Coconut beer

Fair trade coconut beer from Belgium. 

Have you ever had coconut juice or water? It has the same smell as that, with the appearance you might find with a cloudy cider, albeit with a slightly yellower tinge. 

Coconut has a well-known taste: something that reminds you of a hotter climate, and more exotic fruits and foods. 

This beer definitely aims to hit those taste buds and amplify your other sense to make you feel like you are in a tropical climate. 

It doesn't taste like beer. It is more like a carbonated coconut drink with that bitterness that you get with a beer. But it's not overpowering in the slightest. As beers go, it isn't something that really showcases. But if you just want to show off an alcoholic beverage with a coconut taste, it isn't horrible, an there isn't anything else out there that I could compare it to that I know of. 

So a coconut fizzy drink could do just about the same job as this. In fact, it may just be worthwhile having a Malibu with sparkling water. It would have the same effect. 

:-)

Elky

Banana beer

Exotic beer with the flavour of banana. 

This beer has travelled all the way Belgium. It may be available in the shops over here in the UK but I wouldn't know as it was gifted to me. 

It has a lovely banana smell that I've also smelt before in banana liqueurs. It smells slightly flat with a hint of alcohol, but it isn't unpleasant. 

It's immediately sweet with an almost medicine-like taste, but the bitterness and sweetness help to cancel each other out slightly so it ends up being quite a refreshing taste. 

At 3.6% alcohol content, it's an enjoyable beverage on a hot day especially if you're looking just to have a sip of alcohol without actually getting drunk. As I am trying it now. 

:-)

Elky

Kit Kat - Passion Fruit, Strawberry and Matcha Green Tea & Cherry Blossom

Passion fruit flavour.

Have you ever had passion fruit? Or a passion fruit juice perhaps? The thing that strikes you first is the smell: it makes up about half of what the fruit actually tastes like. The passion fruit flavoured Kit Kat definitely has the taste of the fruit, but it doesn't smell like it. There is no doubt that the flavour is spot on, but the smell is almost citrus-like. What I can say is that it is delicious! The yellow colour of the bar is enticing and suits the flavour well!

Strawberry (Wa-Ichigo).

The teeny Kit Kats of Japan

The thing with strawberry flavoured foods is that they never have a nice smell unless you add something like vanilla essence. Strawberries themselves aren't that pleasant smelling; if you've ever made a smoothie with strawberries it can be very off-putting, and that's with the natural fruit. This Kit Kat variation has that artificial strawberry smell that you get from other strawberry products. Protein bars and shakes in strawberry flavour have been some of the worst that I've tried in taste smell and in looks. This Kit Kat is in the same shade of pink that I've seen the aforementioned products in, but having the Kit Kat logo stamped over it makes it a lot more appetising than them. Unfortunately, it has that same odd taste that artificial strawberry products have. Don't get me wrong, it tastes more like a strawberry and cream infusion, which is a lot better than other products in comparison, but it's lower down the list on recommend Kit Kats. 

Cherry Blossom and Matcha Green Tea flavour (Sakura Matcha).

I had a few questions before I tucked into this flavour as I wasn't sure of what it was apart from a little flower on the packaging. Which flower is this? The green chocolate doesn't exactly get your taste buds going, not in this shade anyway. Then again I loved the Green Tea flavour and it was a lighter version of this. Still, the green bar in the pink packaging is a big contrast, and before you've even taken a bite you might be wondering what you're getting into. 

Oh my goodness. What a treat. It has an overpowering taste that explodes in your mouth. Sure, it hasn't got much of a smell, which is surprising for a chocolate flavoured from a flower (plant / tree), but it has a creamy, silky feel and taste like no other chocolate bar I've tried. The crunch of the biscuit with the creaminess of the chocolate is a great fit and I would go as far as saying it is one of the best Kit Kat flavours I've ever tasted. It's so original compared to the other chocolates we have on the market including those more "gourmet" varieties. A very nice surprise! And this was all without knowing what flower the chocolate was flavoured by. 

It turns out (after a quick googling) that the Sakura Matcha flavour takes its taste from the Sakura, cherry blossom, and Matcha green tea combination. As I've said previously, when I tasted the Green Tea Kit Kat, I was a big fan, and this combo doesn't disappoint either. 

I tried three Kit Kat flavours from Japan, and they each had something different going for them. Although the Strawberry Kit Kat has nice packaging, it's my least favourite of the bars in this tasting as it has that artificial strawberry taste, smell and look. It still beats anything over in this country though.

