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A while back I was contacted by a representative for JavaFit Coffee, who offered to send me a few samples of their coffee for review. I gladly accepted the offer, and a few weeks later I received a duffel bag full of Coffee sample packs. I don’t drink a lot of coffee, but I do enjoy a cup every few days, so in addition to sharing with family and friends, I slowly tried each of the different “flavors” I received. JavaFit has a concept on coffee that is somewhat unique and a bit odd - they have added supplements, vitamins, and other useful additives to regular coffee, and they promote their coffees as companions to a fit and healthy lifestyle.
I was sent five different flavors or “functions”as JavaFit likes to call them - original, energy extreme, diet plus, focus plus multi-vitamin, and immune plus multi-vitamin. Each of the non-original flavors/functions contains a variety of supplements geared toward a specific goal: increased energy, appetite suppressant, mental clarity, or an immune system boost (you can read about the specific additives on their website). I am far from a coffee aficionado, but I would describe their coffee as average. It tasted very similiar to other mid-range pre-ground coffees I’ve had in the past. I generally add a decent amount of sugar and milk to my coffee, but for this review I tried each of the coffees without sugar/coffee, and with, to gauge the flavor. Here are my thoughts on each flavor:
Extreme Energy: this one has a slightly odd flavor, maybe it’s the green tea extract? It also has an unfortunate slight aftertaste. Extreme Energy tastes decent with enough sugar and cream. This flavor/function gave me a definite energy boost for a few hours - I drank two cups in a row one day, and it gave me jitters. This might be a good alternative for people who use energy drinks to get them through the day, or if you prescribe to the marketting materials, a good way to jumpstart a workout.
Diet Plus: I didn’t detect and weird flavors in diet plus, and it tasted pretty much the same as the original. I didn’t really follow the scientific process, but I don’t think this flavor/function supressed my appetite for very long. I am not sure if any of the other additives had any beneficial effects on me, but they very well may have.
Mental Clarity: It is very hard to determine whether the additives in this coffee had any effect on my mental clarity, so I have to evaluate it based on taste alone. I thought it was odd, that after opening the package, this flavor/function didn’t really smell enough like coffee. Despite the weird lack of aroma, this flavor tasted pretty decent, and had no aftertaste. I was pleased that it didn’t taste like vitamins - although it did taste slightly different than the original.
Immune Support: This flavor was basically the same as mental clarity as far as taste, and once again, it is very hard to tell whether it had a real impact on my immune system health.
I don’t generally associate coffee with exercise or fitness, especially given that coffee dehydrates me, but I do find that JavaFit has a good angle on the supplement market. By selling to offices, workout centers, and other places that want to promote coffee with benefits, JavaFit is finding it’s target market, and gaining customers who enjoy coffee with the added health benefits. Since I generally take a multivitamin every morning, and I only drink coffee every few days, I don’t really see a need to drink coffee with vitamin additives, especially if they alter the flavor. Also, I don’t find that I enjoy the high/low cycle of energy supplements, and I don’t have a need for an appetite suppressant, so I am really not one of JavaFit’s “target” customers. Despite that, their product has the potential to provide real benefits for people who are willing to pay the slightly higher price tag (about $1 per pot of coffee, if buying at their online store). I probably won’t ever buy their coffee again, but I enjoyed it for what it was, as did the people I gave samples to. I didn’t derive any specific benefit from the special blends, but I can see how they would be enticing to some. Assuming the cost isn’t prohibitive, you may want to try it.
JavaFit Brewed Coffee from JavaFit.com: 
Thanks to JavaFit for sending me these coffee samples for review, if you have a product that you would like me to review, please check out the ‘Get Reviewed‘ page for details on how to contact me. Have you ever tried JavaFit coffee? What do you think of the supplemented coffee concept? Is $1/pot too high of a price?
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After spending too much time over at the Walmart free samples and trials page, I have recently been getting a tidal wave of free samples in my mailbox. Today I received a free sample of Betty Crocker’s “Warm Delights Minis” in Molten Chocolate Cake flavor. I have seen these products around for a while now, but never given them any consideration. As it turns out, free samples are definitely a worthwhile marketing effort, because if this cake wasn’t in my mailbox today, I may have never tried this product.
