Tag Archives: review

September 17, 2012

Review: Silver and Green

Just so that you know, this is a review of a product of which I was sent a free sample. The opinions in the post are, as ever, mine, and the review is honest. Please note my Patrick Stewart-worthy sentence arrangement in the first line there.

When Rachel sent me a tweet asking if I’d like a sample box of delights from Silver and Green, you can bet I was all over it like a cheap suit. Silver and Green are a Cumbrian company specialising in antipasti, meze, tapas and olive oils. Can you see why I was excited about this? When my parcel arrived, I couldn’t believe my eyes – there was so much packed in there! Thank you, Silver and Green, for your generosity, it really was above and beyond.

Here’s what I got:

Kalamata olives

Sweet African peppers with cheese

Anchovy fillets

Kalamata olives marinated in garlic and chili

Garlic stuffed green olives

Pickled Sicilian garlic

I told you it was a generous parcel! I waited until I had a night of leisure ahead and cracked everything open to have a try. The quality of the products is superb. I didn’t eat the garlic straight out of the tub, but I’ve since used it in cooking and it lends a great deal of flavour where normal garlic really is a bit one dimensional. Sorry, normal garlic. Two products in particular took me by surprise, as I had expected to like them the least and, in fact, they were my favourites. First, the olives stuffed with garlic. While I have been coming round to olives for some time, I still struggle with green olives. The flavour is so strong that I have littered many a table with the remains of green olives that I’ve tried and not enjoyed. Much to the chagrin of the people who owned the tables, I might add. I tried these with understandable trepidation, but I needn’t have worried. Yes, the olive has a strong flavour of its own, but married with the crunchy garlic in the middle it’s a delight. Both the flavour and texture of these stuffed olives made them a winner for me. This is why you have to keep trying foods, even if you think you might not like them. Nothing bad will happen if you don’t, but something wonderful could happen if you do.

The second item I have to rave about is the jar of anchovy fillets. I have had anchovies before and found them too salty, or been put off by the little bones in them. I know they’re only soft, but I don’t like the feeling on them between my teeth. I am not a bone crunching Roald Dahl giant, and eating round the bone is fine for a pork chop but trying to do so with an anchovy leads to mess, despair and funny looks. Believe me. These anchovies looked nothing like any I’ve tried before. They are huge, compared to those skinny ones you get in jars, and not a bone in sight. The flavour, though, is the main thing. They are pickled, and the sharpness of the vinegar against the wonderful, rich, oily fish is the perfect balance. They are like mini sardines, I had to check and double check that I wasn’t getting my fish mixed up.

I loved the anchovies so much that I made up little skewers with them, the olives and some other bits I had in the fridge. These were inspired by a recipe in the rather beautiful cookbook, Movida Rustica, with the exotic name Banderillos. My version combined anchovy fillets, kalamata olives, soy-pickled chili rings, cheddar cheese and cornichons. Alright, perhaps not exactly the culinary orchestra you might expect, but haven’t you ever heard of fusion food?

You can see the photo of the original in the background there – they look kind of like a little face. Quite a surprised face, at that. Mine were a great little snack, and I felt quite the lady making them all for myself. Food on sticks – it’s hard to beat, you know.

I must thank Silver and Green, and Rachel, once again for their kindness, and I can recommend that, if you see these products, you go ahead and buy them. They have the Rock Salt seal of approval.

6 comments | tags: anchovies, antipasti, olives, review, samples, Silver and Green | posted in British food, Gluten free, Snacks, Vegetarian

August 3, 2012

Review: Healthspan Energex Plus Tablets

By Rock Salt

I was asked if I’d like to review a vitamin supplement. I thought ‘Yes, this would be an ideal time to really get to the root of whether or not vitamins make me feel better, brighter, more alive, more vibrant’. I might not have thought all those words but, you know, that was the general gist. Anyway, my sample tablets from Healthspan turned up soon thereafter and I realised that, rather than a supplement to take every day, these are an energy boost tablet, to take now and again when you need a bit of an oomph.

I was initially a bit unsure as I read through the ingredients. I’m a novice in the world of supplements and vitamins, and the list at first seemed a bit intimidating. Guarana Extract, Maltodextrin, L-Tyrosine, Taurine, Croscarmellose Sodium… Whaaaa…? Anyway, I looked into it a bit more, and read over Healthspan’s product page and realised that taking one or two of these wasn’t going to send me leaping up on the table, heart beating like a moth at a windowpane, waving glowsticks and blowing a whistle. Instead, they’re designed to give you a bit of a boost on the occasions that you need it, using only natural ingredients.

(As I often point out, lots of things are natural. Wasps are natural. Lard is natural. Cocaine is natural. However, having studied the ingredient list I feel like ‘natural’ in this context is a good thing).

The pills themselves are a bit frightening to look at, they’re pretty giant and very green. Check it:

They are cellulose coated though, so they are easy to swallow and don’t taste as green as they look. In fact, they don’t taste of anything at all. The packaging is high quality and even comes in handy detachable strips, so you can put a strip in your bag or keep some at work and some at home, whatever you think will work.

So, I waited for a day when I was feeling a bit tired, a bit ‘meh’ and a bit lacklustre. Sad to say, this day came around without too much delay. I had a 3pm moment at work – you may be familiar with that moment. It’s when your lunch is well and truly digested, your blood sugar is in a bit of a slump, and it’s still a long road to home time. 3pm – the dozing hour. So, I took one of my Energex Plus pills to see what would happen. Then I almost immediately got a big job to do that was going to require a lot of focus. Not a bad situation in which to test the quality of a ‘pick me up’ pill, I daresay.

