Monthly Archives: April 2013

Goldfish French Toast Grahams, Reviewed

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The people have spoken!  The winner of the Goldfish Grahams taste test poll is…. French Toast!

First off, these grahams come in a plastic sack instead of paper, and it’s nearly impossible to open without ripping it, even if you’re careful.  It seriously took me 90 seconds to fully open it, and I still tore it.  The glue used to seal this bag could have been used to seal the BP oil rig leak.

Here’s a pic of a graham next to a regular fish:

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They’re about the same size, but they’re solid and covered in “taste crystals” (sugar), so they’re messier than regular fish.  My first reaction after eating some was that they tasted just like Teddy Grahams.  I could only taste cinnamon at first, but after a few seconds, the french toast taste kicked in.  Not too shabby!  After a few more of these lil guys, I realized that I could keep eating more, but I see an end in sight; I could see myself getting sick of them after a while.  They’re way more rich than standard Goldfish, and maybe it’s because I prefer salty to sweet, but this isn’t a snack that I see myself craving in the future.  Don’t get me wrong though, by the time I typed this sentence, I’d had about 6 handfuls of them… but after a night out, I don’t envision me doing something like this:

So try ’em if you like Teddy Grahams or sweet snacks, but if you’re looking for something similar to Goldfish, get something else.  Or get some real f*ckin’ french toast.

Goldfish SANDWICH BREAD????

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Has anyone seen or heard of this??

goldfish bread

I just stumbled upon this online.  This better not be a cruel joke… I need to know where I can find this, and I need to know now.  Maybe good ol’ Amazon can help me, because THIS needs to happen:

goldfish sandwich

That’s so beautiful I could cry.  I want to blow that photo up, frame it, and hang it above my bed.  I will get to the bottom of this and report back.

Recipe #2: Goldfish Meatballs

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Wow, let me tell you, it took DAYS to count all the votes that came in for the meatballs vs mac n cheese recipe poll.  I may need some interns to help me with the next one.  I have to say though, I was a bit surprised that the meatballs won out by such a large margin.. they got twice as many votes than the mac n’ cheese!  Check out the poll results and see for yourself.

OK, so lets get started.  Here’s what you’ll need:

-A pound a’ meat
-A cup of blended Goldfish crumbs
-One egg
-A nice amount of parmesan cheese
-2 tablespoons of olive oil
-Marinara sauce (I went store-bought again)
-Salt and pepper
-Salt-N-Pepa playing in the background (most crucial)

Behold my 6 total inches of counter space!

Behold my 6 total inches of counter space!

First thing you’ll wanna do is preheat your oven to three-fitty.  Then slather 2 tablespoons of the olive oil on a baking sheet, spread it around, and shove it in the oven (I had a picture of me doing this, but do you really need to see that?). Next, crack an egg in a big bowl and beat it up and dump in the meat (I used ground beef, but you can use turkey or pork or horse or whatever the eff you want), dump in the Goldfish crumbs, and a nice big dash of parmesan, salt, and pepper.  I didn’t use anything too fancy to season this because I didn’t want the Goldfish to be overpowered.  Mush it all together for a while.  Here’s what that hot mess will look like as you’re mixing it:

The mix

Push it real good

Once it’s nicely mixed up, take out the heated pan and make golf ball-sized balls of the meat mush and put them on the pan, at least an inch apart.  And wash your hands once in a while, will ya?

Look at those beauties

Look at those beauties

Put ’em in the oven and bake for like 13 minutes, and then take ’em out and flip ’em and put ’em back in for another 5 or so.  Be sure that Salt-N-Pepa is still playing.  Here’s a thrilling picture of me flipping them over:

Flippers

OK it’s been a few minutes.. do they look done?  Good, now take out the pan and cut one of the balls in half and make sure its cooked all the way through so you don’t kill yourself from eating frikkin’ undercooked Goldfish meatballs.  That would be a sad/amazing obituary.

These look done, right?

These look done, right?

You can see the Goldfish bits in there!  Hohooo!  Now I’m getting excited.  Before I slathered the marinara sauce (oh yeah, you should’ve been heating your sauce, my bad) and parmesan cheese onto the meatballs, I wanted to taste one as-is to see if the Goldfish taste came through. It kiiiinda did.  Maybe if you put more Goldfish crumbs in there you could taste it more, but these only had a very slight taste of it.  There’s a fix though!  In addition to pouring on the heated sauce and a dash of parmesan, sprinkle some of the leftover Goldfish crumbs on top.  Once you do, it’s a thing of beauty:

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Now THAT’s a Goldfishy meatball!  Everything actually goes pretty well together.  Maybe throw a few whole Goldfish on there for presentation too.  Voila!  There’s your Goldfish meatballs.  Let me know what you think!  Maybe make some pasta too so you’re not just eating Goldfish and beef for dinner (not that there’s anything wrong with that!).

