Review: Little Salad Bar Mexican Style Quartet

This is practically unheard of for this blog, but I am posting a timely update. Meaning: you can actually purchase this item I am about to review.

Little Salad Bar is Aldi's line of...salad bar items. I was going to say "condiments" but they're really not. Um, okay, Little Salad Bar is Aldi's line of wet and/or semi-liquid snack products. Hummus, salsa, guacamole, chicken dips, etc. The thing about these snack products is that you can't eat them by themselves. This is a little bit annoying at Aldi, because there is an obvious one-way flow to the store. The aisles are made so that you are just siphoned through and spit out at the cash registers. The store closest to me now is one in which the deli/semi-liquid snack products are all the way at the end of that maze, and of course I never pick up tortilla chips or any kind of dip delivery-system food beforehand, which means that I then have to reeeeally decide whether I want this kind of gross-looking superfluous food product and then fight my way against the flow of Aldi zombies. But it's simply not a socially- or comestably*-acceptable option to eat dips, etc. without them, just like how everyone is merely tolerating tacos as a vehicle to get sour cream into their bodies (I think).

(*At first I was going to write "culinarily" and I even googled "adverb culinary" and a website told me, "Here's the word you're looking for: 'Culinarily'" but that's actually not a word. And actually neither is "comestibly" and anyway, dips are still edible without chips, even if they're not that appealing, but "comestible" lends itself better to drive-by adverb-making.)

I was at the grocery store tonight, actually, and I saw this couple trying to decide whether to buy this Mexican Style Quartet dip and I wish I had business cards to hand out to tell people that they no longer have to just take a chance on weird Aldi stuff: that's what I am here for.

their lawyer made them put in that "style" modifier

Aldi put these "festive dips" (that's helpfully in a corner in case you weren't sure what kind of Mexican quartet this is) out right around Independence Day, which I would like to think is a little jab at American politics, but which is probably just a case of us exploiting other nations for party purposes, like "St. Patrick's Day" and "study abroad programs."

There's four flavors in here: fajita, black bean, chipotle, and guacamole. It's not actual guacamole, I don't think, just a dip flavored like guacamole, but I can't be sure because there wasn't actually a label on this. I guess Aldi is realistically thinking that if you're eating this it's either because you're shitfaced outside at a barbecue or you're hate-eating to punish yourself for a minor social faux-pas committed several weeks ago, and whatever the case, you are not here to get some nutritional facts dropped on you.

At first I was going to say these are lit but they're mostly just fine once the novelty kind of wears off. Fajita dip was lit, yes, and the black bean one was also pretty good. The chipotle one was more liquid, and with a chip it wasn't much better. Like if you ran out of solid food and all you could find in your house was saltine crackers and a bunch of condiments, and you made yourself a "sandwich" out of that. 

also, when you take off the cover, a voice says "mix them all together"

And at $5.99, this is definitely in the top 3 most expensive things I've ever bought at Aldi. You can buy rainboots at Aldi that cost less than this, I'm pretty sure. I'm on the fence about this. If you're recovering from a Fourth of July party where you drank way, way too much because you didn't know anyone there (what is it about Fourth of July that can bring total strangers together? In my 26 years of celebrating this holiday, over half of my memories are of being with people I didn't know and never saw again, in places I never had been and have never been back to. I feel like a therapy client with false memories. Please let me know if your July 4th experiences have been similar), this could be a good friend to you. Plus it does double-duty for that off-putting thing you said yesterday to a total stranger who now probably finds your presence uncomfortable. Spend 20 minutes replaying that conversation over these festive dips.

Review: Priano Chicken Parmesan Ravioli

When I first moved out of my parents' house, I was pretty confident in my cooking skills, for reasons that weren't necessarily grounded in "reality," and were more likely grounded in things like "being 18" and "weed-smoking."

One thing I made consistently was ravioli with sauce and broccoli. That was about the pinnacle of my culinary skills at that point. If I was really feeling fancy, I might sub an artichoke for the broccoli. Later on, I learned that many people consider ravioli to be a "garbage food." My ex one time even refused to buy it when he saw a very large man in front of us also buying ravioli.

And, as a result of no longer being a teen and figuring out how to make actually tasty food, I really don't buy ravioli anymore. (That ex, now that I'm thinking of it, was 5 years older, so maybe he just had already crossed the threshold into Ravioli Is Garbage land, an experience which I think is the adult equivalent of The Day Your Imagination Died as a child. Aside: Do you remember that vividly? For me, I was 12, playing with Barbies and not really getting into it, like my brain was just turned off. And then it dawned on me: my imagination was dead. It was now time to experience Discovering You Have Musical Tastes That Are Not Your Parents' and For Some Reason Wanting to Bite Lindsay Lohan's Thighs).

I had tried meal prepping this week, which is a totally genius idea in that you save a lot of time, but also it maybe makes you feel kind of like a serial killer because you're eating the same. thing. for 5 or 6 days straight. And also? Being forced to cook a meal every night and make a lunch for the day after is maybe the only thing that is keeping me from relapsing into a mood disorder?

