NEAROF

These three chocolate bars were all gifted to NEAROF! by my dad, who bought them during a trip to Seattle. All look to be delicious, flavourful treats, yet all are hard to find in this corner of Canada. Trying exotic foodstuffs with limited availability can be fraught with mental anguish. If you don’t like the [...]

My first experience with a Skinny Cow product was their tiny little frozen dessert single-serve cups, and it was downright terrible. With the first spoonful, I instantly regretted picking it over the tiny tubs of Häagen-Dazs in the same cooler. In the quest to find decent calorie-reduced treats, there are successes and there are failures; [...]

Yes, it’s that time of year again, isn’t it? While the world’s Christians will celebrate the death of rebirth of the son of god, everyone else (and yeah, let’s face it, some of the Christians) will be celebrating the massive quantity of chocolates on offer at shops during the lead-up to Easter. Have you seen [...]

There’s something great about packaging that makes you say, “Amazing. Why hasn’t anyone thought of this before?” For every 500 impossible-to-open plastic clamshell packaging nightmares, someone does something brilliant that makes me smile. Often, that company is Apple. This week, that company is Cadbury. Cadbury’s latest egg-shaped Easter treat, Cadbury L’il Scoops Chocolatey Mousse, looks, [...]

I found these Sconza Lemoncello Almonds at a London Drugs in Calgary around Christmas time, but it’s taken me a while to get around to reviewing them. Now that I’ve tried these little yellow bundles of sweet, creamy, lemony joy, I wish I’d sampled them sooner. The Pitch: “Roasted almonds covered in white chocolate and [...]

It’s that time of year again, isn’t it? It’s hard to believe this is the third annual NEAROF! gift guide. Every year, it’s getting harder to write this thing, probably because I’ve included all sorts of great stuff in prior years. Be sure to check out the 2010 guide, as well as the 2011 guide. [...]

Like most humans, I like shiny things. While diamond-encrusted teeth and flashy gold chains don’t do anything for me, a pretty, shiny package in the grocery store – especially for a product I’ve never seen before – draws me in like the stupid ape-man I clearly am. No amount of formal education or summer afternoons [...]

Another week, and another mission to my amazing neighbourhood U.K. import shop, British Pantry. So many boxes brimming with temptations, both sweet and savoury, yet so little time/treasure. This trip, I brought back a small bag of Cadbury BiscBits, a treat I’d never met before, that featured the tantalizing “NEW” in a banner on the [...]