7-Select Green Tea with Citrus

We're still on a health kick here, and chose a premium "7-Select" Green Tea with Citrus to rinse down our first healthy lunch in ages. The packaging depicts tea leaves, oranges, and a clean look, along with the 7-Select branding that suggests a product for a discerning buyer.

The first taste, however, reveals sweetness on par with Kool-Aid and an artificial taste to match. This green tea must have been steeped in 100% pure corn syrup to be this sweet. Unless there is an unsweetened version, steer clear. 1/11

Healthy Lunch #1

With an eye on health, we took to 7-Eleven to find a healthy alternative to ramen and taquitos - obviously a masochistic move. Emerging victorious in more than one way, we learned a healthy lunch was possible all while staying within a 7-Eleven.

Sub-branded "Fresh to Go," this Turkey, Ham & Cheddar Cheese Combo on Wheat Bread was wholesome. The bread tasted like real bread - with a nutty texture, perhaps whole grain? The cheese was a bit pasty and think. It would have been more agreeable to trade one slice of the cheese for a scrap of lettuce or a slice of tomato.

The 7-Select, Kettle Style Chips bear homage to the original Cape Cod Kettle Chips. This generic 7-Eleven product has flavor that is very present, a healthy, up-market look, and simple packaging. The chips are thick, however, perhaps a bit too thick. Goodbye crispy - here's CRUNCHY. Oral laceration was about on par with Captain Crunch cereal.

All together a decent meal devoid of the pizazz of junk food, but who knew you could love yourself and eat at 7-Eleven? 6/11

7-Eleven Comida Numbero Tres

Seeing a 7-Eleven for the first time in nearly of month is.... well, a ¡7/11! And, having that first 7-Eleven be in Mexico is even more of a surprise. So three 7-Elevens within sight of each other provides endless opportunities. ¡Viva Mexico!

Leave it to 7-Eleven to create the Big Bite Chicken Finger - a miracle of hot dog craftsmanship. It is my belief that 7-Eleven is the only food purveyor with the ability to create chicken that looks the part, tastes the part, but is devoid of any chicken texture. Instead this Chicken Finger Big Bite has a uniform consistency not unlike... a hot dog, and it shouldn't be a surprise.

I topped mine with some fresh onions, and queso de la machina (nacho chesse sauce from the machine) and jalapenos. Condiment and toppings gave themselves to the cause of texture, but could not save the extremely mild flavor and lack of texture of the cylindrical meat.

Rounding out Numbero Tres was Quaker Stila con moras. For our loyal Stuff I Eat From 711 readers, it's a granola bar filled with blackberry jam. This is not a candy bar in a healthy, mid-30's wrapper. Inside the clean white wrapper with clear branding lies wholesome granola bonded together with a modest amount of sticky blackberry jam.

To wash it down, Clamato El Original. A traditional Mexican combination of jugo de tomate con camerón. Translation: Tomato juice with shrimp. I thought twice about drinking it, too, handling the bottle a few times before cracking the seal of the 473ml (16 ounce) glass container. Once opened, the taste and smell of tomato soup blended with a tin of bouillon cubes filled the air. This is a jem in a jar - the number one reason that Budweiser Chelada with Clamato, took top honors.

Rating confections, snacks, and prepared food from 7-Eleven is never any easy task. Just as eating the food is easier than scoring it, a meal does not not always equal the sum of it's parts.

Numero tres: 4/11
Big Bite Chicken Finger : 4/11
Clamato con Camerón: 7/11
Quaker Stila con Moras: 7/11

Snickers Ice Cream Bar

Hello Summer.

After the worst start to summer since the beginning of the universe, we've come to 3 whole days of nothing but sunshine and mildly warm temperatures in the smallest state in the union. To celebrate this natural wonder, we are reviewing the Snickers Ice Cream Bar.

At first glance, one may mistake this for a normal Snickers candy bar. The differences are as follows:
1 - It's located in a freezer.
2 - It's cold to touch (because it's in the freezer).
3 - It says ice cream bar on the side of the packaging.

But that's it. It's about 33% bigger than the normal Snickers, probably actually close to "King Size." Way to keep the branding consistent, Snickers.

Now on to the experience... You know how you can eat an ice cream bar and the thing falls apart half way though, and you have to juggle the rest trying to not get it all over yourself? This didn't happen this time. I can attribute this feat of engineering to two things. The chocolate shell on the outside is really thin, and the ice cream on the inside is really soft. The shell was just strong enough to hold everything together, which didn't take much because it was an easy bite through the ice cream.

The ice cream itself had 3 components. the ice cream, a layer of carmel, and peanuts. The peanuts were the key ingredient in connecting the regular version to it's ice cream counterpart. The ice cream was hard to pinpoint what flavor it was exactly. It was closely related to vanilla, but palish in color, not your typical white. It had a slightly different taste as well... possibly french vanilla. And overall, I was very surprised at how much it tasted like Snickers bar. There was no confusion. This was clearly made by Snickers.

In the end I really couldn't take any points away.
I am content in giving the the Snickers Ice Cream Bar a full...

7/11

Potato Wedges and Steak and Cheese Taquito

They say if you've had one Taquito you've had them all, but how would you know without trying them all? That's exactly what we set out to do in this Taquito and Potato Wedge meal from 7-Eleven at Lombard & Denver, in Portland. That's store #19909 at 1931 N Lombard St.
And though unadvertised, I was offered sauce with my purchase and happily accepted both Tapatío brand hot sauce and Heinz brand ranch dressing.

