Supper, Assemble!

Clearing out our fridge at the end of the work week, I turned up thawed chicken breasts, wrinkly green beans and cherry tomatoes, and half an improperly stored red onion. I also found a baking potato that had been left in the bread bin for who-knows-how-long but was starting to sprout eyes. From these questionable ingredients, supper just seemed to assemble itself.

Tomato "Jam" Chicken

Ingredients
2 3 oz boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 tsp olive oil
2 tsp Penzeys Sunny Spain salt-free seasoning blend
1 shallot, minced
½ cup chopped red onion
4 garlic cloves, pressed
2 cups quartered cherry tomatoes

Directions
Heat olive oil in a nonstick skillet. Season chicken with seasoning blend. Sauté in hot pan until cooked through. Remove from pan, cover with foil, and let sit.

To hot pan, add shallots, onions, and garlic. Cook until onions and shallots are tender. Add tomatoes and cook, stirring occassionally, until tomatoes have cooked down to a "jammy" consistency. Stir in any juices released by the resting chicken.

Plate chicken and top with sauce. Serve with garlicky green beans and oven fries.

Oh, the chicken was good but the oven fries stole the show. I'd never made oven fries before so I was really impressed with how easy they were to make and how well they turned out -- crispy-crunchy outside with tender, pillowy potato inside and just the right amount of seasoning.

Easy Oven Fries

Ingredients
1 large baking potato
2 tsp olive oil
2 tsp Penzeys Sunny Spain salt-free seasoning blend
Sea salt and black pepper, to taste

Directions
Preheat oven to 400ºF. Grease jellyroll pan with cooking spray and set aside.

Cut potato in half lengthwise, then widthwise. Quarter each piece.

Toss potatoes with olive oil and seasoning blend to coat. Spread potatoes out across jellyroll pan (be careful not to crowd) and bake for 20 minutes.

Remove potatoes from oven; sprinkle with salt and pepper. Flip potatoes and repeat.

Return pan to oven; bake until potatoes are golden and crispy along the edges (about 15 minutes).

(I don't usually store potatoes in my bread bin -- too warm -- but I'd stuffed it there in a mad dash of tidying before company came and then forgotten about it)

Beautiful Blue Buffalo Chicken Salad

See that salad? Isn't it beautiful? Tasted pretty darn good, too. To me, at least. The Husband was less keen as his delicate palate could not tolerate the funky strong blue cheese and the vinegary sauce. So sad for him ... more salad for me! (He did say that, excepting the chicken and cheese, it was a really nice salad. Yes, damned with faint praise).

Blue Buffalo Chicken Salad

Ingredients
2 3 oz boneless skinless chicken breasts
½ cup + 2 Tbsp Ken’s® Buffalo Wing Sauce
1 head Romaine lettuce
2 Tbsp buttermilk ranch dressing
¼ cup diced red onion
4 Campari tomatoes, quartered
½ cup blue cheese crumbles
1 cup diced cucumber
1 hard-cooked egg, chopped

Directions
Marinade chicken breasts overnight in ½ cup wind sauce. Remove from sauce and broil until cooked through (approx. 10 minutes). Dice chicken and toss with remaining wing sauce.

Chop Romaine lettuce and toss with ranch dressing. Divide between two plates and top with remaining ingredients. Top with chicken. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

But what did The Husband eat? I didn't let the poor dear starve, did I? No, I made him egg salad sandwiches and he was very happy.

Oven-Fried Chicken Thighs

I went a little mad a few weeks ago and bought not one, but three Weight Watchers cookbooks -- Fruits & Veggies A-Z, Tastier Than Takeout, and Best Darn Food Ever! While I've filled them with sticky notes, I've not actually made anything from them yet. Planned to, certainly. We were supposed to have "Oven-Fried Chicken" from Best Darn Food Ever! tonight, but I must have been standing in someone else's kitchen when I wrote last week's menu plan, because when it came time to make supper,  it was clear I did not have the right ingredients.

