durhamonthecheap

Saturday, February 2, 2013

Product Review: bzzcampaign Cafe Escapes

Today I received the bzzcampaign supplies to WOM advertise Cafe Escapes, which makes Keurig compatible beverages in a variety of flavors. What makes this campaign particularly exciting for me is the inclusion of Chai Latte and Mocha. I like Chai because the spices give its flavors a nice complexity and Mocha to me is the perfect combination of chocolate and coffee.

Gosh, the packaging already looks delicious! Those cups of specialty coffee and hot chocolate look so good, especially one week after we had a real winter here in North Carolina with ice storm and everything!

I will bring the coupons to work next week, so if you are interested in sampling Cafe Escapes, let me know!

I will share the Cafe Caramel and Cafe Vanilla. For my taste they are too sweet on their own, but great if mixed in with regular coffee instead of coffee creamer. So if you work at the university, you may find these in break rooms across campus for sampling! If you like the McDonalds frappes and lattes, these may be really good for you because the frappes at McDs or Starbucks tend to be too sweet for me and I am not very fond of the whipped cream on those either. I know that both new flavors have gotten really good reviews online. If you prefer French Roast because you want full-bodied coffee flavor, you are in the same boat as I, you will miss coffee flavor in these.

This second sampler I am particularly excited about because it has Chai Latte, Mocha and two hot chocolates - what a wonderful variety of flavors to include. I love Chai and Mocha and having two hot chocolates, especially a dark chocolate variety, is awesome. I am glad bzzagent decided to have this campaign now when it is still cold, even in North Carolina, and we can warm up with a nice cup of hot chocolate!

It is amazing that Cafe Escapes managed to make a flavored coffee that actually tastes like caramel. Overall, the caramel flavor is good, but it was a tad too sweet for me. So my solution, use half and half. I mix regular coffee with Cafe Caramel, save the cream and sugar, and it is ending up being a perfect cup of coffee with a hint of caramel!

Disclaimer: I was provided by bzzagent.com free samples and coupons in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed in the blog are solely my own and have not been influenced by bzzagent or any other third party.

Catch it while you can: Aldi in Durham has Red Velvet Cake on clearance at $2.99

I stopped by the Aldi in S. Durham today and besides my actual shopping list items, I did pick up something nice for dessert this weekend. Aldi had Red Velvet Cake for the last few weeks, but today I saw it was on clearance for less than $3. Down from more than $6, the price was too good and I pulled trigger and bought a cake.

I am not an expert on Red Velvet Cake, but this cake was wonderfully light and fluffy. I liked that the cake was not too dense and the frosting was just thick enough to cover the cake, but certainly not too thick to make the cake overly sweet. Overall, I think that the Aldi version of a Red Velvet Cake will serve nicely as a family dessert and at the current clearance price it is a true bargain!

The velvet cake does contain cacao and the frosting is cream cheese. Based on our experiences, one slice is just fine, although because of the light texture an adult can easily finish up two slices. The fact that the cake tastes really good makes eating two slices certainly an easy enough "chore".

Book review: Scott Palmer - The 5 Money Personalities: Speaking the Same Love and Money Language

This book takes an interesting approach to money counseling. Rather than provide advice about which stocks to buy or how to properly and effectively balance your checkbook, the book by the Palmers seeks to counsel couples how to prevent that their marriage is torn apart by financial issues. Appropriately written by the couple of Scott and Bethany Palmer, the books arose out of the statistic that financial issues are a major reason for divorce in the USA. Financial issues does not necessarily mean that people are short on money, but can also include problems such as hiding expenses or how money is spent.

available on Amazon.com here

The authors therefore start their book of with a simple assessment tool to identify the money personality of the partners and help the individuals as well as their partners understand why they handle money the way they do it. Understanding your money personality and relating to your spouse's money personality is an important first step in bringing about honesty in a relationship. No more secret accounts or money in cookie jars; if you know how your spouse behaves with money, you can not only reduce fighting about money, but also lend the necessary support to bring about change or correct money mistakes.

The marriage as a partnership includes together working out finances and therefore the next three chapters focus on communicating about finances between the partners, including sharing a cons with your spouse and discussing them. While these tools are simple and some of the approaches may appear to be common sense to the reader, they also provide a foundational framework to guide partners on ways to start communicating about money.

I got out of this book that it is okay to share bank accounts or keep separate accounts, as long as both partners agree and understand the reasons behind these facts. Being open about how you feel about money and how you prefer to allocate resources is as important as being open about the partnership goals itself. Money talk does not mean stress, it can be an important strengthening factor in your relationship if one correctly and that is what this books hopes to achieve in the end.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book through booksneeze in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed in this review are solely my own and have not been influenced by the authors or the publisher of this book.

Product review: Subway breakfast - Sunrise Subway Melt

Today, Subway had its free breakfast promotion in some of the North Carolina markets. I went to the Subway in the Woodcroft shopping center in S. Durham and ordered the Sunrise Subway Melt and also got my free coffee, for which Subway uses Seattle's Best.

The Sunrise Subway Melt, described here on the Subway Menu page, contains three different meats as well as cheese and a choice of egg or egg white. I ordered egg white and Provolone cheese, plus asked that some bell peppers and banana peppers be added to the sandwich.

It is a good size sandwich that combined with the coffee makes for a decent breakfast. The regular price for the sandwich alone is $2.75. Not bad for the mix of Turkey, Bacon and Black Forest Ham.

