Review: Starbucks Caramel Ribbon Crunch Frappucino

Happy Hour is just about the only time you can get me into a Starbucks, owing to the fact that I’m generally too cheap to spend an entire combo meal’s worth on a single drink when the gods of McDonald’s have graced this earth with something I like to call the value menu sweet tea. But it is May, and that means frappucino happy hour between three and five pm, early enough that I’m not at work yet but late enough that I still get that pissy “are you going to be hungry for dinner” look from someone who constantly forgets that I have the appetite of a butcher’s disposal unit and about as discriminating of a diet.

As with any year, Starbucks has crazy two crazy new flavors, and as with any year they are limited with just enough time that you will fall in love with them before they get yanked off the menu in what is probably a combination of reminding you who wears the daddy pants in this relationship, and also because they find the sighs of disappointment strangely gratifying in a sexual way. The two flavors I speak of are Mocha Cookie Crumble (not photographed in this article) and Caramel Ribbon Crunch. And speaking of sexual, just read the description of the Caramel Ribbon Crunch:

“Caramel connoisseurs, this is your beverage. It’s a swirly celebration of four different types of caramel in a cup, topped with a layer of dark caramel sauce, caramel drizzle and crunchy caramel sugar topping. Yes, there are some other ingredients: coffee, milk, ice, whipped cream – but really this is all about ribbons and ribbons of caramel, over and over and over.”

Contempt from the Barista if you pronounce anything incorrectly is not factored into the ingredients, but is rather provided at point of purchase for no additional fee. Not currently rated by Food and Drug Administration for recommended daily values, please consult your doctor if your caramel sugar topping stays crunchy for more than four hours, and do not operate heavy machinery while under the influence of where-ever this joke was headed.

I found the actual frappucino part of the Caramel Ribbon Crunch to be something of a lighter tasting caramel frap, which is great because my enjoyment of caramel and milk in a frozen blended form had previously been hindered by my general attitude against developing diabetes. Not that this will work out in the end, since the Caramel Ribbon Crunch weighs in at a hefty 58g of sugar, and that is for the smallest size you can get, a twelve ounce tall with nonfat milk. However, I have the feeling just based on taste that if you asked them to take away the caramel drizzle and chunks of sugar, you would actually end up with a caramel frappucino with less sugar. I can’t substantiate these claims and I actually reached out to Starbucks for nuitritional information with no response as of yet.

For the caramel lovers, this is exactly what it sets out to be. It is caramel covered caramel with caramel filling that cuts just short of slashing your dietary physician’s tires and burning an effigy of him on his own lawn to send the message that he ain’t welcome in this town anymore. It is a barely creative concoction that throws mountains of caramel in a manner that is slightly more shameless than the person ordering it at the counter, and good lord do I love it.

Wegmans Sunday: Pizza and Pie Night

It’s Sunday, and that can only mean one thing: The Shameless Consumer is leaving work and hungry at midnight. And what do you do at midnight for food in a town where everything except grocery stores and McDonald’s close at nine pm? You go to a grocery store. Tonight I decided to take a trip down Wegmans lane, a store I consider as the place with a cheese selection about as large and pale as most of its shoppers. Sorry, Wegmans, I know it isn’t your fault. This is Orchard Park, and when the demographics lean 95% white with Asian coming in a close second at 1.8%, the only person of Japanese ethnicity who will enter the store is likely the guy you hired to roll the sushi.

As you can tell from the photo and title, today is PP Sunday, because I am a mature adult and I have an appropriate diet. First I will start out with the spicy pepperoni pizza which you may have been duped by the picture into thinking that it is a whole lot of bread and not much sauce or cheese. You couldn’t be further from the truth, you uncultured swine (with all due respect). Actually the pizza was surprisingly tasty considering I not only bought it from the prepared-then-refrigerated rack, but cooked it in the not-recommended microwave. I wouldn’t say it is anything to write home about (which is why I’ve blocked my family from reading this page), but the cheese was very thick, as was the sauce, all of which melted together without the pizza itself getting soggy. Unsurprisingly, the pepperoni was spicy on the level of someone accidentally dropping a pepper into a pot of soup, only to fish it out and then when it is finally served the customer says “this tastes spicy.” I suppose it is spicy to someone, perhaps a five year old with a capsicum allergy.

This is one of the few times I get to say that I consider something worth the price if only because of availability. The pizza was $4.99, but measured about a pound and a half. You can get a large pizza for $5 at Tops Markets, but not at half past midnight. And again, this is a place where 90% of the restaurants and pizzerias are closed by 10pm. There is nowhere else to choose from for pizza after midnight.

The pie you may assume was destroyed during transit. Sadly, that is exactly how they all looked when I picked it up off the shelf, and that is how they always look. Wegman’s pies taste great, but they have no structure and once they leave the confines of that pie dish, they fall apart into nothing. Also Wegman’s is either too lazy or too cheap to print two different labels. The apple pies are labeled “apple pie.” The tripleberry pies are labeled “apple pie” with apple pie scribbled out and the real name written in Sharpie. Like the pie consistency, this could be put off as a one time event if it hadn’t been the case for well over six months.

It is a system that flies in the face of everything Wegmans seems to strive for otherwise, which is providing fancy looking food with ingredients even I can pronounce, at a price somewhat higher than their local competitors. Higher priced food for a higher quality shopping experience, as they say in the bizz. I’m not in the bizz, so I don’t call it that.

The pie was very sweet, and despite its complexity resembling that of a mudslide, the crust held together rather well. In lieu of crust on top, the tripleberry pie uses a crumble made primarily of brown sugar. There isn’t much to comment on the pie, other than the fact that it was sweet enough that I felt compelled to get a diabetes test. What I’m trying to say is that there is a lot of sugar in this slice of pie, more than any pie should conceivably have, with the exception of that pie being baked in order to assassinate a politician with diabetes.

Ultimately the pizza was the more satisfying of the duo, granting me more faith in the pre-cooked and refrigerated food market. If someone can find the recipe that my old high school used to make pizza, that would be great. That and their spaghetti. It was fantastic, and for just $1.75 too.