Mmm...food

Other than trail food I don't talk food much, but those who know me well know that I love to eat. Let me qualify that, I love to eat when the food is high quality and the company is as well. Yesterday I wanted coffee but given a variety of minor health issues, caffeine is a really bad choice right now so instead of spending $4.00 on a random hot drink I went shopping for red chai and almond milk and returned home with nearly $70 in groceries. Go me! I'm single handedly working on saving the economy.

On a whim I purchased a few new (and expensive!) products to try: Teese Mozzarella Vegan cheese and Honest Granola Planks.

I love that there are more and more vegan cheese options every day: Sheese, Chreese, Teese, Follow Your Heart, VeganRella, Tofutti...and I wanted to love Teese as an alternative to Follow Your Heart, BUT I don't love the consistency. Teese melts, but then it develops watery pools so you have to wait a little while for it to re-solidify so it doesn't slide off your dish. Once it resolidifies it has an unappetizingly rubbery consistency. The flavor? Its a little sweet--which I didn't mind, but its disarming. It also tastes, sadly, rather like processed "cheese food." All this being said, I think it might work really well in recipes (other than pizza) where cheese is not the focal point.

The Honest Granola Planks were fantastic! A little high in cals and fat but what granola isn't? Great flavor, good mouth feel and texture (soft and chewy, but held up well in coconut milk yogurt) and conveniently packaged for breakfast on the run, post-gym snack or out on the trails. Two paws up on the granola front for sure!

So, to recap: skip the Teese for pizzas but give it a try on sandwiches if you have the room in your grocery budget (retails for approx $5/tube) and want something different. And if you enjoy granola or chewy and grainy snack bars you will dig the Honest Granola Planks