Oats So Simple: Extreme

I like cinnamon. I like sweets. I like instant porridge.

So imagine my delight when I spied Oats So Simple: Sweet Cinnamon in my local Sainsburys Local.

I quickly snapped up two giant packs of ten sachets without a second thought to whether it would be disgusting or not. After all, cinnamon porridge, what's not to like? (And it's sweet cinnamon too, not that horrible sour cinnamon. I am still waiting for Oats So Simple: Sour Cinnamon.)

BIG MISTAKE, A key problem with Oats So Simple: Sweet Cinnamon is that THEY FORGOT TO MAKE IT TASTE OF CINNAMON.

It's not particularly sweet either.

It tastes of approximately nothing. 1 out of 7. Hence forth, all mentions of OSS Sweet Cinnamon must have quote marks around the "Sweet Cinnamon" bit. Starting from now.

Anyway, in late 2011, I had a massive brainwave - why not eschew ordinary boring milk and replace with flavoured milk dans la porridge?

"Too sweet!" said the naysayers.
"You're an idiot!" said some other naysayers.
"You talking incessantly about porridge is getting on my nerves," said most people.

But all those people were wrong. Yes I am the first to agree it is mental - BUT - how else to correct Quaker's feeble attempt to actually make instant porridge oats that taste of something?

And, with a hefty surplus of OSS: "Sweet Cinnamon" sitting in the cupboard uneaten, it was either this or post them all back individually to Quakers HQ with the words "sweet cinnamon" crossed out and replaced with "sh-t cinnamon".
And no one wanted that.*

So here we go.

STEP ONE: Buy some flavoured milk - EG banana

STEP TWO: Put the OOS: "Sweet Cinnamon" into the pan. Pour the required amount of banana milk into the sachet, then add to the pan.

BOIL.

Not so Oats So Complicated right? OSS: "Sweet Cinnamon" and Banana - 6 out of 7.

But why stop there? Here's OOS: "Sweet Cinnamon" with Sainsburys White Chocolate and Raspberry Milk. (5 out of 7)

There's no reason why this can't be repeated with different OSS flavours combined with different flavoured milks. For example, OSS: Mango and Passion fruit with strawberry milk, or OSS: Golden Syrup with chocolate milk. Why not try your own combos?

BUT. Could the concept be taken one step further? What about adding a Honeycomb Choc Swirl Frijj Milkshake? "NOOOOOO" everyone shouted. But I didn't listen:

a DISGUSTING thick gloopy mess. Just shows you, some experiments can be taken too far.

Oats So Simple: "Sweet Cinnamon" and Honeycomb Choc Swirl porridge, 
Gobble Monkey says: 2 out of 7 

*least of all me, I've run out of stamps

Frijj Shakes

I've never quite fallen in love the Frijj range of milkshakes, mainly because I've never been sure how to pronounce the name. These new flavours, promoted by a weird circus cat and a cross dressing dog, purport to be Raspberry Jam Doughnut flavour (ACTUAL  FLAVOUR: Raspberry) and Honeycomb Choc Swirl flavour (ACTUAL FLAVOUR: Chocolate)

They have the usual consistency of a barium meal, and taste almost identical to the traditional chocolate
/raspberry
Frijj flavours.
OH WELL.

(strangely enough, both flavours have almost EXACTLY the same ingredients)




At least you can look at a dog with an umbrella or a cat banging a drum before or after drinking them. (not during).




Frijj have given each of their new characters a distinct personality. They are:

Hugo Meeow “the serious, balshy, dapper, tough one”
Pablo Pooch “the poser and slightly flamboyant one of the bunch”
Magnus Monkee (NOT AVAILABLE IN MY TESCOS) “the mischievous, cheeky chappy of the group”

Hugo, Pablo and Magnus. They sound like a bunch of tossers, don't they? Oh Hugo, you're so balshy! Magnus, stop being so mischievous! And Pablo, you poser, is that a tea-cosy on your head? And an umbrella! Are you being slightly flamboyant again?