The Passion Fruit Kit Kat automatically hits you when you take a bite. The smell alone isn't of passion fruit, but after it enters your mouth, you can't fault it. All the elements add up to give you a scrumptious passion fruit flavoured, biscuity chocolate. 

The final flavour was the biggest surprise for me. The pretty-in-pink packaging lulls you into a false expectation as to what the chocolate will look like; striking green is not your first guess. But this is what makes it the most intriguing. Add to that a flavour I can't quite put my finger on (or two in the case of these mini Kit Kats), yet it still being the tastiest out of the three, and I think it's a winner. 

:-)

Elky

With thanks to my "dealer" Rosa  over in bloggerland ;-)

After Earth

And after earth, there was a story by a father who wanted to boost his son's career. And it possibly worked. 

After Earth

Will Smith is one of my favourite actors. The only film he's been in that hasn't been awesome was 'I Am Legend', and that's not because he was poor in it. His performance was great, but the book was just miles better. 

Kilometres. I believe it is 100 kilometres that Kitai Raige, Jaden's character, has to travel to recover the beacon thingy-majiggy; the technical gubbins that the father and son combo have to use to call for help on this planet which has evolved to kill our species. 

There are cute conversations that happen throughout the film that highlight the people are no longer of this planet, such as when Kitai's sister (or mother, I got confused) holds up a physical copy of Moby Dick and exclaims that she had been able to take it out of the museum / library. I guess there are no books in the future / 'After Earth' period. 

The start of the film gives us a back story into the characters of Kitai and dad Cypher that leads up to their crash landing, but the whole aim of this film is to give more screen-time to the young Smith. 

That's not a terrible thing though; story by Will Smith and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, the kid has a big break and a lot of pressure to show he is his father's son, or rather that he's a competent actor despite the large shoes he has to fill. 

Jaden has a lot of time to show off that he can do these kind of roles, but it means that there isn't much screen time for any nobodies (to put it bluntly), or even Will Smith himself. The trailers for this film make it seem like there will be interaction between the two throughout the film, but the only interaction is done via a high-tech walkie talkie. 

The special effects are out of this world (well it's our world... but it's different now... so... they're good). There are chimps / apes / baboons, and giant eagles which seem to be all-CGI, and also creations such as the Ursa Monster (Although I kept saying Ursa Major in my head), which is quite an imaginative and bland creature at the same time. 

There are surprising moments in the film portrayed through memories and hallucinations from lack of sleep from both the father's and son's perspectives. They're welcome additions to break up the running and action scenes and it's a shame they're not looked into more in depth. There could have been a whole other layer to the film if there was more focus on the activities off earth. 

So it's a nice idea for a film, and good sentiments behind why Will Smith has a story focusing on a young boy's journey to save his dad's, and his own, life. There are some heartfelt moments where we see how and why their relationship has been affected, and again it's these scenes that I think would have benefited from having more exploration.

As a new film, it's not one I'd say is a must see, but it's light-hearted and is jumpy in a few places so by all means isn't terrible. 

Well call me Ismail. Those humans didn't kill all the whales!

:-)

Elky

Pan

Pan

After dinner mint equivalent?

This is the first time I've ever seen or heard of the leaf folded into a triangle shape and containing rose syrup, some kind of seeds, a jam substance and tobacco apparently. 

Every culture has there own delicacies and oddities, my own has uncooked, salted, dried meat with oregano. It sounds odd but I've grown up with it, and so I find it delicious! (It's called samorella or pastırma depending on where you're from). 

But back to Pan; I was recommended it by a friend after we had just had a late meal and apparently it is something you eat after such an occasion. What he didn't tell me was that it wasn't really a dessert, which was what I was expecting. 

Biting into a leaf is as you would expect, leafy. It isn't a salad leaf which is usually soft or crisp, but an actual waxy, chewy unknown variety. 

The gentleman making the parcels laid two leafs slightly overlapping each other and covered them with the seeds which varied from things you see in the supermarket but don't know the name of, to brightly coloured pellets that look like they'd come straight out of a candy store.  Even asking my friend what half of the things going into the parcel didn't really get me anywhere, apart from pointing out the one that was tobacco, which was slightly off-putting. 

