Veatables

I'm really rather sick of all the "healthy" and healthy sweet snacky bars you can get.  I don't have a sweet tooth, they're usually far too sweet for me and I usually crave savoury snacks when I'm hungry.  And look what I found the other day...

  Fresh, soft, tasty vegetable-based snack bars.  They come in three flavours; "Tomato Pizza", "Thai Sweetcorn" and "Sweet Roast Vegetable" and are made from between 50% and 64% fresh vegetables, 34% - 38% dried vegetables and then flavour enhancers such as Gruyere cheese, chickpea flour, salt, seeds etc.

Because they contain fresh vegetables and some cheese, they do need chilling...

"To make each bar we take fresh vegetables (some pureed, some roasted) and mix them with ingredients such as Gruyere cheese, sweet chilli sauce and fresh herbs. We combine these with dried vegetables to make sure that each 45g bar contains the equivalent of 80g of vegetables.

 Once mixed the ingredients are moulded into bars and are transferred to trays to be baked. After cooling we wrap them and then they’re ready to go.

Each bar contains only natural ingredients and is a combination of fresh cooked vegetables with some dried and concentrated vegetables.

Because they are so fresh and natural they need to be stored in a fridge until they are eaten. However, it is absolutely fine to pop one in your child’s lunch box as it will last perfectly well up until lunchtime and beyond."

As soon as my sample pack arrived (one of each flavour) I scoffed one, the "Sweet Roast Vegetable" flavour one.  When you open the packet, the smell is really quite amazing; like pizza or a vegetable pasta sauce with cheese on top.  The texture is soft and crumbly like a really soft, fine-textured flapjack.  And it tastes so tangy with a reasonably strong Gruyere twang to it and a definite strong butternut squash flavour.  Half an hour after I finished the bar and my mouth was still watering from the flavour.  At 99kcals and 1 portion of fruit and veg, they're satisfying on the belly, but moreish on the flavour.  I might just have to grab another one out of the fridge...


("Thai Sweetcorn" tastes a bit curryish... hints of chilli and spices as well as the cheese).