Has anyone actually ever been described as "slightly flamboyant" before? Is that possible?

"Hey, what's Pablo like?" "Well, he's a tiny bit ostentatious, but he keeps it mostly to himself."

And yes, before you ask I did try mixing them to make a Choc Raspberry Jam Honeycomb Doughnut flavour.(ACTUAL FLAVOUR: chocolate again).

But what you really want to know is did I mix TURBO Tango with Strawberry Jam Chocolate Honeycomb Doughnut flavour Frijj?

Yes I did.

WORLD FIRST.

Frijj Raspberry Jam Doughnut Flavour, £1.20
Gobble Monkey says: 4 out of 7

Frijj Honeycomb Choc Swirl flavour, £1.20
Gobble Monkey says:  4 out of 7

Frijj Raspberry Choc Jam Honeycomb Swirl Doughnut flavour, £2.40
Gobble Monkey says: 4 out of 7

Frijj TURBO Raspberry Choc Jam Honeycomb Swirl Doughnut Orange flavour, £4
Gobble Monkey says: zero out of 7 

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DON'T FORGET TO CHECK OUT THE GOBBLE MONKEY CEREAL COMPETITION! here

McDonald's DOUBLE TASTE SHAKES

EXCITING NEW McDONALD'S MILKSHAKES ALERT!
Look! 'Double Taste' Shakes! They look exciting don't they? There are two 'Double Taste' flavours: Double Taste Tropical & Vanilla and Double Taste Double Choc. (They even doubled the word double in that one).

Basically these are your regular McDonald's vanilla and chocolate shakes, with extra flavoured syrup. But in their wisdom, McDonalds have decided that rather than putting the syrup on the top like any normal milkshake emporium would do, they've squirted it all round the insides of the cup. This means that after sucking up all the milkshake, you're left with the syrup stuck around the cup and have to scoop it up with the straw like this:

So it's not a 'Double Taste' shake, it's a normal boring shake followed by some flavoured syrup eaten off a straw. It's actually really difficult + messy to eat up the syrup with the straw, and not worth the effort either. I could easily just buy a bottle of chocolate syrup and a straw from the supermarket, then squidge it all round a mug if I wanted to do that. In fact, I did:

And it was miles better.
Alright, while we're in McDonald's, let's talk about the McFlurry for a minute. Remember the legend of how Banoffee pies were invented when a cook accidentally knocked a tin of condensed milk into a pan of water, and discovered it turned to caramel? Well McFlurrys were apparently invented when Ronald McDonald accidentally knocked skimmed milk, cream, sugar, whey powder, glucose syrup, stabilisers (E412 guar gum, E471 mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids, E407 carrageenan (standardised with sugars) and some Smarties into a dustbin.

ANYWAY we all know the top three McFlurries are thus:

3) Oreo Caramel
2) Oreo
1) Toffee Crisp

(Why has there never been a TWIX McFlurry? Twix would be the ULTIMATE McFlurry. Why not email Ronald McDonald directly HERE with the Subject Heading: TWIX MCFLURRY IMMEDIATELY PLEASE)

But what chocolate bar would you LEAST like to see in a McFlurry? What is the one that NOBODY IN THEIR RIGHT MIND would ask for? That's right a *&@$ing Drifter. I haven't even SEEN a Drifter for sale in a shop for about 6 years. But Ronald McDonald obviously has, and he thought it would be a good idea to put one in a McFlurry. Now take a look the Drifter McFlurry I got compared to the promotional image:

Is there actually ANY Drifter in this McFlurry? Maybe one piece of chocolate and one piece of wafer that tasted like a soggy cornflake. Well you did me a favour Ronald McDonald, cos this McFlurry is 3x better for NOT having any @&*@%^&ing Drifter in it.
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McDonald's Double Taste Shakes, McDonalds £1.89
Gobble Monkey says: 2 out of 7