Netflix and Children does the #CheerioChallenge with Little Bellies Hoops and Loops

I hate online memes normally. Especially the Harlem Shake and the Running Man Challenge. Usually this is born out of a deep seated cynicism, driven by incessant media coverage and peer pressure guilt-tripping other individuals or groups into partaking in a largely irrelevant, pointless and cringeworthy task. Whilst often harmless, these crazes can have far-reaching consequences, making respected public leaders to look like tools in public, and lead to official government agencies to change the way they answer phones.

(On a slightly tangential note, official Labour Party YouTube video channel, why would you keep that video up and remind us he did that? Do you want him to win the election next year?)

But when I heard about the Cheerio Challenge this morning, I was instantly drawn in. Mostly because I thought it had something to do with delicious red cocktail sausages. I was slightly dissapointed to find it actually referred fathers piling little ring-shaped American cereal pieces on their sleeping infants, but heck, I'd just bought some cheap Australian rip off hoops with half an intention to review them, may as well put them to good use. So tonight, the family sat down to try out the #CheerioChallenge, before John Key kills it by stacking cereal on top of a sleeping Max. In fact, what's in that bowl behind the glass in this photo?

Anyway, it's fair to say our attempts were a disaster. My first mistake was, in my eagerness, not waiting for the kids to fall asleep before starting out. Given the difficulty stacking on a small moving child, we started tying using Dad as a base substrate. Handed a bowl of small banana flavoured hoops, however, the instinct of a toddler seems to be to eat them. No definitive photos exist, but I blindly fumbled my way to about four little circles, before they were snatched and scoffed.

Luke was actually relatively keen to give being a base for a cereal tower a go, and lay still enough for a tower of seven to be erected between his eyes, before getting the giggles. Emily then, in attempt to emulate her brother, actually lay down and starting building upon her own face, but only succeeded in throwing a small snack into her eye socket.

Of course, we were unable to threaten the record of 16!!!!! Cheerios in one stack. My hypothesis, looking at  my packet of Little Bellies Hoops and Loops (banana flavour), is the lack of sugar (0.2g per serving in comparison to a full gram per serving of Cheerios) affects the adhesiveness of each grain-filled miniature donut, both to adjacent loops, but also to the skin of a small child. I'd also question how the connective qualities of organic corn stack up (pun 100% totally intended) against oats.

Anyway, now I've partaken in the Cheerios Challenge, I imagine it will bumble along slowly, gathering momentum until Jono and Ben invite Cher(io) to come and do it on their show (artist's impression below), followed several months later by the Silver Ferns entering the court at the Fast Netball World Cup stacking  fruit loops on top of each other.

As for a review of Little Bellies Hoops and Loops (banana flavour): the kids seem to love them, but in all honestly they taste like stale dust. 2/10.

Food review! Wattie's custard with banana

Its Tuesday, I'm bored. The kids are at the grandparents and my wife is at s musical practice. I have eaten meat! And now I've realised that at a push I've had 2 of my 5 plus a day, cos supermarket sushi doesn't really count as a vegetable (even if you get the amazing vegetable spring roll sushi, or the delectable chicken cranberry sushi, direct from top ethnic fusion outlet New World Supermarket Pahiatua).

On a tangent, I had briefly considered turning this blog into some sort of crap sushi or crap ethnic food blog, but my attempts at including family were thwarted by the three year old, who when on being exposed to Japanese food for the first time, declared loudly to the whole (actual authentic and quite nice this time) sushi bar, that he would 'not eat here EVER AGAIN', on account of it not warming him up on a cool day.

Anyway, in an attempt to reach my required vitamin C intake for the day I'm currently cramming as much fruit as I can into my pie hole at 10pm. Do hops count in your 5+? I'm saying yes, anyway. And it's persimmon season! Isn't that great! But I feel I need an accompaniment for my fruity delights, and there's no ice cream. Raiding the cupboard, my eye falls on a small sachet of Wattie's baby custard. Surely Emily won't mind if I nick it? It's not like she'll be eating it?

The ingredients look far removed from my previous baby food experiences. Not just simple mushed vegetable with some starchy carbohydrate: this has full cream milk (25%), sugar, butter, and cream, to be avoided for the body conscious six month plus year old looking to fit into that perfect onesie for summer, but a great winter comfort.

It looks like gelatinous gloop. And it's the colour of curdy baby vomit. Which, when you're a six month old, is something you might try and eat back up again. When you're thirty two, it's not as appetising, but maybe that's my problem. And anyway, I'm desperate for some accompaniment for my fruit, so it will do. The smell is bananaey enough, maybe not that authentic, real fresh banana, but the fake banana smell reminiscent of the time you made esthers in sixth form chemistry if you were a hard out nerd like I am.

