Tasty Tuesdays: 10 Foodie Products You Need to Buy This WeekBy Alicia Grimshaw
Shopping basket looking a bit sad? We’re here to help. We’ve rounded up 10 foodie products you need to buy this week. Get slinging them into your trolley, pronto:
1. For a Healthy Snack: The Living Food Kitchen
What: The Living Food Kitchen create delicious, plant-based food which is 100% natural and, where possible, organic. They never use animal products and they’re committed to producing foods that are free of lactose, gluten and soya. They produce a range of items including raw desserts, smoothies, buckwheat granola and their bestselling flapjacks.
The Lowdown: There’s three flavours in the flapjack range – cacao and date, coconut, and inca berry and pumpkin seed. All flapjack are made with gluten-free oats and virgin coconut oil. They’re all dairy, gluten and refined sugar-free. Yes please.
Stockists: Buy online
2. For Quirky Crisps: Burts Lentil Waves
What: Thick cut British crisps done just right: hand-cooked in Devon with real taste, proper crunch, and made by real people. That’s Burts Chips in a bag. They source the best potatoes, slice and cook them in small batches, and season them with the best natural flavours around, often sourced from local partners.
The Lowdown: Lentil Waves come in three tempting flavours – sour cream and chive, Thai sweet chilli and lightly salted, with variety to suit every taste bud. Big on flavour, these snacks are packed full of crunch and offer an alternative to your standard crisp.
Stockist: Waitrose
3. For Marshmallows: Cookies & Fluff
What: Cookies & Fluff are a Staffordshire based start-up who make gourmet marshmallows and deliver them to your door. They fuse together well-loved biscuits and cookies into their light and fluffy marshmallows for the ultimate afternoon treat.
The Lowdown: Jammie Dodger marshmallows, Creme Egg marshmallows and Oreo marshmallows are all sold on their website. Their Cadbury Crunchie marshmallows are not to be missed, and their matchmaker marshmallows are pretty dreamy.
Stockist: Buy online
4. For Japanese Cooking: Clearspring
What: Clearspring are experts in premium quality Japanese and European foods skillfully prepared by artisan and professional producers. All of their products are suitable for vegans, vegatarians and are gluten, dairy and defined sugar-free, and contain no artificial additives, MSG, colourings or preservatives.
The Lowdown: Clearspring’s popular jarred brown rice miso 300g is now available in a 150g smaller trial size for consumers who do not yet know about the magic of miso. Only whole soya beans are used to produce this authentic miso which is produced to a very old family recipe and using specialised tools which have been passed down the generations. This organic brown rice miso has similar properties to the Barley Miso but with a slightly sweeter taste.
Stockist: Health Food Wholesales, Independent retailers and online
5. For Vegan Chocolate: Chocolate and Love
What: Chocolate and Love is a family owned company which was created by husband and wife chocolate connoisseurs, Richard and Birgitte. Additionally to the high antioxidant levels naturally found in cocoa, each bar has the added health benefit of being gluten-free, GM-free and completely natural with no additives and all but two of Chocolate and Love’s products are dairy free, making them ideal for vegans.
The Lowdown: The range consists of seven different flavours including the popular sea salt and caramel and two pure chocolate bars. All of their cacao beans are sourced from San Martin in the central Amazonian area and the Apurimac Valley in Peru, the Yamasa area in The Dominican Republic and the Talamanca mountain range in Panama.
Stockist: Buy online
6. For Sugar-Free Iced Tea: Daymer Bay Drinks Co
What: Daymer Bay Drinks Co was founded in Cornwall in 2010 by Anthony Jenks. Having travelled through South America and drank iced tea wherever he visited, Anthony believed a healthier, free-from refined sugar iced tea would be popular back home.
The Lowdown: Daymer Bay Drinks Co has unveiled a distinctive new brand identity for their range of naturally flavoured drinks. As well as redesigning three original iced tea flavours, the rebrand has also introduced three new juice, water and botanical blends. They are all free from refined sugar, and instead naturally sweetened with stevia.
Stockist: Wholefoods, Waitrose and The West Cornwall Pasty Co
7. For New Chocolate Flavours: Original Beans
What: Since 2008, Original Beans has combined its dual passion for chocolate making and conservation, raising the bar in both areas. The team travel into the most remote rainforests in the world in pursuit of the rarest cacao beans – to bring foodies, environmentally conscious consumers and leading chefs pure, additive-free chocolate.
The Lowdown: Now, the Original Beans chocolate family has increased with 4 new bars, including The Grand Cru Blend No. 1 – the first Original Beans Blend, containing the rarest cacaos on earth, from rainforest hotspots in South America and Africa. Tuck into Papua Kerafat, Femmes De Virunga, and the first white chocolate for Original Beans – Edel Weiss.
Stockist: Fortnum & Mason
8. For a Delicious Snack: Nairn’s
What: At Nairn’s they’re proud of their oaty heritage, they’ve been baking oatcakes since 1896. They only use wholegrain oats grown in the nearby Scottish Borders (with the exception of gluten-free), where the climate is perfect for slowly ripening the grains. Today, they now have a versatile range of oatcakes, oat biscuits, oaty bakes and gluten free products which do not contain any artificial colourings, flavours or preservatives.
The Lowdown: Full of delicious flax, chia and sunflower seeds these crunchy oatcakes taste great on their own or with your favourite topping. The seeds are a great natural source of protein, are high in fibre and rich in omegas 3 and 6 making these oatcakes the perfect snack to help keep you going.
Stockist: Supermarkets nationswide
9. For a Paleo Bar: The Primal Pantry
What: Founded by Nutritionist Suzie Walker The Primal Pantry is the UK’s 1st Paleo Bar. Armed with nothing more than her kitchen blender, some dried fruit, coconut and nuts Suzie embarked upon a mission to create the perfect Paleo bar.
The Lowdown: There’s 5 energy bars in the range, each made with no more than 6 ingredients and 0% junk. Free from GMOs, gluten, grains, dairy, soy and refined sugar. The Primal Pantry bars were designed to provide people living a Primal lifestyle with the opportunity to buy a natural energy snack that they could carry around on-the-go and consume knowing that it’s ingredients are 100% natural.
Stockist: Wholefoods and Planet Organic
10. For Organic Chocolate: Go*Do Chocolate
What: GO*DO chocolate bars are made by a third-generation Italian family in their state-of-the-art factory near the Como Lake. They have total control ‘from bean to bar’ – farming the cocoa, harvesting the beans, making the chocolate and forming the bars.
The Lowdown: There’s six flavours in the chocolate range – Dark Chocolate, White, Milk, Sicilian Almonds, Hazelnut and Expresso Coffee. All of their chocolate is certified organic and gluten-free. Nom nom.
Stockist: Planet Organic and Whole Foods