We’ve blogged in the past about the delicious blackberry soda from Hotlips Pizza in Portland, Oregon. It’s got real pulp in it, and you feel like you’re actually drinking something made from fruit, not chemicals. Now, that drink and a bevvy of other Hotlips flavors, including apple, pear, raspberry, and boysenberry, are spreading into more locations. Besides Oregon, you can now buy the sodas online for the first time, including in a mixed variety pack. We’re hoping this is a sign that Hotlips will go nationwide soon, so we can pick it up at gas stations and janky corner stores everywhere. That’d sure be nice.
New Finds 
Our favorite products, gadgets, restaurants, bars, wine, beer, and food websites and blogs.
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
New Finds: Wisconsin Cheese Guide
Yes, cheese from Wisconsin really is that good. So I was excited to read the new book The Master Cheesemakers of Wisconsin by CHOW.com’s own Supertaster columnist, Jim Norton, and his wife, photographer Becca Dilley.
The layout is really fun if you have an interest in the personalities behind the products: Each gorgeous picture of a particular cheese, like, say, the Cinnamon-rubbed butter jack from Bass Lake Cheese Factor, is paired with a mini-profile of the cheesemaker. In the case of the butter Jack, for instance, we learn that Bass Lake’s Scott Erickson looks really artsy, and once made gelatinous lutefisk (a Norwegian holiday dish of lye-cured codfish) for a living. It’s interesting to know just who goes into the old-fashioned business of making small-batch cheeses and how each cheesemaker got there, because who hasn’t fantasized about joining them?
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
New Finds: Pomegranate Tootsie Pops
The ultimate sign that pomegranate has reached critical mass: There is now a pomegranate Tootsie Pop. Introduced in 2008, pomegranate is one of a bunch of new flavors launched in recent years: watermelon, blue raspberry (yuck), and banana (double yuck). But the pomegranate flavor is wonderful, reminiscent of classic cherry but more fruity and puckery. It actually tastes like pomegranate, which is more than I can say for the center, which tastes less like chocolate than choco-scented crayon.
Tootsie would love for consumers to weigh in on the new flavors and suggest others. Peppermint, maybe? Oh, and by the way, according to the Tootsie Roll FAQ, the company has received tens of thousands of letters from children claiming to know how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop. Estimates generally run in the 600–800 licks range, but your own personal best “depends on a variety of factors such as the size of your mouth, the amount of saliva, etc.”
Monday, November 2nd, 2009
New Finds: Maple Bitters from Vermont
Vermont-based Urban Moonshine makes maple bitters using organic botanicals. Imbibe has a nice cocktail idea on its blog for using them, courtesy of John Gertsen of Drink in Boston. We think they’d be a delicious addition to our Log Cabin cocktail recipe: apple brandy, maple liqueur, sparkling apple cider, and lemon juice.
If you want to try your hand at making your own bitters, we also have easy recipes for grapefruit, saffron-cardamom, and cherry-vanilla, among others.
Urban Moonshine Maple Bitters, $10.99
Thursday, October 29th, 2009
New Finds: The Grand Central Baking Book
The new cookbook from the minichain of Grand Central bakeries scattered throughout Portland and Seattle is full of simple, classic recipes: clafouti; rustic fruit tarts organized by season; “hand pies” filled with spicy potatoes or steak and onion; homemade graham cracker sandwich cookies filled with vanilla cream … the list goes on. It’s not a book of fancy trendy things, just stuff that is timelessly appealing, presented in a way that feels accessible and nonintimidating. It would be a nice gift for someone just getting interested in baking.
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009
New Finds: Irresistible Peppermint Patties
Recchiuti Confections recently sent over some samples of its holiday chocolate lineup to the CHOW office, and though the truffles were good, printing some Christmas-related crap on top of the same old dark-chocolate ganache doesn’t really seem all that new or exciting. What was new, however, was the appearance of peppermint thins. They’re bite-sized, extremely minty, and coated with dark, intense chocolate. Now Recchiuti just needs to start making them the same size as those big York Peppermint Patties.
Recchiuti Peppermint Thins, $18 for a box of 24
Friday, October 16th, 2009
New Find: Never-Stick Brownie Pan
No more broken brownies or stuck-to-the-bottom brownies. This is like a springform pan for brownies or bar cookies, even Rice Krispies Treats. You simply cook the batter in a grid shape, then the bottom lifts out so each brownie is individually formed and needs no scraping out of the pan. Genius!
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
Business Cards You Can Eat
You want a new business card, but you’re just not sure your design is memorable enough. So, instead of ordering yet another humdrum average card, why not try Meat Cards on for size?
Meat Cards are made using real beef jerky, with the information burned on to the meat with a 150-watt carbon dioxide laser.
Wednesday, October 7th, 2009
New Finds: The Local Foods Wheel Hits New York
The San Francisco Bay Area has had one of these great local food wheels for a while, but now there’s a new version for the New York metro area. The rotating cardboard discs tell you what’s in season throughout the year; you can move the dial based on the month to see what you can consume and still be a locavore. The team that makes the wheels—Jessica Prentice, Sarah Klein, and Maggie Gosselin—dealt with the troublesome fact that nothing grows in the dead of winter in New York in a cute way. From mid-January to mid-March, there are pictures of a root cellar. Sweet potatoes, onions, dried beans, apples and such, are in crates below jars of apple cider and pickles, hanging cured meats, and crocks of sauerkraut, and kimchee. (CHOW has instructions on how to make sauerkraut.)
I’m happy to see that the locally-made items listed as “year round” include hard cider and maple candy. Now that’s a sustainable diet I can get behind.
Local Foods Wheel, New York Metro Area, $12.95.
