Sooper easy
Boiling up SooFoo's blend of nine ingredients (brown rice, grains and lentils) straight from the bag is the beauty of this mix.
Sure, you could put together your own mish-mash of wholesome ingredients, but you don't always have ingredients such as green lentils, rye berries and buckwheat at the ready. Convenience is king, and it's nice when the end result is a healthy base ready for your own blend of spices and other add-ins.
It's available at select supermarkets nationwide; go to soo-foo.com for locations.
How's tricks?
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These days, new versions of existing grocery products typically cost more -- because the amount in the package is slightly smaller. That's the deal with Yoplait's new Splitz -- two-layered little tubs of low-fat yogurt. The four-pack of newly shrunk 3.25-ounce tublets is $2.49.
The easiest comparison is with Yoplait's Trix yogurt, which has similar aimed-at-kids flavors but comes in six-packs of 4-ounce tubs, selling for $2.99. Tub-for-tub (ignoring the fact that the Splitz tub is smaller), a Trix tub costs 50 cents, a Splitz tub costs 62 cents -- 25 percent more. Now, throw in the size of each serving: A tub of Trix contains 4 ounces, so it's 12.5 cents an ounce, and a tub of Splitz contains 3.25 ounces, so it's 19 cents an ounce -- 52 percent more per ounce.
Crunch up!
Same story with Nabisco's new Wheat Thins Crunch Stix. The 8-ounce box of Crunch Stix is the same price as the 10-ounce box of regular Wheat Thins crackers, so the Crunch Stix cost 25 percent more per ounce.
Fiber two-thirds
Likewise, with the new Fiber One 90-calorie chewy bars. There already are six flavors of Fiber One chewy bars, but they contain 130 to 150 calories each. But they do each offer 35 percent of the daily value of fiber, which presumably is the reason to buy a Fiber One bar; the 90-calorie bars each contain just 20 percent.
And the 90-calorie bars are smaller: The box of five totals 4.1 ounces; the box of five regular Fiber One bars is 7 ounces. They sell for the same price, so the new ones cost 71 percent more per ounce.
One-stop seasoning
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Another example of a shortcut gone right, Paula Deen's grinders are prefilled with a mix of spices for designated treatments. Grilling a slab of meat? Try a few twists of the steak seasoning grinder, which trumps some mixed seasoning rubs because of the simple fact that it's freshly ground. As far as we know, you'll still have to add the slab of butter yourself.
The grinders are available in grocery stores nationwide.
