Trident Layers Sweet Cherry and Island Lime

I've probably mentioned it a thousand times, I'm a sucker for the word "new." That, plus the sudden craving for gum I had, led to the purchase of a few packs, one of them being these.

I'm surprised. For all my hesitation about this flavor, being that one of my most common flavor preferences is "NOT citrus," I really like this gum. If the gum flavor actually is layered, that might explain why, because the cherry comes to counteract/balance out/fill out the lime. And, the lime flavor isn't TOO intense. You can definitely taste it, but at the same time, there's the sweetness of cherry so you're not overloaded.

In addition to that, I love the texture of this gum! It comes in a stick that's maybe half the size of your average "stick of gum," with a lot of the equivalence coming from how thick the stick is (because of the layers). Unlike some other gums I've had, this stays remarkably pliable for me for a while.

Starbucks Doubleshot Energy+Coffee Mocha and White Chocolate

Starbucks Doubleshots. Actually, these are Starbucks Doubleshots + Energy, officially -- rather than the smaller cans, which are listed as the pure 'Doubleshots', this is a mixture of coffee and an energy drink mixture, rather than what is touted as purely espresso and cream/flavoring. The flavor that I usually get is mocha, and the taste got some time to get used to -- I think because, in addition to the getting over the coffee in the mocha flavoring, there were the unexpected zings of an energy drink (other than these, I hadn't really partaken of energy drinks).

As for effectiveness, I had one in the morning and I'm jittery as anything. I take energy strangely, where I get foggy/sleepy before it kicks in, so during the hour or so I sipped this I felt a bit groggy. About half an hour later, though (this being about an hour and a half before typing this), I felt my mind start to race and my brain start to be on hyper mode. Typing this, I'm still jittery and hyper. I still feel my eyes wanting to sleep, my body's yawning, but it's not complete lethargy. It's like being tired but overly energetic at the same time. There may or may not be a crash in the near future, but as it is, I'm in a semi-productive state of mind -- that is, if I can get myself to concentrate.

Though, the effects I'm having are probably due to my body, personally. I'm guessing this affects different people differently. It can work as something of a boost for me, if I time drinking it right. If I'm already exhausted it'll keep me on a semi-awake plateau.

If you know what energy drinks do to you, it probably does something along that order. I can't really say much for sure.


Until recently, I'd only really had mocha whenever I had a doubleshot (which depending on my workload/schedule, varies from like once a month to once a week at least...it's been much towards the latter over the past two months). Maybe a month ago, I came across a non-coffee, non-vanilla, non-mocha variant of the drink that I'd not seen before: white chocolate. I was curious, so I tried it.

It could be that I'm used to mocha to the extent that the combination of coffee/energydrink and flavoring tastes odd with nythig else, but I have to say, I didn't really like it quite as much. There is a white chocolate flavor, but it's sort of tame, or light. I had to take a big sip to definitively taste it. The drink is definitely more 'mellow' feeling than the mocha. I don't know how to quite put it into words others will understand, but the adjectives "dark" and "deep" as compared to the mocha came to me. Kind of like it's more subdued, less sweet, less chocolatey. You get used to it as you drink, but at first I was a bit taken aback by the flavor, and not in a good way.

Chobani Yogurt

Being that I am, admittedly, prone to episodes of 'I should stop whining about what I don't like and do something,' I came across something somewhere that touted Greek yogurt as a good 'I need to get through this morning on something not ridiculously caloric' option. What the hell is Greek yogurt, I wondered. Not that didn't know of its existence; I'd seen it on the shelves, I just didn't know why the yogurt being Greek suddenly made it all that different. It had high protein, the article/yogurt cups said.

All they had to tell me was "it's twice as thick as normal yogurt. AND WE MEAN IT." The extra protein's a nice bonus for a carb-based lump like I am, but the real reason I fell for it was, when I finally went 'okay, I'll try it,' it was THICK.

(FYI: The only brand/type of Greek yogurt I can really go by is Chobani, so I'm going to use that as my example for now.)

It's actually to the point that the fruit-on-the-bottom types of the yogurt are thicker than plain, likely because they strain the yogurt just a little more to compensate for the liquid of the fruit that's...y'know...on the bottom. Chobani basically comes in Plain or fruit, with the Honey (and probably the Vanilla, too) being the exceptions. For its part, the Honey was a bit liquidy though -- like it was a fruit-on-the-bottom already mixed up for you, which I guess makes sense against dealing with honey-on-the-bottom.