We did eat oven-fried chicken and it was good.  It just wasn't Weight Watchers' chicken.

Oven-Fried Chicken Thighs

Ingredients
¾ cup Butterworks Farm Organic nonfat buttermilk (my buttermilk BFF, yo)
½ tsp sriracha
2 tsp Penzeys salt-free Sunny Spain seasoning blend (black pepper, lemon peel, garlic, and onion)
4 boneless skinless chicken thighs
1 cup seasoned salt-free whole wheat bread crumbs
2 Tbsp grated Parmesan cheese

Instructions
Whisk buttermilk, seasoning blend together, and sriracha together. Pour over thighs. Toss to coat. Marinade overnight in fridge.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place a baking rack on a jelly roll pan and spray rack with nonstick spray.

Whisk together bread crumbs and cheese. Remove chicken from buttermilk mixture and coat chicken, one piece at a time, in bread crumb mixture. Place chicken pieces on prepared rack and bake 30 minutes.

Set oven to broil. Spray tops of thighs with nonstick spray and broil until golden, about 5 minutes longer.

I used a baking rack to elevate the chicken, hoping that would keep the bottoms from getting soggy. The alternative was to flip the chicken halfway through and I couldn't be arsed to fiddle with chicken-flipping on a weeknight.

We ate this chicken with potato salad and parslied corn and it was very good. The bottoms still weren't as crispy as I'd like, but I'm not sure it's possible to get uniformly crispy oven-fried chicken without fiddling with them more than I'd like.

Improv Challenge: Almonds & Cherries

For June’s Improv Challenge, I decided to go simple and easy with salad. Oh, I’d had plans to bake something sweet and splendid -- cherry Bakewell tartlets or King Arthur Flours’s cherry frangipane tarts, maybe -- but when it came down to it, I found myself craving something fresh and savory. Something very much like this salad:

Isn't it pretty? And delicious, too. Crunchy almonds, sweet cherries, tart blue cheese ... I could eat it all week.

There are two steps (and two meals) to making this recipe -- first, you make oven-fried chicken tenders in almond meal. Then you make this salad with the leftover chicken. Obviously, you could use any old leftover chicken, but the almond flour crusted chicken tenders give this salad a certain je ne sais quoi. Also, they are pretty yummy.

Almond Flour-Crusted Chicken Tenders

Ingredients

1 pound boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into strips
1 cup buttermilk
2 Tbsp Penzeys salt-free Sunny Spain seasoning blend (black pepper, lemon peel, garlic, and onion)
1 cup almond flour
1 cup panko

Instructions

Whisk buttermilk and seasoning blend together. Pour over chicken strips. Toss to coat. Marinade overnight in fridge.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place a baking rack on a jelly roll pan and spray rack with nonstick spray.

Whisk together almond flour and panko.

Remove chicken from buttermilk mixture and coat chicken, one piece at a time, in bread crumb mixture.

Place chicken pieces on prepared rack and bake 15-20 minutes or until chicken is cooked through.

Let rest 10 minutes before serving.

Serve your chicken with oven-roasted corn on the cob and potato salad. Or use it to top a caesar salad. Or what have you. Just make sure to set some aside for later ...

Cherry Almond Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Diced leftover chicken tenders
Chopped garden lettuce
Blue cheese crumbles
Fresh cherries, halved and pitted
Flaked almonds
Lucini Italia Cherry Balsamic & Rosemary Vinaigrette
Salt and pepper

Instructions

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and toss gently to combine. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

I know, I know. I haven't listed any amounts. How much chicken? How many cherries? As much or as little as you like, my darlings. It's salad. It's forgiving.

I dressed this salad with some of the Lucini Italia Cherry Balsamic & Rosemary Vinaigrette that I was lucky enough to find at Whole Foods. I'd actually gone to Whole Foods for a jar of sour cherry preserves to make my own vinaigrette using Panera's recipe, but this was easier. And probably just as delicious.

