What a brilliant weekend in the UK! Warmt and sunny; a rare combination on the Antrim coast. This is a very busy year in our household, and a lot of DIY is in store for us. It all kicked off with a bang – painting furniture, planting flower seeds, painting the fence, and some other overdue tasks as well. All four of us worked very hard, and were rewarded with some fun and tasty snacks and drinks from our Best of British Degustabox.
Let’s start with the contents of the Best of British Degustabox before moving on to our top picks. Each monthly box contains between 10-15 products; some aren’t yet available in the shops which gives you the first chance to try them out! The short version of this month’s box is that there are 13 items; 5 snacks, 3 beverages, and 5 meal items. The long version is….
The Full Best of British Box Contains:
- £2.49 Robinson’s Fruit Cordials – Pear and Elderflower
- £2.20 Typhoo Black Tea
- £1.00 Heinz Organic Baked Beanz
- £1.19 Cream of Tomato Pot Soup
- £1.00 London Flavours crisps
- £2.66 Cheerios Multigrain
- £2.55 Eat Water Slim Rice Sushi
- £1.49 Skinny food Co Not Guilty White Chocolate Crispies & Milk Chocolate Crispies
- £2.00 CRAFTED by Cracker Drinks Co Mango & Passionfruit
- £1.39 Pachmama Andean Berry & Raspberry / Cacao & Cashew
- £1.50 Candy Kittens Wild Strawberry sweets
- £2.49 Bull’s-Eye NY Steakhouse Barbecue Sauce
- £1.29 Love corn Smoked BBQ
Best of British Top Picks
Each month we feature our top picks in the box. Of course, these choices are based on our own tastes, and I’d love to hear what your favourites are, just pop them down in the comments at the end of this post.
Elderflower is definitely a flavour of the UK. I remember the first time I tasted it in Belfast. Now we make our own bottle once a year when our sole tree is in bloom. However, with Robinson’s Fruit Cordials – Pear and Elderflower, you don’t need to go foraging, the taste of summer is right in the bottle, blended deliciously with sweet pear. We all enjoyed this drink mixed with sparkling water after a hot day toiling in the sun.
There’s nothing that says British more than tea. Typhoo Black Tea makes a great anytime of day cuppa. Morning, noon, or night, and definitely to get you over that mid-afternoon slump. After 116 years if making tea, Typhoo know how to blend it right. Phil and I enjoyed a break together while I was refinishing a piece of furniture and he was painting the fence.
Corn nuts are always a treat, and I usually only have them maybe once a year as I pick them up at the foreign foods shop, so I’m happy to see a British brand, Love Corn, now making them. Smoked BBQ is full of flavour and definitely crunchy and fun to eat, and yes, they’r made from corn, not nuts!
The Kids’ Top Picks
Candy Kittens Wild Strawberry sweets are sweet, tangy, and free of gelatin and gluten. They are so good that they were gone before I knew it!
As a Canadian, barbecues are part of my fabric, and no barbecue is complete without sauce. Bull’s-Eye NY Steakhouse Barbecue Sauce was perfect on our burgers and chips. It’s a little like a cross between brown sauce and a mild salsa with the odd chunk of tomato or bell pepper in it. Sweet and smokey, it is great for summer!
My children love porridge for breakfast, but like to live on the wild side from time to time…they added some Cheerios Multigrain sprinkled on the top of their porridge and fruit for an interesting change. Phil and I had a bowl as it was – well, I did (I’m a no-milk on my cereal type of gal) while Phil added milk to his. It gave us some extra energy before we headed outdoors to paint the fence.
More Best of British Degustabox Products
Pachmama energy bars are both soft and crunchy at the same time as both varieties contain nuts. I prefer Andean Berry & Raspberry with its tangy and tart raspberries, Andean berries, and raisins. The Cacao & Cashew bar was also good with the bitter taste of cacao and the nutty flavour of almonds.
Kids and husbands love saucy beans, so it’s nice to see that Heinz now has Organic Baked Beanz for health and environmentally conscious families. They taste just like the original, but without the nasty chemicals.
CRAFTED by Cracker Drinks Co Mango & Passionfruit is a small but powerful drink that gives a real punch of strong flavour. I actually found it to be a bit too strong. However, my children loved that part of this drink.
Cream of Tomato Pot Soup was in this month’s box from Heinz. Unfortunately, this wasn’t a family favourite as Kallista and I found it tasted like a tinned ravioli sauce, but Tristan finished the pot on his own. Perhaps this is a soup for those who like to smother their food in sauce?
I love crisps, and London Flavours crisps were in our box this month. We received Pho flavour. The crisps were very crunchy, which I loved, and the flavour was good, with a little warmth sneaking in after the crunch. British flavours no longer need to be bland with the flavours of street food in a crisp.
We found a package of Eat Water Slim Rice Sushi in our box this month. We do love to make sushi in our home. This isn’t the usual sushi we’re used to as it is just plain rice with some flour mixed in (it’s this flour that combined with you drinking a lot of water is supposed to help you become slim). Traditional sushi has rice wine vinegar, salt, and sugar added to the rice, so we found this sushi rice to be lacking in flavour when on its own. The children enjoyed it much better when it was consumed with a sheet of nori (as suggested on the package), with additional veggies, but it’s not something they would look for again, and I’d have to agree.
I’m sorry to say, but Skinny Food Co.’s Not Guilty White Chocolate Crispies & Milk Chocolate Crispies were not our favourites. The texture was nice and crispy, but there was a lingering after-taste that we weren’t very keen on.
There you have it! The full run-down of the Best of British Degustabox – the ups and downs and in-betweens. Have you tried a Degustabox yet? Give it a whirl and see what delights are in the next box!
You can can connect with Degustabox through their sites:
UK website, UK Facebook, UK Twitter, or UK Instagram.
