I know Oreos. I have never had them before, but I know of them. I know that they were invented in Baltimore and had a baseball team named after them. They are so famous that Philip J. Fry makes Oreos in the future. Whilst I haven’t eaten Oreos themselves I am aware of the general concept, that of a creamy filling sandwiched between two biscuits to form a crunchy, creamy experience, similar to the chocolatey Bourbons or buttery Custard Creams over here. Oreos seem to be half-way between the two, with chocolate biscuits encasing a light-coloured centre.
How to try them. I could peel the biscuit off the creamy centre and taste the parts individually, or I can crunch in to a whole Oreo and have the complete experience. I shall try the whole Oreo experience to start with.
My, that’s a dark biscuit. It doesn’t smell particularly chocolatey for something so dark, it has a rather pleasant biscuit smell. I also have a sneaking suspicion that Ebony and Ivory was written for this biscuit, and all that talk about pianos was a diversion to hide a sweet tooth.
Crunch crunch! Hmm, there’s not much taste when first bitten in to, but, my goodness, there is certainly some strong taste a few chews in, and it lingers. That’s quite powerful. I’m not entirely convinced I can taste the creamy centre, such is the strength of the biscuit and the thinness of the centre. Needs more creamy goodness! I can see why people peel these apart to eat the sections separately. Our own Custard Creams and Bourbons at least have enough filling to be tasted alongside the biscuit. Or maybe the biscuit is blander, which is probably true of the Custard Cream. Anyway, time to press on!
It occurs to me that the creamy centre offers two advantages. One is that it cushions the bite against the crunchy biscuit. The other is to soften the palate with its creaminess before the heavy chocolate biscuit taste kicks in. Mind you, the strength of the biscuit peters slightly with subsequent bites, or maybe it’s dulled my taste buds more than a vindaloo could.
Let me try the components separately. Before I do that, a quick diversion. The packaging is quite neat, with an easy open pull tab that actually both opens easily and reseals effectively, which I noticed when plucking a second biscuit from within. I am suitably impressed! This is technology that we could borrow over here. Although I have to admit to being a little ignorant of the state of the British biscuit packaging I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that a biscuit tin or jar is still required to decant all the biscuits of a pack in order to keep them fresh. The Oreo packaging is a neat, self-contained unit.
Back to the biscuit itself. Twisting the biscuits with opposite torque pulls the two biscuits apart from the creamy filling glue with little effort, although the centre adheres to both bits of the biscuit and is not found whole on one half. Scraping the filling off and tasting it reveals it to be mostly tasteless but sweet, with more of a fondant texture than the creamy fillings I’m used to here. It may simply be a sweet counterpart to the bitter biscuit, let me see. Yes, that seems about right. That’s a strong biscuit, and any flavour in the filling would be lost when eaten as a whole. I’m sure I couldn’t eat too many of the biscuits without the filling either. The two halves seem quite enough by themselves, and the filling by itself doesn’t really do anything for me. The Oreo as a whole is pretty tasty, but I think I’d prefer a Bourbon to be honest.
So it was with divine wonder that I opened a parcel from Philip, and it contained both Crunchies AND the idols that are bags of prawn-cocktail Skips. Now, I’d not had Skips before. They are these lovely little discs, each looks a bit like a sand dollar, actually, only about an inch in diameter. They’re made of corn or rice or something, and they positively melt in your mouth. The prawn-cocktail flavor is perfect for the amount of solid food you’re getting, and at only 89 calories (USAian kcal) per bag, MANG. I could go on a diet with these.