I am trying my hand at homemade cherry vinegar using Signature Dish's recipe for "Spicy Cherry Vinegar," because I happen to have all the ingredients on hand and making my own flavored vinegar feels just pioneer girl-ish enough to tempt me.

More Chard Goodness

Turns out sriracha does make my chard scramble recipe even better. I added a half teaspoon sriracha and two diced seeded tomatoes and, wow, it was delicious! (And two servings of vegetables at breakfast time is a pretty neat feat).

If you don't have chard, I'm pretty sure this recipe would work just as well with spinach.

Thanks to all the scrambles I've been making, I've finally amassed enough chard stems to make Bon Appetit’s easy "Sriracha Fridge Pickles" today. Based on the amount of chard I had and my general taste preferences, I tweaked the ingredient amounts somewhat.

I chopped my stems into bite-sized pieces and dumped them in a glass storage container with a small, thinly sliced, onion.

I mixed together 2 cups vinegar, 1 cup sugar, 6 tablespoons sriracha, and 1 tsp celery seed. Poured that over the vegetables, snapped the lid on the container, and gave everything a good shake.

Then I put the container in the fridge and told myself to leave it alone for a few days rather than do what I usually do with fridge pickles -- obsessively check the container, wondering if pickle-ization is happening.

They should be ready for taste-testing on Friday ...

Chard for Breakfast!

Last year, I made scrambled eggs with chard and, while it was good, I knew I could do better. And I have! Oh, dear gods of egg and leaf, yes.

Scrambled Eggs with Chard & Cheese

Ingredients
5 large-leafed stalks of chard (each leaf was the size of my hand or bigger)
1 large shallot, minced
1 tsp olive oil
2 large eggs
2 Tbsp whole milk
1 .75 oz Cabot 50% light cheddar snack bar, diced small
Salt & pepper, to taste
Sriracha, if desired

Instructions
Gently wash chard to remove any soil. Remove stems and set aside for another day. Roll leaves up into a cigar and slice thinly. Set aside.

Whisk eggs with milk and set aside.

Heat olive oil in a nonstick pan over medium heat until fragrant. Add the shallots and cook, stirring, until they go translucent. (The olive oil is here more for flavor than for it's lubricative powers so use a "tasty" one -- right now, I'm loving Lucero Arbequina Three Star Blend Certified Extra Virgin Olive Oil).

Add chard and cook, stirring, until chard is wilted. Pour in eggs and cook, stirring gently, until eggs begin to set.

Top not-quite-cooked eggs with diced cheese. Cover pan with a tight-fitting lid and remove from heat. Let sit until the cheese is melted.

Season with salt and pepper to taste. (Add a little sriracha if you like your mornings spicy).

I’m thinking this will be nice topped with some fresh chopped garden tomatoes when they’re in season. Or, instead of using scrambled eggs and cheese, I bet this would be good with a nice soft-poached egg nestled in the chard. Unfortunately, I’ve yet to master poached eggs so I’ll stick with scrambled.

Seriously, this is yum. I would happily eat it every day until the chard gave out. I’m wondering, though, if I could cook the shallots and chard ahead of time and then reheat them, adding the eggs and cheese, the next morning?

And what do you do with chard stems? I’m using mine in Bon Appetit’s easy "Sriracha Fridge Pickles." Mmm. My spicy, crunchy, pickle-love.

Eating the Alphabet: J is for Jerusalem Artichokes

I've been enamored with Jerusalem artichokes (aka "sunchokes") since I saw them listed in a seed catalog a few years ago. I thought this sunflower-like plant with its potato-like tubers was quite pretty and the old-fashioned sound of its name, coupled with the fact it's an indigenous vegetable, made it seem like something I might like to grow. But ...