I was at first put off when I opened the box and found a plastic dish with two pouches in it - for some reason I didn’t expect to have to open a pouch of cake mix, mix it with water, and then open a pouch of fudge topping to squeeze on the top of the batter. The extremely lazy side of me was not impressed with how much work actually went in to preparing this “just add water and microwave” snack. On the flip side, it is a pretty impressive food technology when a bit of batter is mixed with water, and then microwaved for 30 seconds, resulting in a warm delicious chocolate cake. The low cook time, combined with the quality of the result definitely overrides my initial objection.
The cake itself tasted very good, it was fluffy, chocolatey, and warm. The fudge topping added a lot to the cake as well. As an easy and quick dessert/snack, warm delights minis are satisfying, and I would definitely be willing to try out the variety of other flavors that are available. Of course, I would likely not buy the mini size in the future, as they are too small for my appetite. I am not sure if these are a good value, since this was a free trial, but I have a feeling Betty Crocker may over-charge for this product, due to the convenience. If given the choice, I would definitely pick a home baked confection over a microwave cake - but these seem to be a good solution when you’re not in the baking mood.
Betty Crocker Warm Delights Minis (Molten Chocolate Cake): 4/5
4/5
Have you ever dried Warm Delights? Are the other flavors any good? Do you know the average cost of these in the grocery store?
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I’ll admit upfront - this is going to be a pretty lame review. The first strike against it has to be the fact that I actually bought, baked, and consumed the product months ago, and frankly, I’m not even sure that they are still sold in stores (I couldn’t find them in a product listing on the pillsbury website). Secondly, the pictures I took are barely passable, and there aren’t enough of them. I apologize for these oversights, but there really isn’t anything I can do about it, so here we go!
As I recall, these Pillsbury Mint Chocolate Brownies were delicious as brownies, but not quite minty enough. The box boasted of real Andes mint candy pieces in the batter, which is what sold me on the product - the idea of little bits of delicious candy melted into my brownies was too much, and I had to try them. Sadly, the effect of the candy pieces wasn’t really that powerful, and I remember them tasting mostly like plain brownies with a hint of mint. The included mint-chocolate drizzle was definitely minty, but wasn’t very good as a topping for the brownies - it was a bit too sticky, and didn’t seem to compliment the brownies.
Mixing up the batter was like any other brownie mix, easy and quick - all I had to do was add oil, eggs, and maybe water (I can’t quite remember), mix it around, and dump it into a baking pan - definitely easier than doing it from scratch.
If I recall, this mix was only $1.50 - another reason that I decided to try it out, and I would say that it was pretty good as far as brownie mixes go, but I might not pick it again over the cheaper non-mint mix in the future (why are brownie mixes so cheap, by the way?). I guess sometimes there’s just no reason to mess with a classic by trying to spice it up with stuff like mint. That said, these brownies weren’t disgusting by any means, and the mint flavor was slightly enhanced when eaten with a glass of cold milk - so we had no problem polishing off the whole pan. I would suggest trying them out next time you are buying brownie mix, just to see if you agree with my conclusion, and if you do, please come back and tell me if my memory from a few months ago is faulty or not. Hopefully you didn’t find this review as terrible as I prompted at the beginning, and if you get nothing else out of it, at least you should have a craving for brownies now (I know I do).
Pillsbury Mint Chocolate Premium Brownie Mix: 
2.5/5
2.5/5
Have you tried any uniquely flavored brownie recipes lately? How did they turn out? What’s your favorite brownie recipe/mix? Stay tuned for more current reviews in the near future!
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I once again have yet another Crock-pot Classics review for all of you slow cooker fans out there (what’s that? there aren’t any slow cooker fans? oh, well, I’ll have to keep this short and sweet then). Since I didn’t take a picture myself (who thinks of a picture as they are rushing to throw ingredients into a slow cooker before work?) - and there aren’t any decent stock pics out there on the internet for me to borrow, this review will sadly go picture-less. Fortunately, the Meatballs in Stroganoff Sauce didn’t really meet my expectations, so I could say that in a way, it’s review doesn’t deserve a picture.
