Review: Kellogg's Krave Cereal

I am not someone who likes most "breakfast" foods, like eggs, bacon, sausage, etc. So cereals, hot or cold, make up a lot of my breakfast choices. I am always looking for something new, so I was super excited to try Kellogg's Krave.

The first thing I noticed was the nutritional information. A 3/4 cup serving is only 120 calories, 3.5 grams of fat, 3 grams of fiber, and 2 grams protein. Not awful nutritionally, certainly better than a lot of cereals out there.

When I opened the box, it was initially just to look at the cereal, but Hubby and I tried a piece dry. It has a nice crunch, and tasty flavor. It was not overly chocolatey, just a mere hint of chocolate in the middle, which I actually really liked. I tried some with soy milk as a late night snack. With my milk, it was only 155 calories. And I enjoyed every single one. It stayed crunchy in the milk, and it had a nice flavor. I especially liked that the cereal was not overly sweet, just sweet enough with a hint of chocolate.

I really liked the cereal, and it is a nice way to break of the routine of oatmeal and traditional healthy cereals. In terms of where it falls on the health-taste balance, Krave falls somewhere between Kashi and Cocopuffs. I would, and in fact already have, recommend this to someone looking for a good cereal to break up the breakfast routine.

I received the product for review as part of the Amazon Vine program.

All You Need Is Love

I am dreadfully late with my Valentine's day post (I blame all of the people who encouraged me to watch Downton Abbey, which I finally finished).  But my lateness does not matter, since the whole idea behind Valentine's Day is one I live out daily- love.

I cannot, for the life of me, understand people who are fundamentally against Valentine's Day.  To me, this is a day to show love.  Sure, greeting card and flower companies try to guilt you into believing it is about spending big bucks, but at the very heart of the matter, it is a day to celebrate love in all forms.  It is not just a day for romance; I say it again, this day is about love.  Loving your spouse or partner, your parents or children, your friends, God, and all the wonderful people who share this earth.

Hubby and I make a point to not spend a lot on Valentine's Day each year.  Every year I do something special.  Our first year I decorated our house including hearts stating all the various things I loved about him.

The second year I lined Hershey kisses from the door up the stairs to our room, where I sat with a home made valentine telling him I "kissed" the very ground on which he walks.  This year, I made him a box of candy valentines, with the card using the name of the candy to say something sweet or silly.  Each year, my surprise has cost less than 20 dollars.

 And I always make a special Valentine's Day dinner.

For the last two years, I have also used Valentine's Day to show love, compassion, and respect to people in my community by performing random acts of kindness.

To me, this is what Valentine's Day is about.  Why would I not cherish a day, any day, every day, every chance, to tell the people in my life how much I love them?

Birchbox

I am a girly girl.  I was not always, particularly as a kid, but as an adult, I love girly things, things that are pretty and smell good, awesome products for hair and skin, things that make you look and feel better.  Unfortunately, because I am so busy reading books most of the time, I never have time to read magazines.  This means I do not get to learn about new and innovative beauty products unless I hear about them from a friend.  I decided I needed to change this.

One of the latest trends are sample subscription services.  You pay a monthly or annual fee, usually pretty reasonable, and you get sent monthly samples of products.  I have seen these subscription services for both beauty and food products, and I am sure other types of products have them as well.  I decided I wanted to try one out, to see if it was worthwhile.

After looking around, I decided to try the Birchbox.  First thing first, the fee is $10 a month, and no shipping charges.  Your box contains about 5 product samples.  And these are not just any old drugstore beauty products, these are luxurious, premium beauty products.  Also, they do not just ship you these samples and say, off you go.  Their website is packed with information about all the samples, including videos and tutorials.  You can shop for the products from the samples right on their website as well; the shopping sections includes thorough information about each product.

Yesterday, I got my first Birchbox.  I was really excited!  When I saw the pink shipping box on my doorstep, I may have squealed a little.  I opened the shipping package, and saw the box inside.  As I opened it, I felt like I was getting a present, it was so nicely packaged.  And the samples, oh my!   Already, I am in love!  My box contained products worth well over my subscription fee.  And because I filled out a beauty profile on the website, my box contained products specifically for me.  Some products are sent to all subscribers, and some products are customized.

I have decided to review a couple of the products I get each month, so keep an eye out.  In the mean time, consider this a glowing review of the Birchbox program.  If you love beauty, and love to try to new products, I highly recommend you join Birchbox.  It is well worth the monthly fee.  

Review: Popchips Sweet Potato Chips

I am always looking for healthy, low calorie snacks, so when I heard about Popchips, I was intrigued.  They are crunchy chips that are not fried, and not baked, but created using heat and pressure to make them pop into being.  Since I love sweet potato chips in general, I thought I would give these a try.