I'm a bit of a coward when it comes to growing tubers -- even potatoes fill me with trepidation. And I didn't know anyone who'd ever grown or eaten Jerusalem artichokes. So they've lurked at the bottom of my list of vegetables to try for some time now, never moving nearer to the top ...

And then I signed on for the Eating the Alphabet Challenge and Jerusalem artichokes seemed like the perfect "J" vegetable! I would finally cook Jerusalem artichokes and know whether they were worth growing or no. But where to buy them? Turned out the local Whole Foods had a whole bin of them and they weren't particularly expensive. What to do with them? Well, that was easy -- I'd had Eat Drink Better's "Jerusalem Artichoke Recipe: Creamy No-Dairy Vegetable Soup" bookmarked since February so I knew exactly how I wanted to prepare these tubers.

My Jerusalem artichokes were, maybe, a little on the small side but I tried to buy similarly-sized tubers. Several recipes I consulted said cleaning these tubers would be time-consuming, but mine looked as if they had been pretty well cleaned before they hit the produce shelf and I didn't have to scrub them long to make sure they were grit-free.

I loved that this recipe didn't need me to peel the tubers as there's nothing more boring than peeling vegetables. No, I just scrubbed them and sliced them thickly. (Don't they look like sliced waxy potatoes?)

Cooked diced onion and garlic in olive oil (I used red onion and doubled the garlic) until the onion was translucent.

Chucked in the Jerusalem artichokes, sliced carrots (I used baby carrots), and 3 cups (vegetable) broth so that the vegetables were just covered and simmered with the lid on for about 35 minutes (until the Jerusalem artichokes were tender when I stuck them with a knife).

Seasoned the soup with salt, pepper, and curry powder (1 tsp Penzeys salt-free Maharajah Style Curry Powder) to taste. Using an immersion blender, I pureed the soup until was reasonably smooth.

This soup kept well in the fridge -- which was good thing, because while I thought this soup was phenomenal, The Husband did not agree and I ended up taking it to work all week. Silly man with his resistance to new vegetables! This soup is nutty and creamy and rich and so very yum.

Will I grow Jerusalem artichokes next year? I think so!

Too Much Wine? Make Sangria. Obviously.

While we were in Niagara Falls, we spent a day with a friend, visiting several wineries in Niagara-on-the-Lake. Visiting led to tasting which led to buying and I came home with a ridiculous amount of wine. So much wine I should have paid a duty. So much wine I had to buy a wine rack ...

60% ice wine!

It's not the best wine rack in the world, but it holds all my new Canadian wines and "good" old wines. It does not hold any Arbor Mist. No, the Arbor Mist is safely tucked in a cabinet where no one can see it to judge me. I own an embarrassing number and variety of Arbor Mist bottles. It's something I used to drink a lot of in my twenties and, even now, I like a chilled bottle of the peach or strawberry chardonnay in the summer. Still, I own far more bottles than I'm likely to drink. (In fact, I'm pretty sure at least one bottle followed us from our old house five years ago!)

If I were a more sociable person, I'd invite all my friends to a picnic and get everyone blotto on Arbor Mist. As I'm not sociable ... I'm just going to get quietly drunk on the back porch with the cats and some chunky paperbacks.

Happily, I found a delicious peach sangria recipe at Two Roses to help me along, so that's one bottle down.

In a pitcher, combine 1 bottle of Arbor Mist peach chardonnay, 1 cup peach schnapps, 1 cup frozen lemonade concentrate, and sliced oranges and peaches. Allow to sit overnight (this is important -- I assure you 3 hours in the fridge may seem "good enough," but 12 is way better-licious).

The best part? Eating the drunken orange and peach segments when the sangria was all gone.

Menu Plan Monday: 11 June

My vegetable beds are exploding with produce and a menu plan is the only way I'm going to manage the glut with any thriftiness so here I am, participating in Menu Plan Monday for the first time in yonks.

