Jack in the Box Peppermint & Oreo Milkshake!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of our readers!  Our gift to you? A special CHRISTMAS DAY REVIEW from our friends at Jack In The Box! Today we take a moment from our holiday cheer to tell you about the new Jack in the Box Peppermint & Oreo Milkshake! 

That whipped cream is beautiful!

I was looking for a ice cold tasty treat while finishing up my shopping, so I swung by my local Jack in the Box and picked up one of these. Oreo? Peppermint? I LIKE BOTH OF THOSE THINGS! So how could I go wrong? 

Since the winter in Seattle means non-stop rain, I waited to crack into this cup full of holiday cheer until I got home. Well, that and I tried to take a sip and couldn't get one. I figured the straw was probably clogged with Oreo. This is an okay problem to have. 

But when I got it home, (along with the other items I purchased) I found something to be amiss...the straw wasn't just clogged, the shake was too thick to drink! Now I know a lot of people prefer this and like to eat them with a spoon. Me? Not so much. 

Almost popped something in my brain trying to take a sip!

So I let it sit for twenty mins and then it was perfect. It's just what you expect. A lovely mix of ice cream, peppermint and tons of crushed up Oreo cookie. How much? So much that my creepy little Santa was quite impressed by it. 

Creep Santa approves!

They definitely didn't hold back on loading this thing up with Oreo. Every single sip flooded my mouth with a cookies worth of Oreo chunks! From the outside of the cup I was worried because the ice cream hides the amount of Oreo quite well. But fear not, my friends! Not only that, but the Peppermint flavor was quite nice and distributed throughout the shake perfectly. 

The Jack in the Box Peppermint & Oreo Milkshake is only around for a limited time, and with today being Christmas Day, I wouldn't expect it around TOO much longer, so get out there and get one while you can. Apart from some initial problems with the shake thickness, after it melted a little bit, I enjoyed it! It's a great holiday treat. Unless you're outside spending time in the cold. I'm giving this shake a B+!

For more info on this and other great Jack in the Box offerings, go here: http://www.jackinthebox.com/

And while you're sitting there in a daze after opening a million presents and spending time with family and friends, perhaps you might think of something you'd love us to review! If this is the case, drop us a line! Here's where you can find us on that Internet thang:
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Soulfire BBQ in Allston, MASS!

Quite recently I was disturbed to see a review for a hoity-toity, highfalutin, what-in-tarnation-the-dang-heck-is-this vegetarian bistro on our site. I could barely bring myself to read it, afraid that some kind of traumatic brain injury had suddenly afflicted Josh that would only become more apparent as I read on. Before I did, I decided to head out to my local meat shack in sunny Allston, MA, in a hasty attempt to regain credibility with our dear readers. Later I actually read his review and was actually quite pleased to see its meager C- rating. I should’ve known Josh wouldn’t have let me down like that! But at least the experience got me out to try a place in my ‘hood I’ve wanted to try out for a few months now. Ladies and gents, I present Soulfire BBQ.

I’ll start by saying this- if this review sways you to check the place out, you need to walk to it on the side street behind it. Not only will you avoid the riff-raff on one of the grungiest streets of Allston, Harvard Ave, you can enjoy one of the most pleasant smells known to humanity; the entire neighborhood smells completely of smoked meat. For those of you who have no clue what Allston is (99% of our readers, which equals out to about 4.8 readers), it’s a neighborhood in Boston on the B branch of the Green Line, close to Boston University.

If you find yourself in the city looking for quality grub but less crowds, it really is a great place to check out. Soulfire BBQ sticks out like a sore thumb on Harvard Ave amongst the mind-bogglingly numerous Korean restaurants and dive bars. And as I said before, take the right streets to get there and you can Toucan Sam all the way there.

I looked over the menu, salivating as I looked over all of the tried-and-true BBQ classics- ribs, steak, wings, etc. Then I saw something that caught my eye. A Reuben sandwich. Stay with me here, folks. Not just any Reuben sandwich, a Reuben with an intriguing twist. It had all the necessities- marble rye, coleslaw, and thousand island, but in place of pastrami these crazy BBQ brains replaced it with brisket!!

Brisket on a Reuben sandwich? NOW THAT’S CRAAAAAAZAAAYY

I said to myself, hey, why not. I like Reuben sandwiches and I like brisket. And if that’s not fat enough for the FGFB I’ll start myself out with some FRIED MAC+CHEESE, a novelty food so delicious it should be renamed God’s Testicles. That’ll do the trick.

But these didn’t look like omnipotent testes at all, for they were SQUARE!!

SQUARE FRIED MAC AND CHEESE NOW I KNOW THIS PLACE IS KOOKY!!