The first thing I noticed was the color.  They looked a bit lighter in color to other sweet potato chips I have tried, and I think this is due to them not being fried.  They really looked the same color as fresh, cooked sweet potatoes.  I did not notice any particular smell, other than good old sweet potatoes.  So far so good.


In terms of taste, I thought they tasted great.  The chips were nice and crispy, with only a hint of salt, so you really got to enjoy the naturally sweet flavor.  I can really see that these will help satisfy cravings for something crunchy, something salty, something sweet, and especially something that is all three.

The texture is definitely not that of a typical potato chip.  They are lighter, crisper, and airy, not as dense as a rice cake, but not as greasy as a typical chip.  All in all, I was really pleased with them.  Someone looking for a healthy replacement, or enjoys other veggie chip type snacks would really like these, I think.  For a die hard chip lover, these would might not satisfy you upon first taste, but give them a couple of chances; personally I loved them.

With the snack size bag being 100 calories, I am pretty sold on these as a healthy snack alternative.  This would be a great addition to a sandwich for lunch, or an in-between meal snack.  I am happy to add Popchips to my snack rotation.

That time that I almost witnessed a crime

Today, I went to work, like I always do, and spent the first minutes firing up the computer, checking email, and going through the beginning parts of my morning routine.  Suddenly, we heard all these sirens, and before I knew it, the main street in my town was full of police cars, ambulances, and uniformed officers running, yes, running, into a local storefront.  Something bad was going down.

Over the next three hours we watched cop cars circle the blocks, and lights flashing.  Eventually some of the emergency vehicles left, and details trickled in.  A drug store in town had been robbed at gunpoint.  Apparently, the female suspect was apprehended; she had been attempting to steal opiates.  This happened on the next block up from my office, in plain sight.  Scary stuff, and everyone was a little shook up.

Incredibly, this was not the first time I almost witnessed a crime.  Well before Hubby and I were married, before we were even dating, I lived in a suburb of Pittsburgh, part of the South Hills area.  It was a nice, clean area, little crime, and very few problems.  I lived near a large, lovely 24 hour market, so I would just pop in whenever I took the notion.  One Friday night, my timing was inexplicably bad.

I headed to the market, walked through the doors, and took little notice of what was going on around me.  I gathered some produce and frozen foods, and it was only when I went to the register that I learned I had walked into the store in the middle of a robbery.  The suspects robbed the cigarette counter, and made off with several thousands of dollars worth of cigarettes.  I had breezed in during the event, none the wiser.  By the time I was at the register, the robbers were long gone, and police were taking statements.  Since I had not seen anything, I was free to go.

(In trying to find the news story of that incident to no avail, I see that since I moved away from that area, about 4 more robberies have happened a block from where I lived.  Guess it is not so quiet after all.)

Clearly, I have someone looking out for me.

Review: McAfee Antivirus Plus 2012

In this day and age, it pays to have your computer protected by antivirus software.  So, when I was given an opportunity to review McAfee 2012, I jumped on it.  Between the two of us, we have 5 computers we use on a regular basis, plus a couple more in storage, so I really liked that this software was licensed for 3 computers.

We loaded it on my husband's desktop first, since he recently ran into issues with a virus.  The installation was pretty simple.  You do need to make sure any other antivirus program is removed, so that this one will properly load.  He says this is typical, but for people who have not encountered this, they may be surprised, so be prepared.  Installation was a snap, the only issue was an erroneous dialog box that claimed the licensed expired in 10 months, not 12.  However, when Hubby looked at the actual program info on the computer, the correct expiration date was shown.

The next day, we installed it on one of my laptops.  Again, I had to remove my previous program.  Otherwise, installation was painless.  I did not get the erroneous dialog box (I actually never got one at all) and the program info on my computer shows the correct expiration date. 

So far, so good, on both of our computers.  The scans seem non-intrusive, and I have not noticed a slow down in the performance of my computer.  The only mildly annoying this is that the program checks the validity of all the links people post on Facebook, and displays green checkmarks next to them in my Facebook feed to alert me that the links are safe.  And really, that is probably a very good thing, given the number of garbage/virus infested links that get posted with titles like "see what happened when this dad walks in on his daughter, OMG so embarrassing!!!!!".  While I know not to click those, clearly other people do not, because I see them all over people's pages.  This software seems like it would help someone not so tech savvy to determine what is or is not safe.

Is this the best antivirus software out there?  Probably not.  This is not actually the full McAfee suite, so it gives very limited protection.  But for me, it seems to be adequate.

Cartoons by Hubby: Occupy Lunch

The Backstory: As many people in my part of the world do, we had pork and saurkraut for New Years.  We had leftovers, and I did not want them, so hubby has happily been eating them.  I suggested that he take the rest as his lunch today.

He informed me that the pork to saurkraut ratio was not optimal, and there was hardly any pork left.  He then went on about the elitist pork and informed me that the saurkraut was the 99%.  So here you have it, the 99% kraut protesting.  Occupy Lunch.