Tru Moo Flavored Milk - Fun for your Halloween Parties, if you can find it

BzzAgent asked me to try TruMoo chocolate milk.  I was happy to be asked to the TruMoo campaign because I thought that it would be something my daughter would enjoy. She likes flavored milk, and gets chocolate milk with lunch in school every day.

 One thing I noticed first: I went to the Tru Moo website and put in my zip code, only to be told that there was nothing locally. Wrong. I know I've seen it in my local stores. Turns out it's licensed to different dairies depending upon where you live. For us, it's Tuscan. If you go to the "My Dairy" link on the website it now tells you who your local dairy supplier will be.

My ShopRite and Stop & Shop both carry Tru Moo but I haven't been able to find the Vanilla variety, either plain or orange for Halloween. Too bad, it would have been a nice thing to try.

 I picked up a gallon of the Tru Moo chocolate milk for Haley. Sadly, it wasn't her favorite. She said she prefers the chocolate milk that they serve in school. Both are low-fat (she prefers low-fat milk) and both have similar nutritional labels, but she wasn't sold on the taste of Tru Moo and asked me to buy some powder to put in her milk instead.

So, now I had nearly a gallon of Tru Moo to use and she really didn't want to drink it. I'm not a chocolate milk kind of person, I'm a coffee hound, and my husband wasn't about to drink it. So, I did what I always do, I baked!

 I used recipes from the Cake Mix Doctor book by Anne Byrn, and where it would call for milk, I would add the chocolate milk. I figured it would give an extra chocolate kick to the recipe. This worked really well! My daughter and I made red velvet cupcakes using 1 cup of chocolate milk, and we added 1 cup of chocolate milk to the batter of my son's mocha birthday cake. In addition, I used chocolate milk to thin my chocolate buttercream frosting for spreading. So, this was definitely used and tasted good as part of those projects.

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Pros: seems to be locally available available in both fat-free and low-fat varieties
available in half and full gallon sizes
less sugar than soft drinks
They're having a Goosebumps sweepstakes, so enter

Cons:
My kid didn't like it as much as another brand
No matter how they sell it, it's still extra sugar in the diet.
Other flavor varieties (vanilla, orange-tinted vanilla, strawberry) weren't available locally
Price (cheaper to buy regular milk & add chocolate milk mix)

Kashi Hummus Crisps - Yay or Nay?

BzzAgent asked me to try Kashi's new Hummus Crisps. I was intrigued.

I loved the Kashi Hummus Crisps. Truly. I would be buying them if I could find them. They are fantastic. I thought that the Sea Salt & Olive Oil is great. These are good, healthy snacks, they taste great, and go with a variety of dips. I like to use healthier dips like Tzatziki sauce or a nice Fage Yogurt dip, in order to keep things healthy.

The protein in the Kashi Hummus Crisps is a huge positive to me. As someone who lost weight with weight-loss surgery 10 years ago, I strive to eat healthy and to incorporate protein into my diet in as many ways as possible. I have talked about this online with friends, and have told friends near and far that the Kashi Hummus Crisps are great and a good food for those of us who have had weight loss surgery. So, here's my dilemma: where the heck do I find them? I have asked every supermarket in my area (ShopRite, Stop & Shop, Pathmark, Whole Foods) to carry them and they can't get them from their distributors. I have used the product locator and have not come up with a single place that has them. I tried 60 miles away in each direction, since I travel down to south Jersey to visit relatives and up to Westchester to visit friends. NOTHING! I can't find them anywhere. I have a stack of coupons to hand out that I can't give away because no one can find these Hummus Crisps. I am very disappointed that this campaign was launched before the product distribution went national. My Stop & Shop has half an aisle devoted to Kashi products, but they don't have these, and from the looks of things, they won't any time soon. It's quite sad.

I would love to blog about these and try the other varieties, but without having the product (and I am not ordering from Amazon or ebay at inflated prices) I won't be able to do it. Pros: Great nutritional snack, guilt-free eating, adds to your protein count. Cons: Can't find them in the northeast! New York, NJ, PA - no.