Continuing in my search for good long term storage foods from the regular grocery store, tonight I am looking at Brothers-All-Natural Asian Pear Crisps
and Pineapple Crisps. These are single serving foil packs of freeze dried fruit. I've seen freeze dried fruits in the grocery store before, but they were pretty doggone expensive. I got them to go to Pathfinder School with, but never ate them. I figured as hot as it was up there, I'd risk some dehydration issues eating dried fruit. I don't recall the exact price on these, but they were in the .79 to .99 cents range at Wal-Mart. They are about the same price on Amazon in 24 packs, but much cheaper on 200 packs at their website (plus they have coupon codes).
I tried both of these this morning as a snack at work. Both are listed as 100% fruit, with such bonuses as Kosher, Vegan, non-GMO and fair working conditions for employees if any of that matters to you. To me it is nice, but not something I particularly look for. The "best by" dates are a year (pineapple) and a year and a half (pears) from now. No idea when they were packed, but being freeze dried, I can't imagine that they would not be good for much, much longer.
Asian Pear Crisps
Each pack is 1/2 cup, 10 grams (0.35oz), 40 calories, 9 grams of carbs, 2% of your RDA of vitamin C, and about a pear and a half.
They were OK. Not great, but OK. Pretty good pear taste, but the consistency was a bit off. Kind of a melt in your mouth thing. I think kids would like them, and they'd probably real good crushed up and sprinkled on ice cream.
Pineapple Crisps
Each pack is 1/2 cup, 15 grams (0.53oz), 60 calories, 14 grams of carbs, 15% of your RDA of vitamin C, and about 40% of a whole pineapple.
These were delicious! The consistancy was crunchy, with a little melt in your mouth at the end, great pineapple taste, and they looked like pineapple pieces. Put them in granola, trail mix, on ice cream or oatmeal, or straight out of the bag.
Put Them On Your List
These Brothers-All-Natural fruit crisps are a good value (especially in large quantities), and great for camping, the long term storage pantry, or a snack in your (or your kid's) lunch. I'll keep my eyes out for other varieties and bring you reviews of them as well.
I've tried the Strawberry and the Apple varieties as well. Both pretty consistent. I have a client who wanted to be their rep for Kosher markets back in 2006 and so we ate a lot of them then.
ReplyDeleteWhat section of Walmart do you find these in? Are they with things like prunes or with trail mixes and nuts? Granola items? Since they began reorganizing their stores, I can't find anything. (Been looking for flyswatters for months- even the employees don't know where they keep them).
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure all stores carry the same stuff, either. We have a small-ish one where we are and the selection seems poor.
I guess I could just get them from Amazon, but I'd rather try them first.
Thanks for the suggestions.
Laura
Hi Laura,
ReplyDeleteThey were in the section with canned fruit and raisens, etc... I think you are right that lots of WalMarts have completely different set ups inside. I think it is aimed at getting people to wander about looking for things so that they will stumble upon and buy things they don't really need.