Below are more detailed images of the sandwich, so you can see what you can expect if you decide to order it. I do not go to Subway often, but I have to say that for a different breakfast than all the fried food at many other places, this sandwich tasted fresh and very different. I liked that I could add some veggies to the flatbread and the combination of peppers that I used went really well with the standard ingredients.

I also used the nutritional information calculator on the Subway page and these are the numbers for my customized sandwich.

SERVING SIZE (g) - 120

CALORIES - 190

Calories from Fat - 50

TOTAL FAT (g) - 6

Saturated Fat (g) - 2

Trans Fat* (g) - 0

CHOLESTEROL (mg) - 0

SODIUM (mg) - 780

CARBOHYDRATES (G) - 22

Dietary Fiber (g) - 1

Sugars (g) - 1

PROTEIN (G) - 15

VITAMIN C % DV - 10

CALCIUM % DV - 20

IRON % DV - 8

Thursday, January 31, 2013

Product review; sampling the January Goodies box

I love getting Goodies boxes because the products included are often perfect for the lunch bag. These last couple of days I sampled the hummus and dip, the cookies, the falafel chips and the berry fruit chews. So far, Goodies samples from the January box have been a hit! Everything was outstanding and I cannot wait to go through the last remaining items.

Of course I had to try the chocolate cookies. With two in each bag, this was a perfect afternoon snack. The cookies has just the right mix of crispy and flaky. I really though enjoyed the flavor; the cookies tasted real like chocolate had been baked into them!

I also had to sample the hummus. I got the original flavor, which made me happy. I prefer original flavor over the fancy flavors since I actually like chickpeas and so the original flavor maintains the most of the chickpea flavor. As you can see the pita chips were a good portion and I actually had hummus left over to pair with other chips at home after I was done at lunch. The hummus portion was definitely plenty. Everything tasted good. The pita chips were nice and crispy and the hummus smooth and just the right hint of spices.

Today I decided to sample the falafel chips as well as the druit chews. The falafel chips were branded as spicy, but while they were flavorful, I would not describe the flavor as spicy. I could not detect a lot of spice in the flavor and they certainly were not hot to me. I ate the bag by itself; I would recommend using either hummus or a cheese or savory spread to go with the chips.The chips on their own had a nice flavor, but they were not really spicy in my opinion.
The second item I sampled for lunch were the fruit chews. I got mine in berry flavor and berry flavor they had. Opening the bag, I felt surrounded by berries because the bag literally smelled as if filled with dried raspberries. The chews were just the right consistency, not to soft and hard enough to last some time in your mouth. I thought the berry flavor was really natural and strong. These were next to the chocolate cookies my favorite item so far. Going into the sampling I would not have expected the sweet items to beat out the savory items since I usually prefer savory items to cookies and candy.

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Review: Goodies January box

Today the January Goodies box came. I am not sure if there was a specific theme for this box, but as always the contents were healthy, containing many natural ingredients and showed a great variety in product types. They included a soda, which I was happy about because I love trying out new beverages. I would more often buy special sodas, but it is so hard to find single serving sodas these days and I hate to buy 6-packs and then realize that the flavor I imagined the soda to have is nothing like the flavor that soda ends up having!

As you can see from the image, I got

original flavored hummus dip and pita chips
spicy falafel chips
chocolate cookies
berry cassis soda - really excited about this one since I love black currant-flavored beverages
berry fruit chews
whole wheat raspberry fig bar - I never really liked the original Fig Newtons so I have high hopes for "Raspberry Newtons"
blueberry granola

Everything is one serving size and a wonderful variety of healthy products as in prior Goodies boxes!
I have not tried anything yet, but the soda and chocolate cookies are definitely tempting. I will pack the hummus dip and pita chips for lunch tomorrow and may include the fruit chews as well.

Some subscription services raise an expectation in subscribers that boxes will be a bargain with boxes worth more than what people pay for them. For Goodies, I personally never consider that principle to apply. The reason Goodies stands out to me that I have usually found each box to only contain products that were new to me. Goodies really stands for product discovery. So yes, I may find chocolate cookies in a box, but the company making the cookies is not a company I have heard before and in most cases I may not even be able to find the products in my regular grocery stores. I love that Goodies challenges my taste buds every month; either by introducing me to a soda, as in this box, that is a mix of black currant, tangerine and lemon or by introducing me to sunflower-based mint chocolate cups. Of course, each box will have one or two favorite items, but for me to assemble this collection of food, I would either have to mail order full size items at higher prices or drive around town and visit several stores, hoping to find single serving-sized product there.

If you are interested in having your taste buds challenged on a regular basis and want to subscribe to Goodies, please visit their website at Goodies.co and put in your information. They are continuously sending out invites, but be prepared to have to wait for a couple of months since the company seems to be continuously growing and it takes some time to catch up to all the invite requests.

Disclaimer: I received a Goodies box for a subscription fee of $7. All opinions expressed in this blog are my own and have not been influenced by Goodies, Walmart or any third party.

Monday, January 28, 2013

Freebie: Sample of Downy Infusions™ Honey Flower and Shimmer Unstopables

Go to their website here and request a free sample.

From the Downy website, it seems the scent is a mix of creamy jasmine, lily-of-the-valley, and sweet rose and the scent combination is called Honey Flower. It can be used like a regular fabric softener.

If you create an account at PG Everywhere, you can request a bunch of sample for P&G products as well as request several coupons. P&G provides samples at specific intervals and so you can sign up for all the available samples and you only need a couple of minutes for processing the request. This is a lot more efficient than signing up for each sample individually.

I just requested mine and the sample is still available! I also got samples for a bunch of other P&G products, plus coupons!