Monday
Lunch: Salad of garden lettuce with leftover almond-crusted oven-fried chicken, diced pitted cherries, flaked almonds, blue cheese crumbles, and cherry balsamic vinaigrette.

Supper: Whole Foods prepared kale avocado salad with garden greens and more leftover chicken. Plus fat-free Greek yoghurt with chopped pitted cherries, as needed.


Tuesday
Lunch: Salad of chopped garden chard (stems reserved for later use) with feta, dried cranberries, walnuts, grilled skewered shrimp, and red wine vinaigrette.

Supper: Buttery, oven-roasted corn on the cob with Martha Stewart's "Cucumber Salad with Radish and Dill" and grilled marinated chicken breasts.


Wednesday
Lunch: Salad of garden lettuce with leftover grilled chicken, blue cheese crumbles, red onion, and balsamic. Plus more cherries and yoghurt, as needed.

Supper: Pork tenderloin with Allrecipes' "Summer Radish Salad" and barley pilaf.


Thursday
Lunch: Salad of chopped garden chard (stems reserved for later use) with feta, dried cherries, leftover pork, walnuts, and cherry balsamic vinaigrette.

Supper: Salad of garden lettuce with dried cranberries, leftover chicken, almonds, and balsamic vinegar. Plus fat-free Greek yoghurt with maple syrup, as needed.


Friday
Lunch: "Clean-out-the-fridge Salad" (also know as "Everything Salad").

Supper: Cheeseburger and a milkshake.

Saturday/Sunday
Celebrating Dad's birthday.

Clean Out the Fridge With Enchiladas

Rummaging around the kitchen, thinking about the coming week's menu plan, I realized there was a lot of random food hanging around. Thawed ground lamb that never became shepherd's pie. Sliced pepper jack cheese. An unopened package of white corn tortillas. Slightly manky scallions. And an open container of plain, low-fat Greek yoghurt.

Enchiladas just seemed obvious.

Except, I had no enchilada sauce. So I made some. Sort-of. It was red. It went on things I called enchiladas. Therefore, it was enchilada sauce.

Easy Enchilada Sauce

Ingredients
2 Tbsp unsalted butter
3 Tbsp white whole wheat flour
1 cup water
14.5 oz can Muir Glen fire-roasted diced tomatoes with green chilies
Garlic powder and ground cumin, to taste

Instructions
Using an immersion blender or whathaveyou, puree tomatoes.

Melt butter in a saucepan. Whisk in all-purpose flour. Slowly pour in water, whisking constantly, so that flour-butter-water combination makes a thick slurry. Stir into slurry. Heat until thickened. Season to taste. Set aside until needed.

Sauce made, the enchiladas went together all easy-peasy.

Lamb Enchiladas
 
Ingredients
1 lb ground lamb
1 cup chopped red onions
1 recipe enchilada sauce, divided
6 slices pepper jack cheese
8 white corn tortillas

Directions
Cook lamb and onions in a nonstick skillet until lamb is cooked through and onions are tender. Drain well. Stir in about a cup of enchilada sauce and set aside.

Warm tortillas by wrapping 4 in a damp paper towel and microwaving for about 40 seconds. Repeat.

Spread ½ cup of enchilada sauce onto bottom of 13x9 baking dish.

Spoon about ¼ cup meat mixture onto a tortilla. Roll up and place, seam-side down, in prepared dish. Repeat until no tortillas remain. If there is leftover meat, scatter it across the top of the enchiladas.



Top enchiladas with remaining sauce. Lay cheese slices across the top. Broil until cheese is bubbly and golden and edges of enchiladas haven gone brown and crispy.

Serve topped with a dollop of fat-free Greek yoghurt and sprinkle of sliced scallions.

Crazy Cooking Challenge: Fruit Smoothies/Shakes

Too many late nights this week, up too long reading novels, took a toll on my body. By Thursday morning, I felt like grim death and could not begin to guess how I'd get through the remaining work day. Lots of Red Bull and Earl Grey tea. And prayer.