For the fruit yogurts, I can't say I've tried all of them because (a) I haven't come across all of them and (b) some flavors, such as Lemon, I know on principle I probably will not enjoy, and I'm not paying for a three-dollar (where I get it) yogurt just to see if there's some manner of exception. As such, I can only go by the flavors I've had, which may only amount to three, actually.

Chobani has several  (about 20) flavors. Besides Plain and the aforementioned Vanilla and Honey flavors, they have a large assortment of fruit flavors that are either non-fat or low-fat (a distinction that I, personally, take little notice of, because 160 is only 10-20 calories more than the non-fat flavors, assuming we're not going for the 100 calorie plain. Also, this means MAX 160 calories, come on! For a pretty satisfying/healthyish breakfast, that sells the calorie counter in me.) The flavors range from Pineapple to Pomegranate, Raspberry to Apple Cinnamon (or so the website says, this one I have not seen). Black Cherry, Passionfruit, Pomegranate, Blood Orange, Peach...I just listed a large portion, but my point is, they have a LOT of different fruits.

There is also something listed on the website as Chobani Champions, a kids version of the yogurt. The four flavors are Orange-Vanilla (creamsicle, anyone?), VeryBerry, Vanilla Chocolate Chunk (fighting urge to underline CHOCOLATE) and Honey-Nana (honey + banana). These I've never seen, but the one with chocolate I definitely want to try. Do not joke with me about chocolate every meal of the day, I will take you up as serious.

I've spent long enough talking about the flavors -- if you're still on board, you're probably screaming okay, that's great, but HOW DOES IT TASTE?!

Like I said earlier, Greek yogurt is yogurt that's THICK. Granted, regular yogurt doesn't have to be uber-liquid (though it tends to be that way when heavily flavored, is what I'm guessing), but it usually has some manner of gloop to it - sort of like sour cream or mayonnaise, where it's not liquidy, per se, but it moves pretty easily. So far, besides the Plain yogurt I tried that had a reservoir of liquid on top of and inside the cracks of the yogurt, these have been pretty stable and thick. It's still soft and, well, yogurt, but it's got more resistance. I stress this so much because even the most delicious yogurts, after a while, become virtually inedible to me because I can't get over the liquidity.

Flavor-wise, the fruit on the bottom seems to be a puree of real fruit, almost like a little dollop of preserves was spread out on the bottom. If you mix the fruit, the viscosity goes down, of course (hence my aside about yogurts going uber-liquid), but even if you don't, you still get the fruit flavor. It seeps up from the fruit on the bottom, so it's lighter at the top, but even then if you're having, for instance, Strawberry, you'll get a nice light strawberry flavor that intensifies to the strawberries on the bottom. It's an effect I, personally, find quite nice.

Now, I would be doing a great injustice to this newfound breakfast love of mine if I didn't talk about the light-pink-colored cup. At first I thought it was Strawberry, yum. But then I saw the darker hue of the Strawberry packaging, so I looked closer, and saw this:

Strawberry. Banana. Greek. Yogurt.

Strawnana is hands-down one of my favorite flavors ever. Especially with fruit-flavored things (as opposed to eating actual fruits), seeing anything strawnana makes me really, really happy. This yogurt basically has the strawberry preserve-like-stuff on the bottom, only it's not clear, it's milkier-looking due to the pureed banana mixed in. Like the other fruit yogurts, this one has the gradient of strawberry-banana goodness if left unmixed. It gets a more level, intense flavor if you mix it, which probably also varies with how much yogurt you have left to mix, but the beauty of fruit on the bottom is you get to choose. (This is actually one thing I disliked a bit about the Honey flavor -- the honey was even throughout the yogurt so it overpowered the yogurt flavor in a strange way, or mixed with it in a ratio I wasn't quite sure I found enjoyable.)

I will be honest, one of my biggest motivations for writing this was to do a happy dance about the strawnana yogurt. Overall, though, I really like this stuff, even without that amazing icing to the yogurt cake! (...yogurt cake?)

Three Musketeers Coconut

At first glance, after you open the package, it looks like a normal 3 Musketeers bar. Same chocolatey outside, and, if you break it open, same lighter-chocolatey colored inside. The texture is the same, even -- still that fluffy stuff on the inside.

The only difference is, instead of a light chocolatey flavor, you get blasted with a light but strong sweetness of coconut. Its strong enough that there may be little to no chocolate in the filling, or so it would seem at first taste. This makes sense, though, since it's a chocolate coconut bar so the coconut has to contend not only with the chocolate in the filling (which seems to hint at its presence as you get accustomed to the earthy sweetness of the coconut) but the chocolate shell as well.

I, for one, like coconut, so this was really nice. Like eating shredded coconut with the texture of...well..a 3 Musketeers bar.