The Potato Wedges were heavy, hearty pieces of potato with less of a previously frozen texture than I expect. We know they aren't cut on site, but their quality was better than expected.
They were slightly chewy, yet crunchy on the edges. They were warmish but could have been warmer, or if they were I could have assumed a higher level of freshness. There are a faint taste of the 7-Eleven signature spice, as if the Spicy Big Bite Hot Dog and the Potato Wedges had commingled at some point. The spice flavor exuded that 7-Eleven standard heat, omnipresent, and maybe spicy to someone from the mid-west.

The Steak and Cheese Taquito was warm, mildly cheesy, and perhaps undistinguishable from many other tacquitos, other than Jalapeño and Cream Cheese. The Taquito, too, could have benefited from being warmer, and seemed to be filled with a tasty, salty, cheese and meat sauce. To this palate, it wasn't far from delicious.

Both the Tapatío and the Heinz Ranch Dressing made it on to the Taquito and the Potato Wedges. The sauces weren't necessary but allowed for variety between bites - something that was welcome to this blogger. Tapatío is a much more pleasant and gratifying hot than 7-Eleven's signature spice, and while a bit gritty in consistancy, the Tapatío was a good condiment choice. The Heinz Ranch dressing gets the ranch flavor across adequately. It doesn't drive home the ranch experience like other brands due to a lack of creaminess, but makes due with an oily texture that is less appealing.

Pair of sixes.
Potato Wedges 6/11
Steak and Cheese Taquito 6/11

Souper Meal Noodles

Souper Meal comes off as the Sedan DeVille of noodledom, and in keeping with the old "more pouches; more quality theme," an extra pouch labeled "Finishing Touch - Flavor Enhancer" is right on top of the lid, but under the cellophane wrapper.

There are two other pouches contained in the cup, freeze dried vegetables and soup base. Both go into the cup prior to cooking. Upon preparation, I discovered that Souper Meal takes an inordinate amount of water, which yields a large portion of soup when serving, allowing the noodles to be the sideshow, rather than the main event.

The freeze dried veggies come out very crispy and were a pleasant surprise - my favorite part. Flavor can be helped a bit with hot sauce of your preference. Finishing touch, has a taste much like Bragg's Liquid Aminos. A little yeast, a little soy, but it is probably just liquid MSG.

The noodles stay opaque, never becoming transparent like other ramen varieties, and the soup base is mild - better when eaten hot. Souper Meal is fairly satisfying for a period of time.

Now, in reviewing Souper Meal, it must be mentioned than beyond being a good value and looking like a significant amount of edible food in a paper cup, it is not memorable in the slightest. Just to write this, I had to eat Souper Meal twice. And even writing about it just hours later posed a bit of a challenge.

4/11

Spicy Big Bite and Chelada

The absence of 7-Eleven since southern California was enough to make me wonder if life would ever be the same, seriously now, few stores ooze as much in-store personality right beside good-old-fashioned value. My heart sank as I realized that I'd miss the first 7-Eleven that I'd seen since Long Beach - my RV just wouldn't slow fast enough, but if you've seen one 7-Eleven, then another isn't far off.

I stopped at the 7-Eleven on Route 12 in Aberdeen, Washington and selected a Spicy Big Bite hot dog and a Bud Light & Clamato flavored "Chelada." Added to the hot dog were sauerkraut, yellow mustard, pickle relish, and a dab of salsa, while the Chelada comes standard "with Salt and Lime. The Perfect Combination" ...says it right on the can.

The hot dog was eaten first, and 7-Eleven's "spicy" flavor is now becoming familiar. It's a certain, ever present and nearly artificial hotness whose same-every-bite consistency is unmatched by any hot sauce. I don't particularly like it. It gets the job done with all of the impersonality of a glory hole.

Texturally, the Spicy Big Bite was pleasant. The typical uniformity and rubbery "meat" of a hot dog was replaced with a firmness that I'd welcome in any cased meat product. The meat itself was juicy, and good tasting, but not devoid of gristle which best seemed left unacknowledged. The bun and condiments were standard without need for review, excepting the sauerkraut, which was grated into unrealistically crunchy strands [visible in photo]. Overall the hot dog was very good, and lived up to the "big" name swimmingly.

Washing down this meat-treat was a 24 ounce Bud Light & Clamato Chelada. A Chelada may seem like a relatively new offering to SIEF711's mostly WASPY reader base; however, those of with a little Latin in them, and not the stercus accidit kind, might know that a Chelada is basically a Mexican mixed drink made with beer. Whether it's an attempt by Anheuser Busch to culture us or patronize the latin community (again the Chicano and not the academic kind), I like it. The 24 oz. version has about 300 calories, 31 grams of carbs, 4.2% alcohol by volume, and a generous amount of salt. It should be said that none of my friends or acquaintances will drink it - mainly due to the "Clamato" brand name. Of course, anyone worth their salt that has spent some time on Nantucket will know that clams and drinking go together like Velcro.

The taste of Bud Light & Clamato Chelada is excellent, the alcohol seems only faintly present and my lack of buzz after drinking the entire 24 oz. can reflected that. The saltiness is pleasant as is the the tomato juice. Overall, drinking a can is not unlike having salsa atop "Hint o'Lime" Tostitos brand corn chips. If your response to Chelada is as positive as mine, it should be noted that Chelada only comes in four gangs and not the expected six pack.

I only pick winners:
Spicy Big Bite Hot Dog 7/11
Bud Light & Clamato Chelada 7/11