Chewing the first bite of the Pan, I was hit by a bunch of different flavours and textures. I had the crunch of the seeds, the sweetness of the syrup and jam, a bitterness from the tobacco, a chewiness from the leaf and a shock to my senses. I can't really compare it to anything I've tried before, as there isn't really anything I know that is similar. 

The bitterness is with you while you chew, and swallowing the last bite of the Pan I couldn't see myself going out of my way to have it again, especially because of the tobacco aspect. 

However, as I drove off into the night, dislodging seeds from between my teeth (glamorous), the sweetness of the rose was still present, and for some reason, although I didn't see, smell or taste any hint of mint, my mouth felt minty-fresh which was quite pleasant. 

For people who are always looking for something new to experience, I would recommend trying a sweet Pan and maybe asking for it without tobacco. There's something off-putting to me about that element, even though I don't know the rest of the ingredients in the parcel anyway. 

There is also a plain Pan, which did not look as appetising as my leaf, and had none of the brightly coloured seeds or pellets, or jam, or rose syrup or most of the things I had to rave about. 

I won't be eating Pan again, but I am glad that I have tried it, because now I can say I have. 

:-)

Elky 

Green Tea Kit Kat

Green Tea Kit Kat

Green Tea Kit Kat

Kit Kat is awesome. They've released so many flavours and variations over the years to keep things fresh, and I find some of the most recent additions to be some of the best! (Hazelnut anyone?)

This has also meant they have released the not-so-nice flavours.  Coconut was the strangest, least appetising chocolate I've had the chance of eating recently. I thought it would be a crispy, crunchy Bounty; it wasn't. 

I'm a big peanut butter flavour Kit Kat fan and I added the hazelnut flavour Kit Kat to my top Kit Kat list. These are both 'Chunky' bars which means more chocolatey goodness! But breaks away from the original two / four-finger treat. 

Which brings me to my latest Kit Kat flavour find: Green Tea flavour!

My Giant hand size comparison

I'm not sure if it's available in the UK as it was gifted to me by Rosa and is covered in Japanese writing. What I do know is that it has an awesome creamy chocolate flavour, in a somewhat off-putting green tinge. The taste resembles that of those pink wafers (for some reason my mind jumps to a purple packet with the Pink Panther munching away on them) that sandwich a creamy filling of 'something', but with less of the stale texture or 'bite' that they have. 

The Green Tea Kit Kat actually doesn't have an overpowering green tea taste, in fact, it's very mild. It's a shame it doesn't exist in the UK, as I'd be one of the people that would go out of the way to find a bar, or recommend to a friend. 

Two things though: firstly, it would be nice to have it available in UK size; my hands engulf the tiny bars. And secondly, I don't think it would suit the Chunky range. In fact, just bring it over how it is Kit Kat! I want my Green Tea Kit Kat fix!

:-)

Elky

Special thanks to my Japanese chocolate dealer, Rosa, of http://www.rosainbloggerland.com/ :-)

Fast and Furious 6

Let's keep this Fast and Furious...

Did anybody call for loose ends to be tied, or rather remoulded to force a story to make sense? Probably not, but does it work here? Somewhat, yes. 

Fast and Furious 6

What started out as what seemed like a lower budget film about (under the) hood economics, or how to cash in on the hood scene, has grown into one of the biggest current film franchises. Fast and Furious 6, as the name suggests, is the sixth film in the series of fast-paced action and speed-racing. 

In this one, Toretto (Vin Diesel) and the gang team up with Hobbs (Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson) to track down and capture an English villain by the name of Shaw who is trying to steal a a chip that could shut down a country's military computer capabilities. 

We see a montage of all the other Fast and Furious films at the start of the film as well as seeing the majority of the old cast in their new habitats. Most have settled down while others are still living a fast paced "young" lifestyle. 

I do like car chases, and I love films with action; Fast and Furious 6 has both in very good proportions. The underground racing scene is not as dominant of course, as the series has matured along with the characters. What this means is less neon coloured-cars with neon under-lighting and... well just less neon all around really, but this doesn't mean it is missing completely. In fact, the underground racing scene is used to reminisce back on the series with particular characters that the story focuses on. 

The story itself is imaginative if not predictable once you get past the fact that forgotten characters are resurrected. I also like the fact that there are in jokes within the film, such as Ludacris character receiving a phone call from "Samoan Thor".

Fast and Furious 6 is the best in the series so far as it has just become so much bigger: budget, cast and location-wise. It ties up loose ends as well as starting up a whole new series of questions.

Ride or die!

:-)

Elky