our drinking problem

My brave friend Mary and I got into the Jones Holiday Packs finally. Oh man are they awful. X-entertainment does a good review of them here, but they did not go the extra mile and get the regional pack, so I did.

Here is the "traditional" Holiday Pack:

containing Turkey & Gravy, Cranberry Sauce, Pumpkin Pie, Brussels Sprout, and Wild Herb Stuffing.


and the regional pack:

containing Turkey and Gravy, Corn on the Cob, Smoked Salmon Pate, Broccoli Casserole, Pecan Pie.
Pecan Pie makes me think the reigon is "The South" however, who has Salmon Pate at a southern xmas? Is this the nod to the Jew who married into your family?

We started out with turkey. And turkey, like all of the other flavors, was really not terribly effervescent. This could be because we waited a while to open them, but I have never had this problem with any other Jones Soda going flat, so I think they just did not carbonate them much. Weird.

It tasted a lot like fake butter. Smells and tastes more like gravy and fat than turkey. Odd herb smell, maybe sage? Something like stuffing. I noticed a finish of cream soda. This is bad. I hate hate hate cream soda. It seems like the majority of these sodas have a cream soda base. Why, I have no idea. Turkey was bad, but completely dealable.

Next we went with Wild Herb Stuffing. Oh holy jesus this is bad. Weird cream soda. Plus herb. Yuck.

I completely forgot what broccoli tasted like, which I thought was a good sign. Oh no. I just smelled it. Holy god it smells like burnt breadcrumbs and broccoli. I gagged. I do not gag. I have hurled like, 10 times in my entire life. I seriously thought during this experiment that I might actually get near a dry heave. However, the taste of this one did nothing for me, but wasn;t that bad--the smell was worse.

Brussels Sprout? Huh? Isn't it Brussel Sprouts? Either way, this was the worst. We were doing fine until this one. I have never had Brussels Sprout. However Mary likes them. I cannot imagine why if they taste like this. Imagine you boiled all manner of greens. And then added that boiled water to cream soda. Oh yeah. That's it. This almost got a spit take from Mary. And we both involuntarily shuddered.

Corn on the Cob--I thought this would be great. This is one of the few that I think could be good sweet. But it didn't taste like corn at all--more fake butter and cream soda. Now, why not just make it taste like CORN? I do not know.

After all this we went with the savory one we thought we would like. Smoked Salmon Pate. To preface, I love salmon. Smoked salmon is my favorite food. I recently risked death in many ways by buying some smoked salmon from foreigners in a child molester van. So I have a committment.

Smoked Salmon soda tasted like liquid smoke and BBQ, but oddly, not like salmon at all. In order to truly test it, we made a salmon soda and cream cheese float. This was bad, but only because the soda was more bbq and bbq and cream cheese do not mix well. Still, I think had this been salmon flavored I would have liked it. Mary commented that it tasted like the fake bits of salmon in salmon flavored cream cheese. I took some photos of how pink the cream cheese was dyed, but it was way too gross. This soda was comparatively not bad though, just not what we expected.

Now we were down to the sodas that theoretically should be good--Pumpkin Pie, Pecan Pie, and Cranberry. All except Cranberry had the weird cream soda funk. Pumpkin tasted mainly like pie crust, not pumpkin. Pecan smelled nutty, but mainly tasted like cream soda. But Cranberry. Oh if only this were sold year round it would be among my favorites. it was sour but the right amount of sweet. We drank this one down quick, glad to have some of the other tastes our of our mouths.

Mary asked if I had a cigarette, not from enjoyment but to kill her taste buds.

We read some of the labels and realized that all but the cranberry had one ingredient in common which must be this awful cream soda flavor. yuck!

We had to leave to catch a movie, and when I got home, the aromas of these cups had comingled in a bad bad way.

So 1 for ten of these sodas is awesome. Sadly, I think they could have kept the novelty and still made these taste good! If only they could commit to a fully savory soda, and not a mix of savory and sweet, I think it could work!


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