocolate milks.

Osem's Flat Pretzel Kosher for Pesach

אסם בייגלה שטוחים כשר לפסח

A few weeks ago, when I saw the press release for Osem’s Kosher For Pesach Flat Pretzels I was skeptical about them but I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that I wanted to try them. I also wanted to send a bag to my friend in the USA. Although she does not eat Kitniyot on Pesach I was sure she would enjoy trying them. Plus I always appreciate her take on new products and I like to have more than one opinion if I write a review. 

There are other snacks like Bissli, Apropo, potato chips, popcorn etc that have a Kosher for Pesach option and have been available here in past years as well as this year. But as I’ve mentioned many times, in past blog posts, pretzels are my “go-to” favorite salty snacks. I don’t love the fried/oily snacks as much as the baked pretzel-style snacks. Having a good pretzel option for Pesach would be wonderful for me. That’s if it tasted decent in my opinion, i.e. not like Matzo or potato starch. I’ve also mentioned in the past that I dislike the taste and texture of potato starch. As far as Matzo, if it tastes like Matzo I may as well just eat Matzo. When I saw that it was made mainly of corn flour, rice flour and soy flour I was optimistic and thought it may have potential.

Telma’s Kosher for Pesach Cornflakes

תלמה קורנפלקס כשר לפסח

Since I've reviewed many Kosher for Pesach products in past years (link to last years roundup here) I thought I had already written about Telma’s Kosher for Pesach Cornflakes, but when I looked back I realized I never did review this cereal. I only blogged about Nougat Filled Cereals for Pesach. I did mention the Telma Cornflakes when I reviewed Klik’s Chocolate Covered Cereal -Kosher For Pesach . Maybe that’s what I was remembering. I’m guessing that since I found those chocolate covered cornflakes to be kind of “stale” I didn’t think I would enjoy the Telma Kosher for Pesach Cornflakes to start with, so I must have skipped them in past years.

Strauss Milky White-Chocolate Pudding

Strauss added a new flavor to their ever-so-popular Milky pudding line. This time they went for a white-chocolate flavor.

מילקי שוקולד לבן

As with other Milky products this white-chocolate pudding also comes topped with their signature whipped-cream (which by the way, I don't love because I find it leaves an unpleasant shortening-like film in my mouth, but that’s nothing new.) If you like their whip-cream in any of their other 10 Milky puddings you will like it this time as well.