The taste, unfortunately is a massive let down. First and foremost it's just a slimey texture, but then there's that horrible artificial banana dairy-food taste coming through and ruining anything. What is weird to me, is the smoothness. I can't believe I'm saying this after all these reviews, but it needs some bloody quinoa in there, something to give it grit, chia seeds, anything.

Does it work as a condiment or a dip? Not really. I dipped my banana in (ooh er missus), but the sauce just slides off, that's not a custard, custard needs to adhere, to be able to smother the accompanied food item and decimate any other taste that may be present. The persimmon faired even worse, I don't know why I even bothered trying to dip. 

Frankly, this custard is a disappointment, Mr Wattie. I've seen better served up as airline food.

3/10

Only Organics: More Quinoa

This isn't a food review. This is a quick Ost because I found these in the in-laws' cupboard the other day.

I have not tried these foods. This is because I do not need to try these foods. They will taste, respectively, like banana and blueberry purée and kumara and banana purée. The banana will overpower, but there will be a slight aftertaste of berries on the first, and a hint of tannin-like kumara on the second. Yes, the quinoa may be present on concentrations of up to 2%: BUT IT IS PURÉED TO A SMOOTH PASTE. It will not be detectable.

Only Organic baby food, I have tweeted you before on this topic. Please stop. I know if you put quinoa in your baby food you are enabled to write Supergrain Quinoa! in fancy writing on the top of your packet. But here's the thing: it makes no difference whatsoever. The amount of quinoa in one of these sachets is probably similar to that which I would inhale passively whilst walking down Cuba Street at 10am on a Sunday morning.

I've done a little research into the health benefits of quinoa, and actually found it a little mor fifficult than I expected, by which I mean the first four google hits were pretty useless and then I got bored. One site, authoritynutrition.com sounded as though it would be fairly authoritive on nutritional matters. But then the first of their 11 proven health benefits of quinoa (number one is my favourite) boiled down to the following:

Which essentially in my opinion is the title  reworded. Granted, the article goes on to list the nutritional breakdown of quinoa, spell fibre incorrectly, and point out its benefits to weight loss, heart disease, type two diabetes and gluten intolerance, but none of these are particularly of concern to a four to six month old. Sure, quinoa, may be a great source of protein, but if your serving size is 1.4% of 120g, you're still getting  sweet FA protein. Then we come to this gem at number six:

Now, I'm not going to try and deny that quinoa has a low glycaemic index. But you know what has a very low glycaemic index? Kumara. That shit you've drowned your healthy, slow-sugar-releasing, all glorious super grain in. Damn. Anyway, on to proven reason number 8 that quinoa is good for you:

MAY have some major benefits for metabolic health. That doesn't sound so proven to me. Surely they can't pad out these reasons any more?

Fries are also easy to incorporate into your diet. I guess that's a proven health benefit of fries, then.

Oh, and on a side note, authority nutrition dot com, time to get better at clickbait: if you're going to have a list of eleven things, telling people that number one is your favourite then having it as such a let down means they're not going to read any further. Here's an example to help you out with the format!

So, after this brief foray into the world of health food blogs other than my own, I'm forced to conclude that Only Organic's slow morph into Only Quinoa can only be a cynical attempt to cash in on a current health fad. In which case, I fear they are already too late. According to the BBC Good Food blog, the UN declared the International Year of Quinoa to be 2013.

Heinz Organic Summer fruits and yoghurt with oats and quinoa

Remember that time I reviewed that Only Organic food with quinoa in it, and it got over two times as many page views than anything else I've written? Surely it was a one off and no other company would be stupid enough to put the almighty supergrain in a baby food?

WT actual F Heinz? You used to be a sensible company, dealing in ketchup and brown sauces, possibly a few baked beans or cans of spaghetti. Your baby foods have been mostly sensible combinations, albeit with the odd guava thrown in for no obvious reason. So why quinoa? Emily is, admittedly, two months older than last time she tried this fad, so I concede maybe it is slightly more likely she will finish her breakfast, stand up, and with perfect enunciation say to me 'Thankyou for breakfast Father. Especially, I am grateful for your foresight in giving me copious amounts of quinoa, which has given me the energy I need for my morning crossfit session. I'm off to the gym to flip some large tricycle tyres now. Ciao.'

Really. Quinoa in baby food. Next thing they'll have toddler sized Lululemon yoga pants.

Contains: Fruit (banana (31%), mango (16%), apples (5%)), Apple juice, Cooked oats (contains traces of wheat) (7%), Water, Greek style yoghurt (Cultured milk) (6%), Cornflour, Quinoa (1.7%), Cream, Vitamin C.