So I went to Aldi last night looking for an easy diversion, and found this Chicken Parmesan Ravioli.

they're also a good source of fiber? which means 10-19% DV of fiber

I'm not sure why I was expecting a photo of the inside but I was. It's not like on regular ravioli packaging they show you the inside, but since it's a special kind I thought it would be nice to know. Also thought the cream sauce was a very weird choice since chicken parm usually has red sauce on it, but I guess sometimes you just want to eat a giant white blob of a meal.

First thing you gotta know about these is that they are not regular ravioli shape. They are shaped like little rising suns, which was fitting as I was eating these for breakfast this morning, since last night I actually opted out of dinner in favor of a very lit Friday night of drinking a bunch of mango La Croix and going to sleep.

Wake and...make some ravioli, baby

B's classmate was over and he excitedly told me he had bought these a few weeks ago. I pressed him for some comments but he just had this to say:

"I was expecting them to be really cheesy because of the picture but they were just like normal pasta. So I had to put on a bunch of parmesan cheese on top. "

Not like, a rave review. Or even an informative review.

These were not bad. They actually tasted like chicken parm. Well, first they taste like normal ravioli and then they taste like breading or mozzarella sticks or something. I added some tomato sauce and turmeric-infused turkey meatballs (told you I food prepped) but in fact they're better plain, and I'm sure that has nothing to do with the fact that I have eaten turkey meatballs and tomato sauce for lunch and sometimes dinner every day this week. Seriously, are you people insane? How can you do that to yourself? Is this actually a trick, where you're so tired of eating the same two meals again and again that you just don't have the will to eat anymore?

Here's the inside for you curious ones:

Definitely not winning any photography prizes anytime soon, also

Again, not really sure what I was expecting. But sometimes you just want to know.

These are solid, if you need some emergency dinner food or if you just want to relive a small portion of some of the worst years of your life, not counting the food prepping bits.

Review: Clancy's S'mores Snack Balls

Totally unforgivable that I have been gone this long, I know, the 4 of you out there waiting for my #hottakes on baffling Aldi products are probably suffering. I actually wrote a post about macarons and never edited it! But right now I need some community, because I've made a huge Aldi mistake.

Clancy's is the Aldi snack food brand. Potato chips, tortilla chips, cheese puffs, pretzels of all kinds. The packaging features a windmill and I guess that plus the name "Clancy" is maybe supposed to remind you of the cuisine delights of the Midwest? 

a family of cows died for this

Normally, Clancy's holds up pretty well. Despite their avuncular branding, they're also pretty willing to get creative; the dill pickle-flavored chips are a delight when you want the calories of chips but the weirdest part of a pickle.

Today in my post-work Aldi frenzy, I passed these S'mores "snack balls" (told you it was avuncular) thinking "gross", then doubled back when my curiosity got the better of me. 

I stared at them long and hard, but I suppose it was neither long enough nor hard enough for these balls, because I missed a critical point:

CRUNCHY CORN SNACK. Balls, to be specific. Puffs, you might say...

LIKE CHEESE PUFFS.

This is probably just conditioning, as these aren't really even salty, but every bite tastes like cheese puffs that were tragically mixed with chocolate in a Christmas tin or something. I think it was the description on the back of the bag that mislead me, because really, all the signs were there: "crunchy corn snack," photos of the snack in question.

I was hoping for more of a buckeye situation

I suppose even the description should have given me a hint, but they OBVIOUSLY WERE TRYING TO SNEAK THIS PAST EVERYONE so that they would have to bring this miscarriage of a snack home before revealing its true nature.

There truly is no God

The best thing about these is the smell. When I was 8, I had to get my tonsils out. The anesthesiologist let me pick the scent of my anesthesia, and I picked a delicious-smelling marshmallow. I liked that scent so much that the doctor put a little on some gauze and put it in a ziplock so that I could smell it when I got home.

Except general anesthesia, when you wake up from it, makes you vomit. You vomit when you first wake up and then you realize just how much your raw, newly-stitched up throat feels. That makes you vomit some more. After you stop vomiting, you eat some popsicles...which you also throw up in short time. 

I was discharged that afternoon and my mom ordered a chicken sandwich whose amazing odor filled the car, so in revenge I promptly puked all over her Volvo. When I got home, I settled into bed, my little baggie of heavenly marshmallow gauze tucked beside me. Upon waking up, I decided to relive the moment they put me under, holding the bag up to my nose. At which point I immediately threw up.

I spent a few days after I recovered bringing the gauze with me to school, so I could smell it when I needed comfort (shit was rough back then). Except every time I opened that baggie up, my stomach churned. Resignedly, I tucked the baggie away in a drawer and the next time I found it, the scent had dissipated.

These corn balls smell like that anesthesia gauze. And just like that anesthesia gauze, you too, will want to throw up every time you open this bag. You'll think it's a good idea, maybe even a little funny. But you'll just be left with a destroyed car, and nowhere to put these except the trash.

EDIT: Several wonderful readers have written to say that they loved these. Please see my latest entry (2/11/2018) for an update, because these are on the shelves confusing people right now, baby!