Kooky it was, reader. Because when I bit in to that thing, I wasn’t instantly covered by the cheesy Charlotte’s Web I had imagined when I ordered it. No, no. Disappointingly in its place I found only macaroni with cheese so sparse you would’ve thought it was a dystopian era of cheese Prohibition! And the restaurant was right across from the old-tyme police station! And a time-travelling cheese bandit had broken down his time machine there and decided to hit the place while he was salvaging parts!

No queso, NO BUENO

But, being the resourceful gentleman I am, I decided to use the disappointing Mac squares as a vehicle for sampling the five BBQ sauces provided on our table. There emerged the real star of this show, a truly delicious BBQ sauce known only as “Pitboss”. And call the pitboss I did because I had hit the jackpot of BBQ sauces. This BBQ sauce was so good the time-travelling cheese bandit tasted it and decided to give up his queso-hunting career, broke his time machine, and become a server at Soulfire where he could eat it any day to his heart’s content. Yeah- it’s a really good BBQ sauce.

Then came out my Reuben. The brisket was juicy, flavorful, and tender, and was complimented quite well by the peppery-semi-sour coleslaw, and sauce Pitboss.

While it was a great sandwich, I really should’ve seen through this shallow facade before I ordered. There’s a reason why pastrami usually comes with pastrami, because it’s probably the best meat paired with the other elements. The brisket was great by itself but altogether, it just didn’t really belong.

I’m going to have to stick this Soulfire experience with a C+, the plus coming as a direct result of that really excellent barbecue sauce. Maybe if the fried mac was a bit more cheesy, I could’ve chalked up my Reuben disappointment to a poor ordering decision on my part. But, as what should’ve been an easy home run ended up being a ground-roll double, it left this reviewer skeptical of the restaurant’s other offerings. Alas, eat and learn.

Sl33zy

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Hot Cocoa Chips Ahoy cookies!

Hot cocoa is kind of a weird flavoring that has gotten more and more popular over the past few years. I mean, as cocoa, it's always been popular, right? But recently we've seen companies make hot cocoa (or hot chocolate, whichever way you say it) start using this as it's own stand alone flavor. Edys has a hot cocoa ice cream, M&M's have a hot chocolate flavor, and even those gross marshmallow abominations, Peeps have a hot cocoa version. So it was only a matter of time before the cookie game got wise to this fad and so we find ourselves about to review the limited edition, Hot Cocoa Chips Ahoy Cookies! 

First off, I'll be honest, like I am every time I get stuck reviewing Chips Ahoy cookies. They usually aren't that good. Come on! You all know it. They are weird little discs of sweet chemicals. No part of them taste like they actually came from food. But somehow they are still a popular name in cookies. People like weird fake stuff! Well, I'm sad to tell you, these really don't break the mold.

These are basically the same old chocolate Chewy Chips Ahoy cookies. BUT this time around they added some weird hot cocoa flavored cream in the middle, and in addition to chocolate chips, now the cookies also have little mini marshmallows. In case you're wondering, no, they aren't normal marshmallows, they are the strange kind that come in hot cocoa. The crunchy, almost Lucky Charms type marshmallows. 

These aren't terrible. They are tiny so you can pop one in your mouth. It has a slight crunch to it from the marshmallows and the cream inside definitely helps smooth it out. But after about three or four I put them away unimpressed. Do they taste like hot cocoa? Yeah they do nail the flavor pretty well. But how weird is that? These are flavored like a drink that was made to artificially taste like chocolate. So this is an artificially flavored cookie, flavored like a drink that's flavored like chocolate. Mind blowing stuff right there.

But a day or two later when I grabbed the bag to give these a second go 'round, I noticed a little blurb on the bag telling you to heat them up in the microwave for a treat. I'm always up for a treat so I popped a few in. They say 6-7 seconds. My microwave laughed at that and I left them in for about 20. As I figured, this improved them greatly.

Much like the time we roasted Chips Ahoy over a camp fire, these instantly jumped up a couple letter grades with a little bit of heat. Suddenly they were melting and gooey and felt more like a real cookie.  In fact, if you find yourself buying a bag of these to experience them for yourself, please put the entire package in the microwave and eat them like that. You'll thank me.

In the end I have to say I wasn't very impressed by Hot Cocoa Chips Ahoy. They nailed the flavor, but they still just aren't great. Heated up they were definitely better, but I think I would rather take the money from this package of cookies and buy one REALLY good cookie from a local bakery instead.
HOT COCOA CHIPS AHOY- D
HOT COCOA CHIPS AHOY HEATED- B-

Review by Rich!

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