Morning, friends! I’ve received a number of products lately to review so I thought it would be fun to do one big post sharing all of them at once. Enjoy!
Products I’m Loving Lately
1) Cascadian Farm’s new Ancient Grains granola. They sent me a couple boxes last week, Matt and I have already finished 1.5 of them. His favorite way to eat it? Straight out of the box, usually pouring it directly into his mouth. I take a classier route and enjoy it on top of plain Greek yogurt with fruit for breakfast.
2) This fun Quinn popcorn that arrived last week for me to review. Apparently Matt liked the look of it because he sampled two of the bags before I even realized it! He’s really enjoying this whole blog sample thing. 🙂
Quinn popcorn markets themselves as “microwave popcorn reinvented” — unlike normal microwave popcorn brands, their popcorn kernels are organic and non-gmo, and their bags use recycled and compostable paper, expeller pressed oil instead of hydrogenated, and no artificial flavorings. Sounded good to me!
The popcorn comes in the three flavors you see above — each popcorn bag includes a little seasoning packet and a small packet of oil to flavor the popcorn with.
So far I’ve only tried the lemon and sea salt, but it’s delicious. Matt says the parmesan & rosemary flavor is great, too. My only complaint is that I wish the bags were portioned out smaller — each bag allegedly contains 3 servings (although I ate most of it myself, with a small amount of help from Matt) and if you use all the oil (I only used half), it can be rather caloric. At least you can use as much or as little of the oil and seasonings as you like, though, and the flavor was awesome. Love that I’m not eating a bag of weird chemicals like with the other microwave popcorn brands, too!
3) These minimalist New Balance running shoes — called the Minimus Zero. New Balance sent me and Matt a pair of these a few months ago to try out and we both really love them. They have zero drop, meaning they are designed to feel like you are barefoot or close to it when walking or running.
I haven’t been wearing mine for any runs longer than 2 miles (I was thinking of trying to build up to doing longer runs in them, but decided I’d better not mess with what’s been working for me so far, so I stick with regular running shoes for longer runs), but I really love them for any sort of short runs, gym or strength workout, boot camp, bike ride, etc. Not only are they extremely lightweight and comfortable, but they have great grips on the bottom — perfect for quick side-to-side movements like those you find in boot camps! They’re awesome for sprinting, too.
Here are Matt’s — they are the same exact shoes, just in a men’s version. Matt’s been wearing his pretty much for any and all workouts — including runs up to about 4 miles! Apparently they feel like his soccer shoes so it was easy for him to get used to them (vs. normal running shoes) for running really quickly.
We’ve also both been wearing them to Crossfit quite a bit. Since there’s no lift in the heel of the shoe, you’re really close to the ground, which helps me to feel more stable.
Thanks again to New Balance for letting us both review the shoes. Huge fan and highly recommend them if you’re looking for a minimalist shoe for running or for strength/boot camp type workouts where you want more stability. They also have a trail running version, and two other versions with a slightly higher lift in the heel, if you don’t want full-on minimalist style shoes but still want something less bulky than regular running shoes. Here’s their website with all the options!
4) The Samsung Galaxy S3 phone. I was sent this phone to review as part of round 2 of my Verizon Wireless Ambassador* program. I was pretty excited to check it out, but my excitement level was nowhere near that of Matt’s — he was basically dying of excitement when the package arrived on Friday.
Within about 5 minutes, he’d set up the phone, downloaded about a million apps…
…and changed my background photo to this hilarious one of himself. Lol!
Boys. 🙂
I’ll share more thoughts once I get used to the phone, but so far, it’s pretty amazing (Matt agrees). Very easy to use, beautiful screen, etc. If you have any specific questions about it, let me know!
And with that, I’m off to work. Have a great Tuesday, friends!
What products are you loving lately? Any fun new food finds I should try?
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*Disclosure: As part of the Verizon Wireless Ambassador program I have been provided with a wireless device and three months of service in exchange for my honest opinions about the product.