Irregular sleep patterns and a metric ton of caffeinated sugar ... neither of these meet my good health goals. Surely, I could at least eat some fruit today? Staring at my wrinkly peaches, clutching my can of Red Bull, I wondered if anyone had every made a Red Bull Smoothie.

Apparently, yes. Crafty Girl Squared's recipe for "Redbull Smoothie" was one of the simplest I found during my lazy search and I decided to give it a go. (Best decision I've made this week).

Take a can of Red Bull, frozen mango chunks, and peaches. Crafty Girl Squared uses frozen peaches, but I only had fresh. I didn't peel the peaches -- just cut them in half, pulled out the pit, and scooped their flesh out with a spoon.

Puree everything until it is smooth. I started with the fruit and half the Red Bull, then drizzled in the rest of the Red Bull as everything smoothie-fied.

Decorate with a strawberry, if you're feeling swanky. Drink. Feel more human.

It's good stuff, really. Not very sweet with lots of mango flavor, a whiff of peach, and that Red Bull tang. Pretty sure I could drink one every morning!

MyBlogSpark: Weight Watchers® ♥ Green Giant®

Since we go through a lot of frozen vegetables and I am (kinda-sorta) following the Weight Watchers program, I was pleased to receive a coupon through MyBlogSpark for 60¢ off 2 Weight Watchers® endorsed 2 Green Giant® frozen boxed vegetables. Green Giant® is, apparently, the only frozen vegetable brand to be endorsed by Weight Watchers®, and nearly all endorsed varieties have a 1 or 2 PointsPlus® value per serving.

Wai, ridiculously excited owl, wai.

I’m a fan of Green Giant® "Teriyaki Vegetables" which is only 1 PointsPlus® per serving and tastes great tossed with a serving of brown rice and some cooked shrimp.  Makes an easy and delicious work lunch -- ten minutes or less to throw it together and yet it's real food and makes me feel like I'm having a civilized meal.

I also like to make a fast macaroni and cheese using either the broccoli or cauliflower in cheese sauce with 3 servings of whatever pasta I have on hand and a little sriracha. Just cook the vegetables and pasta as directed. Stir together (sometimes, I mash the vegetables up a bit to make a smoother sauce or stir in some garlicky salsa for extra yum). Season with sriracha as desired (omit if using salsa). Delicious, easy, low Points+ and makes 3 work lunches when combined with fruit and a bit of salad.

Want to try Weight Watchers® endorsed Green Giant® Boxed Vegetables? Thanks to MyBlogSpark, you can visit http://bit.ly/greengiantcoupon to download a printable coupon for 60¢ off the purchase of two boxes. I don’t know how long this offer will last, so print’ em while you can.

Disclosure: This coupon offer was brought to my attention by Weight Watchers® and Green Giant® via MyBlogSpark. All opinions, such as they are, are my own.

Easy White Bean & Basil Salad

My herb pots and raised vegetable beds experienced a tremendous growth spurt the week we were away and, among other things, the basil already needs pinching back. Harvesting basil in the first week of June? Amazing. And delicious.

As I also suffered a surfeit of tomatoes, red onions, and white beans, I thought I'd make a bean salad to go with pan-seared tuna steaks I'd planned on making for supper. I hadn't really had a clear idea what I was going to serve with the tuna, anyway, and white bean salad seemed more exciting than my usual parslied rice and garlicky green beans.

Put chopped seeded (slice off an end and squeeze out the seeds) Campari tomatoes, red onion, capers, and fresh basil in a bowl.

Add drained, rinsed white beans and your vinaigrette of choice (I used Marie's Greek vinaigrette leftover from May's Alphabet Challenge).

Give everything a good stir. Leave on the kitchen side for an hour or so to let the flavors mingle. Season with salt and black pepper to taste.

