NEAROF

It’s a Halloween tradition. Every year, when digging around through my surplus fun-size candy, I rediscover Aero. It’s a chocolate bar I’d never normally buy on its own in a full-size version, but in fun-size, it’s perfect. Why do I like it? Because there are no bells and whistles. It’s just chocolate, infused with a [...]

Continuing an oft-revisited theme here at NEAROF!, I fell victim to the inescapable draw of a grocery store end-unit display. This time, it was a shelf full of MaraNatha Dark Chocolate Peanut Spread at Planet Organic that did me in. My wife balked at the price (“$6.29?” she asked, incredulous), but I bought it anyhow, [...]

In my experience, you can have a healthy, fibre-filled granola bar that bears some similarity to cardboard, or you can have an unhealthy, fat-filled sugar-and-rolled-oats bar masquerading as health food, luring parents to include them in lunch boxes under false pretences of nutritional awesomeness. But these Fibre Plus bars are different. Sort of. While each [...]

In case you hadn’t noticed, I kind of like the combination of orange and chocolate flavours. I also love British candy, a vice that has been cheerfully fed by a new U.K. specialty import shop in Edmonton, just south of Whyte Ave. My latest find isn’t entirely new to me. I got a Fry’s Orange [...]

Is there any more Hawaiian a souvenir than chocolate-covered macadamia nuts? Based on the shelves and shelves full of them at every corner store in Waikiki, they’re clearly a popular gift to bring back from the Hawaiian islands. But are they, you know, any good? In a word, yes. But I’ll qualify that by saying [...]

Part of the fun of having a site like this is getting tips from readers. Back when I wrote about Terry’s Chocolate Orange in December, commenter Darrell pointed me in the direction of several other orange-infused chocolate bars, including this lovely specimen from Cocoa Camino. See, Terry’s Chocolate Orange is great, but it’s not available [...]

I’ve tried a whole pile of different Reese’s products in the past, from various bar-form treats to cereal to tubs of peanut butter, but I’d never seen Reese’s Dark Chocolate and Reese’s White Chocolate peanut butter cups until a trip to Seattle late last fall. So? How do they compare to the regular Reese’s peanut [...]