This slow cooker meal was just as easy to prepare as the other crock-pot classics that I’ve worked with in the past, but once again the time given by the directions for cooking the noodles was not enough, and I had to cook them for another 15-20 minutes before they were edible. Even after all of the extra cook time, the noodles had a weird texture, and didn’t quite compliment the stroganoff like they should have. The sauce was decent, not the best stroganoff flavor I’ve tried, and the meatballs were pretty good. Overall, none of the flavors were impressive.
Nothing in this meal had that slow-cooker feel, it seemed like a meal that I could have heated up on the stove in a few minutes. Despite all of the lackluster ingredients the meatballs in stroganoff sauce wasn’t terrible, and I ate my serving, but I’m definitely not motivated to pull the leftovers out of the fridge to finish it off (hopefully it doesn’t become one of those forgotten dishes, pushed to the back of the fridge, that slowly becomes unrecognizably covered in mold…). I don’t think I will purchase this crock-pot meal again in the future, and instead I will use a stroganoff recipe that I know I like more.
As a possible saving grace, Crystal liked this meal a lot more than I did, and she was even willing to eat some of the leftovers. I believe she liked the meatballs the best, which is understandable, as they were the best ingredient overall.
Banquet Crock-pot Classics Meatballs in Stroganoff Sauce: 2/5
2/5
Do you have a stroganoff recipe I should try? How about an easy meatball recipe? Do you want to see more crock-pot classics reviews in the future, or have I been boring the pants off of my audience with them since I started writing this blog?
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We recently tried another of the Banquet crock-pot classics meals with our new slow cooker. This time we tried the Hearty Beef and Vegetables recipe.
Once again, the directions were almost too easy, I put in less than five minutes of preparation time in the morning, and I came home to a house that smelled like a delicious beef stew later that night. This is a dangerous product, as it is making me increasingly lazy with each meal I prepare, but it is making me feel like I accomplished a great culinary feat at the same time; a formula that doesn’t often work out. If we don’t watch out, we may very well be dependent on Banquet crock-pot meals for dinner-time sustenance for all eternity. Luckily for us, banquet has at least two crock pot meals that I personally know are tasty, and I have a hunch that the rest of the “crock-pot classics” line will follow suit (look for more reviews in the future!).
This meal had almost the exact same preparation steps as the herb chicken and rice recipe; I put water and a sauce packet in the slow cooker, followed by the bag of vegetables and meat, and left it to cook on low for 8+ hours. Once I got home from work, I added the bag of red potatoes, turned the cooker to high, and waited 35 minutes for the potatoes to cook. The only problem encountered with this meal was that after 35 minutes of cooking on high, the potatoes were pretty far from being done, and they required more cook time to lose their crunchiness. If you end up getting this meal, I would suggest cooking the potatoes for at least 50 minutes just to make sure they are done (of course, I imagine things can vary from one cooker to another).
This meal was good, but not as unique as the first “classics” recipe we tried. I found it to taste like most other beef stew style recipes I have had in the past, but that is all I was expecting. The beef chunks seemed to be quality meat, and after being cooked all day they were very tender and juicy. The vegetables all turned out well after the potatoes had their extra time, and the sauce wasn’t half bad. One of the big pluses that we’ve found with both meals we’ve tried so far is, they turn out great as left-overs. Generally my girlfriend avoids left-overs due to the decreased quality of the food after sitting in the fridge for a while, but both of these meals has reheated as a quality and easy to prepare left-over meal.
Since all of the banquet crock-pot classics meals cost the same (about $5), provide the same amount of food, and appear to be delivering quality each time I try them, I don’t see any reason to not continue to buy them. Maybe someday when I find myself dedicating more time to my meals, I can graduate beyond the pre-packaged slow cooker recipe, but for now they are working great.
Banquet Crock-pot Classics Hearty Beef and Vegetables: 4/5
4/5Anyone else slowing becoming strung-out on hearty, warm, and delicious slow cooker meals? Want to start a support group? Have a slow cooker recipe that will make banquet pre-packaged meals taste like dirt? I would like to hear from you!
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