Post Vacational Cookery: Chicken & Veggie Skillet

Now that we've been back from Niagara Falls for a few days, it's time to face the hard truth -- if I don't cook, we're not going to eat. Yes, we could keep eating out, but that's not healthful. Also, we left all our money in Canada as Niagara Falls was much more expensive than we'd anticipated. O, you wily Canadians with your wines and restaurants!

So time to be thrifty and healthful and responsible and make some darn supper.

Ingredients: boneless skinless chicken breasts, Italian dressing, cherry tomatoes, zucchini, snow peas, red onion, grated Parmesan.

That, my dears, is Kraft's "Sizzling Chicken & Veggie Skillet" on a bed of basmati rice. The recipe is low calorie, low fat, and low sodium so there's healthful and responsible checked off. It's also pretty inexpensive as about half the ingredients were purchased on sale.

The recipe is very easy, too. Cook chicken, chop vegetables, cook vegetables, serve.

Cook chicken in a hot skillet over medium-high heat until nicely browned and cooked through. Transfer to shallow bowl (don't want to lose any juices!) and pop into a warm oven to rest until needed.

Add dressing (I used Greek vinaigrette with feta), zucchini, and onions to pan; cook until vegetables are crisp-tender.

Stir in tomatoes and snow peas; cook until heated through. Stir in any accumulated chicken juices. Serve chicken topped with vegetables on a bed of rice or farro or what have you. Sprinkle with grated Parmesan.

While the recipe doesn't call for it, I strongly recommend marinating the chicken in a little Italian dressing for extra flavor.

The Husband recommends more tomatoes and fewer snow peas!

MyBlogSpark: Ocean Spray® Fruit Flavored Snacks

Last month, I signed up with MyBlogSpark to receive special offers and promotions (hopefully) relevant to my interests and this blog. Given the modest size and scope of Savory Tart, I wasn’t expecting much from MyBlogSpark, but the two offers I’ve received have been pretty good. The first offer I received was for Ocean Spray® Fruit Flavored Snacks and, since they were already on sale, I thought I'd give them a whirl.  I'm in the market for new low Points+ snacks and thought these might fit the bill.

Ocean Spray® Fruit Flavored Snacks come in two flavors --"Berries & Cherries" and "Assorted Fruit."  As my grocery store had both on the shelf, I picked up a box of each. They’re basically fruit-flavored gummies, stamped in the shapes of various fruits. They’re actually rather cute and the girlish part of me that digs cute food was quite pleased.  (It's quite probable all gummy snacks are just as cute, but it's been a long time since I've eaten such things).

Ocean Spray® Fruit Flavored Snacks are made with real fruit juice (juice concentrate) and natural colors ("colors from natural sources") and flavors, are only 80 calories per serving, gluten free, and contain 100% of the Daily Value of Vitamin C. Each serving is individually packaged so you can just stuff them in your pocket or bag and go, knowing there’s a little something sweet on hand when the mid-afternoon blahs kick in. (I can’t be the only one who gets all cranky and rundown around 3 o’clock and buys something sweet but regrettable from the snack machine, right?)

The Snacks themselves are very soft -- almost glutinous -- but not gooey enough to stick in your teeth. The flavors are pretty good in that they mostly taste fruit without any of those "fake fruit" notes you sometimes get in candy.

Want to try Ocean Spray® Fruit Flavored Snacks? Thanks to MyBlogSpark, you can visit http://bit.ly/K9P4Eo and download a printable coupon to save $1.10 when you buy any two boxes of Ocean Spray® Fruit Flavored Snacks. I don’t know how long this offer will last, so print’ em while you can.

(I’m amused/horrified that the press release I received from MyBlogSpark regarding these Ocean Spray® Fruit Flavored Snacks specified that “they are not intended to replace fruit in the diet.” People, you should not need to be told this).

Disclosure: This coupon offer was brought to my attention by Ocean Spray® via MyBlogSpark. All opinions, such as they are, are my own.