Goldfish: Forever underrated

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A few months back, my girlfriend threw a party at her apartment and put together a pretty impressive snack spread.  All the bases were covered – hors d’oeuvres, veggies, chips, dips, baked goods…. but there was also a somewhat inconspicuous bowl of Goldfish.   I was shooting the breeze with some chums by the snack station and I noticed that despite the plethora of deliciousness available to the crowd, the Goldfish were being depleted at a swift rate.  Granted, I was generously helping myself to the fish, but I wasn’t the only one.  The other snacks were eaten too, but I was surprised that despite all of the competition on the table, the Goldfish were one of the most popular snacks.  I also heard a party-goer say “Damn… Goldfish were awesome when I was 6 and they’re still awesome today”.  Amen.

The fact that people forget how good Goldfish are is puzzling since you can buy them almost anywhere and they’ve been around forever.  But why are they so underrated?  Why are they the forgotten snack?  Why don’t you see them at Super Bowl parties?  I think a big reason for this is because Pepperidge Farm has their own aisle in the supermarkets and bodegas, and it’s usually not close to the chip section.  While it’s pretty cool to have your own aisle in a store, I think it’s doing them an injustice.  I get that PF sells mostly cookies and baked goods and this is why their section is closer to the cookie aisle than the chip aisle, but if the Goldfish were separated and sold in the chip aisle, I guarantee that you would see them at more parties.  Especially if they changed the packaging so that it resembles a small bag of chips instead of the iconic PF bag they come in now.  Messing with brand recognition is usually a risky move, but I think it could help in this case.  They can still sell Goldfish in the current bags that they have now, but if they also had a potato chip-esque bag with a less kid-friendly design (putting a beard and reading glasses on Finn the fish would give him a distinguished, sophisticated look) and placed it in the chip aisle, people would be more likely to snatch ’em up.

Unfortunately, I don’t see this happening any time soon since PF has been doing what they do for like 1000 years, but I for one would like to see more Goldfish at parties and… holy crap I just thought of something… imagine you could get a giant bucket of Goldfish at a movie theater???  Sweet Christ,  I would go to a movie every other day.  It would probably cost like $200 though.  So worth it.

And the winner of the first taste test poll is……

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…Goldfish Baby Cheddar!

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It was close, but after counting the MILLIONS of votes that flooded in, Goldfish Baby Cheddar edged out Goldfish Grahams Vanilla Cupcake by a 16% margin (7 votes to 5).  Now, on to the review:

First off, these guys are small.  Below is a baby Goldfish next to a full-sized:

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But wait!  These fish aren’t smiling!  I was a little disappointed by this because I like when my food is happy.  After reaching for another fish though, I realized I was wrong:

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So half are smiling and half are not??  What is the meaning of this??!  Why did they do this I wonder… the faceless fish seem so anonymous and emotionally empty.  Perhaps they taste different?  Lets find out.

My first reaction after eating some were that the faceless fish were more puffy and hollow, and the smiling fish were thinner and more dense.  I wouldn’t say that the smiling fish are tough or too crunchy, but eating the faceless fish feel more like you’re eating the traditional-sized Goldfish.  The cheddar taste is present, and they managed to balance the saltiness and cheesiness to replicate the taste of the full-sized cheddar fish.  Eating the smiling and non-smiling together also produced a beautiful medley of crunchosity.  Also, since these fish are so small, you can really get a nice handful:

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Theres gotta be like 20 fish in there.  Oh, and don’t think this means that you’ll be able to manage your portions and eat less because they’re smaller.  They are as delicious as the regular cheddar Goldfish, so any self control or willpower is out the window.  You are at the mercy of these fish, and you will finish eating them when there are no more fish to eat, so prepare accordingly.  However, if I had the choice between the baby cheddar and the full-sized cheddar, I would go full-sized.  They basically taste the same, but if you had the choice between eating Cookie Crisp-sized chocolate chip cookies and Entenmann’s-sized cookies, you’d go Entenmann’s, right?  Me too.  BTW, who knew Entenmann’s was spelled like that??  I first typed it out as “Entiman’s” which doesnt look right at all, but sounds more right than Entenmann’s.  Reminds me of when I was young growing up in Westchester and first realized that New Rochelle was not spelled “Nurrashell”.

Oh, and you thought the regular-sized Goldfish tend to end up on the floor and in the couch cushions?  These lil buggers end up everywhere.

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Your dog will thank you though.