I found, that afternoon, that I was able to focus on a long, drawn out and fiddly task with consistency and even enthusiasm. I was in the zone, but I didn’t feel hyper-focused or twitchy or anything else that you might associate with a high caffeine/ginseng/taurine intake. I felt good, in fact, though I didn’t feel a dramatic energy boost, more an enhanced ability to get on with what needed done and sidestep the mid-afternoon snooziness.

I took the pills on another couple of occasions, to get a proper feel for them. The times when I had something to do that I needed a little extra boost to get started with, something that involved me physically getting up and out of my chair, I found the pills to be a help. The times when I simply felt tired and wanted a boost to get me through an afternoon at my desk, I didn’t find them to make a difference. I think you have to meet them halfway rather than expecting them to do all the work and revolutionise your afternoon (or any other time of day).

In summary, my assessment is that if you are going to be up and at ‘em (whatever ‘em is on that particular occasion), taking one or two of these will add a bit of spring to your step, or a bit of concentration to your cranium. However, don’t take them expecting to suddenly feel like leaping out of your chair and dancing a jig. They don’t really work that way.
I feel obliged to add that this wasn’t in any way a scientific trial, and I’m presenting my own opinion and not a measurable, factual response to these tablets.

Healthspan Energex Plus tablets are available in a pack of 60, for £8.95 on the Healthspan website.

9 comments | tags: energy, herbal supplements, review, tablets, vitamins | posted in Uncategorized

November 23, 2011

Review: Kopi Coffee

By Rock Salt

I wanted to do justice to Kopi and write a more detailed review, including having used the coffee to bake with, but I’ve been tragically disorganised of late (including telling myself that I’ll start blogging properly again next week) so I’ve decided not to delay any longer and to go ahead and write this short post, which I’ll follow up with a baking post as I get around to it.

The idea behind Kopi is a mail order service to deliver coffee to your door every month, with an emphasis on quality,

Image courtesy of http://www.kopi.co.uk

traceable coffee beans. I can certainly vouch for their delivery service; almost no sooner had I volunteered my blog to do a review, a package came in the mail for me. It really took me by surprise how quickly the coffee arrived, and I’d say it is a very good sign – Kopi are on top of it.

I received a full size, very stylish looking pouch of coffee along with a leaflet giving loads of information about the product, including info on what altitude the coffee is grown at (1650m above sea level, if you wondered). The pouch is easily resealable and easy to get into, as well as been very durable; so durable, in fact, that you can’t detect even a hint of the coffee smell until you cut it open. It is packaged in a tidy cardboard box, designed to fit in most letterboxes so you don’t have to make that annoying trip to the sorting office – why is it always raining when I have to go to the sorting office?

The coffee on offer changes every month, and this month it was Guatemala Finca Santa Clara Genuine Antigua. There are loads of tasting notes and information on the coffee on the site, in case you lose your leaflet or want to know a bit more. The info available includes a suggested song choice to accompany your coffee – I wish them the best of luck with that, I started my blog with the intention of an accompanying song choice with each post and it soon fell by the wayside. It was harder to choose a song than write a 2000 word post, most of the time. I salute Kopi for taking on this particular challenge, never mind the challenge of producing quality, traceable and ethically sourced coffee.

Speaking of ethically sourced, one of the first things I noticed about the packaging for the coffee was that it didn’t have a Fairtrade stamp on it anywhere. I checked their website, which assured me that their coffee met or exceeded Fairtrade standards, but couldn’t be officially classified Fair Trade for the following reasons:

We always pay premium prices for premium coffee to premium growers – far above their cost of production or the Fairtrade minimum. While we fully support the Fairtrade, Rainforest Alliance and Soil Association initiatives, not all our coffee is organic or Fairtrade certified and here’s why:

Fairtrade only certifies co-operatives. This excludes many superb growers and smaller farms who like to sell direct – this means lots of high quality small family farms would be excluded if only Fairtrade stamped ones were selected

Fairtrade is tied to the commodity price to secure a minimum to the growers. The market price for a long time (18+ months as of October 2011) has been consistently well above the minimum price.

We strive for a symbiotic relationship between ourselves and the growers to create a sustainable business model for everyone involved.

Those surely sound like good reasons, and I would hope that the coffees which do meet the Fairtrade certification standards would be branded as such – that’s impossible to tell on just one sample, which came from a family farm in Guatemala.

Courtesy of http://www.kopi.co.uk

I suppose I should really offer an opinion on the coffee itself, while we’re here. I would never put myself forward as a coffee connoisseur, but I can appreciate the smell and taste of a nice brew. This particular coffee had the rich smell that you’d expect, and though I wasn’t getting hints of vanilla or almonds, I could definitely smell the sweetness of this particular bean, and possibly that chocolatiness that the tasting notes promised. It also doesn’t look over processed, with the ground beans being reassuringly irregular in size and colour.

Once brewed up, the coffee was smooth (yes, OK, velvety) and deep but completely without that heavy, bitter aftertaste that I’ve often associated with coffee. The G man and I proceeded to dilute it with milk and sugar, which I know would be frowned on by many coffee lovers but which we enjoyed – you feel free to drink coffee to your own taste. I will keep my milk-and-sugary ways. I suppose a crucial distinction would be to say that we added these things because it enhanced our enjoyment, not because the coffee did not taste good on its own.

The Kopi service costs the equivalent of £7 a month if you pay up front, £8 per month if you pay for 6 months up front or £9 a month if you pay as you go along. As they say themselves, this is ‘the price of two grande lattes and a banana muffin’. Or any other kind of muffin, presumably. If you drink a lot of coffee, this could be a great saving over the course of a month, and given that you can keep the coffee in the fridge of freezer you’ll always have a stash ready. There’s also the excitement of getting a parcel in the mail, and the excitement of trying a new blend each month – pretty soon you could have your own coffee library.

Everyone loves a good library.