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Annie's Really Ranch Crackers with Hidden Veggies: I generally enjoy Annie's crackers and was excited to try this flavor I hadn't seen before. I've had many types of vegetable-based snacks, which seems to have expanded substantially over the past decade (cauliflower, chickpea, beets, etc.), but my flavor baseline for mixed veggie crackers is super basic: Nabisco's Vegetable Things, or veggie cream cheese. I was hoping for more of the latter with Annie's combination of veggies with ranch, and they did not disappoint. The texture of the crack... (read more) 3.5/5.0

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Get Back to Human Grain-Free Pizza Crackers: It's been a while since I've shopped at a health-food store, so I didn't realize that suddenly grains have become the enemy. These grain-free crackers proudly advertise everything the snack doesn't contain (refined starches, maltodextrin, seed oils)...but do they taste good? The flavor is a distinct take on pizza – oregano and garlic forward with a roasted tomato aftertaste. The texture of the crackers are crispy; much thinner than Wheat Thins, which makes them feel less substantial. Over... (read more) 3.0/5.0

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Tea King Iron Buddha Milk Tea with Boba: Another solid boba tea shop in Seattle is Tea King, which has both quality fresh brewed teas and a wide range of fruit teas made with fruit syrup made in-house. Their Iron Buddha Milk Tea is an oolong tea, which had a lovely roasted flavor. (Oolong is my go-to option when I'm looking for something a little more nuanced than black tea but don't want the floral notes of jasmine tea). 25% sweetness was perfect for my sugar tolerance, and the boba was excellent too. 4.0/5.0

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Young Tea Rose Green Milk Tea with Boba: Young Tea is a local Seattle tea chain that started off in the International District and now has a location in Wallingford. They brew a wide variety of loose leaf tea, catering to customers that want multiple options for their oolong (e.g., red, rock, golden lily, or high mt.). I really enjoyed their purple rose green milk tea, which had an ideal combination of punchy herbal green tea flavor with an aftertaste of floral rose (not quite as pronounced as the purple-pink mixture might sugges... (read more) 4.0/5.0

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Swedish Fish Tails: Growing up, my family had a Costco membership, which we sparingly used for snacks and essentially never used for candy except for the one time my mom purchased a box of Swedish Fish. The box contained about 20 bags of the original red Swedish Fish, the individual rectangular bags you'd find at the checkout section of a gas station. While I liked Swedish Fish a lot, by the time we were done with that Costco pack, I really did not like Swedish Fish anymore. As an adult, I'd occasionally eat... (read more) 2.0/5.0

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Happy Lemon Ube Green Tea Smoothie with Rock Salt Crema: Ube, green tea, and salted cream seemed like an unlikely combination, but one that I felt of all chains, Happy Lemon could probably pull off. This smoothie tastes much more of ube than green tea, and with its vivid Grimace purple color, it would be hard to know that it contained any matcha at all. The ube slush was rich and very filling, with a fairly mild flavor that's still immediately identifiable as ube. This was probably the best use of the rock salt crema I've had, which I've been s... (read more) 3.5/5.0

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