Two things stand out to me here. First, the very small elephant in the room is the quinoa, and to be fair, there's a whole 0.1% more in this food than in the Only Organic's quinoa based food, so I suppose there is hope of extra grainy flavour. Possibly with the promise of soft lumps within, there could even be some texture... Can you make quinoa into a soft lump?

Secondly, summer fruits: there are only three fruits listed in the ingredients for this food. You want summer fruits? You need peaches, strawberries, nectarines. Apple is predominantly harvested in the autumn months. Bananas, not grown in New Zealand, but are available plentifully year round at a reasonable price. Frankly, in my opinion really only mango can be classified as a truly summer fruit.

Emily's reaction: Generally, was quite favourable initially. However, soon food fatigue set in after half a jar. Emily is entering the stage where she wants to feed herself, and she wasn't about to be left wielding a spoon full of imitation cold sick.

First impressions: Have I used a cold sick analogy yet? In the last sentence, and several times previously in this blog? I'm using it again. It's yellow, and full of little lumps. It looks like cold sick. But to be fair, it's cold sick that smells predominantly like banana, like someone ate a banana, and then thought better of it.

Taste test: Actually against all odds, this goes down a treat. The taste is strongly of banana, with a hint of mango, but very little of the least summery of the fruity trio, the apply. Relatively thick on the tongue, little soft nuggets of rolled oats add an interest as it slides back. And YES! Sure enough, about once every spoonful, your tongue will find a single grain of quinoa! Sure, it's not actually enough to add any flavour, but it's there. That said, a similar texture could be achieved in this food by adding half a teaspoon of poppy seeds, or sand.

Overall: 7/10, not a bad taste or texture. Still can't get over the pointlessness of the quinoa though.

Enjoy: Down at the Hokowhitu Mums' organic paleo vegan coffee group, or wherever such people meet.

Watties for Baby: Banana, mango, courgette, and pea

After last night's quinoa experiment, I think today was always going to be a bit of a let down. So I got home from work, and cracked into a sachet of Watties banana, mango, courgette and pea purée. First things first: this is stage two stuff, things are getting more serious. I wasn't sure what this levelling up of the food would really mean, other than coming in the red pack instead of the blue, possibly a thicker blend? More complex ingredients? Who knows.

Secondly, this was settled on for the ingredients... Four staples I am well familiar with, but never that I would imagine would cohabitate inside a little red pouch. A combination so out there, it's like different having peas in a pod, as well as bananas, mangos, and courgettes. This is the Celebrity Big Brother of baby foods.

So with many questions, chief amongst them WTF?, I dived in.

Ingredients: Banana (42%), Mango (20%), Courgette (14%), Peas (14%), Spinach, Cornflour, Vitamin C

Yesterday I noted Only Organic crammed as many super foods as possible into the name of their product, no matter how insignificant they are to the end product. Well. Of note here, spinach, considered by some to be the ORIGINAL super food, is not even named! Watties are obviously not aiming for the Remuera market with this one.

First impression: It's green. Quite a dark green. And with slightly darker green flecks. Trying to come up with a comparison, unfortunately nothing fits favourably, but the closest I can think of is pond algae. Bottoms up!

Emily's reaction: As is becoming a predictable pattern, now, she loved it. Obviously, being six months of age, she hasn't seen much pond algae in her time, so this didn't really affect her appetite. Half a packet was gone in superquick time, before the long day took effect and she lost interest.

Bouquet: Given the composition, it is unsurprising that banana and mango heavily influenced the nose. I tried hard to catch an influence of courgette or pea, hardly the most fragrant of vegetables at the best of times, but alas to no avail. Given the appearance of algal sludge , I found the strong banana scent slightly disturbing.

Taste test: The texture is certainly thicker than the previous Watties offerings I had tried, but not disimilar to that of the Only Organic purée. Again a fine coarseness announced itself on the tongue, and surprisingly, the small dark green specks were appreciable in the mouth. I managed to isolate  a few of these on the tongue, but alas was unable to elucidate whether they were the peas, the courgettes, or the unannounced spinach.

Taste-wise, this shit is bananas. B. A. N. A. N. A. S. Not even a brief aftertaste of mango at the back of the palate can distract from the terrific flavour of the star of this show. The vegetables may as well have not turned up, such is their degustatory anonymity. The cornflour does, however, lend itself to a pleasant texture in the mouth, and as such is a valuable supporting act.


Overall: 8/10. Like the odd couple comedy film Twins, this may seem like a strange combination, but ends up working well.

Enjoy: As a novel base to a banana milkshake which would have a good chance of bringing all the boys to the yard.