Summer is the time to cool off and chill out, while simultaneously burning up and looking hot, and there are few better ways than refreshing drinks in the sunshine. I’m not talking about the traditional summer drink of Pimm’s, although if I can I will get around to that before the summer is out, because this must be shared with my American friends who are sadly missed out on this wonderful pasttime.

The best way that I could imagine cooling off with a drink is to be sat with a cool milk tea (pearl tea, bubble tea, boba, whichever you prefer to call it), especially with a sweet flavour. It was having blueberry milk tea that led me to desperation on returning to the UK. Boba hasn’t really started out here, so I can’t just pop out and get one, and I can’t really make one as I lack large tapioca pearls (hard to find over here) and a blender – our last blender sadly died from too many milkshakes. So, instead, I looked to the milkshake places in my home town.

I’ve always loved milkshakes since I was a kid, from the many flavours of Crusha syrup (lime milkshakes for the total win) to the Nesquik rabbits call of “Have another Nesquik and blame it on the bunny” beginning the slippery slide to paying attention to secret messages from rabbits. Sure, it starts innocent enough with powdered milkshake flavourings but soon you are looking at stopping a bringing about of the apocalypse.

These milkshake places are not few and far between, in fact they are few and right next door to one another. Shake King and Shake Shack, are one either face of a street corner, sitting opposite the town centre’s McDonalds. They both have the same schtick, about 150 flavours of milkshake based primarily on what they can shove in a blender with milk and ice cream. These blendings range from fresh fruit to chocolate bars to cookies and cakes.

Shake King and Shake Shack (the orange-coloured) shop in Weston-super-Mare

With as much similarity as the two places have, there are some subtle but noticeable differences that lead to people choosing loyalties. For the sake of transparancy and honest disclosure, I admit now that I frequent Shake Shack a lot more than Shake King, but I’ll try to be justifiably so. This is slightly experiment based For SCIENCE, but it’s a rather biased experiment.

When I first went for a milkshake, I was desperate for blueberry, but neither place did just blueberry or had it in stock for smoothies, so I was told that Blueberry Muffin or Nutrigrain would have the same taste, and this brings us to the question: I’m going to drink a milkshake made with a base ingredient that is already a solid object, how will this work? In all honesty, for the nutrigrain and muffin, it didn’t, and for a lot of products that are very solid it has a great degree of variation, some chocolate bars will blend easily whilst others will leave chucks, but some cookies will just becomes specks amongst semi-liquid in seconds. Sadly, I’m still lacking my blueberry to this date.

This actually lead to the following conversation a few days later:
Milkshake Maker: Why not try the nutrigrain blueberry shake, it’s pretty much the same thing…
Guise: No it’s not. I’ve tried. It’s about as much the same thing as being able to give yourself head or getting head from a cute girl. Sure it’s kinda satisfying for the moment, gets the job done and you can maybe convince yourself it’s the same thing, but at the end you come to terms with the fact that you are left feeling disappointed and with a scuzzy taste in your mouth.
Milkshake Maker: O_O
Guise: I guess I’ll just go for Oreo shake then.

The first aspect to look in to is the milkshakes themselves, as there are indeed subtle differences between two exact same products. Oreo shakes are actually really good and, being a milkshake needing a solid object to be completely broken up properly, is a good basis for comparison.

It may be a very simple difference, but Shake Shack blends a scoop of ice with their milk shakes which thins the ice cream to a more drinkable solidity and also further chills the drink out, they also have the thought to ‘double blend’ the drinks more often, adding in extra milk or shifting the contents for breaking up in blending. As a result, the Shake Shack tends to offer a colder drink with a flavour spread more evenly, and with usually less chunks throughout (though for the Oreo, both reduced the cookie to powder in seconds).

The next aspect is where they put the milkshake, seeing as you have to drink it from somewhere and you probably want to be walking around in the sun enjoying it. This is where the places stand out from one another. Shake King opts for the more fast food style lidded cup, with their name and logo printed on the side, whilst Shake Shack go for the clear plastic cup with the dome on the top. I’m not sure if Shake King may have paid more for branded goods and ability to show their logo, but I happen to think the clear pastic is, ironically, more aesthetically pleasing. Besides, isn’t it one of those marketing mantras that if people can recognise a product without seeing the brand, then it’s a success?

Finally, Price wise, Shake King charges 40p (60c) more for their drinks at each size than Shake Shack, both places offer loyalty schemes for free drinks after a set number of purchases.

The first of these to discover boba will, quite likely, rule the chilled milky drink part of my soul for eternity though, regardless of any other factor.

TL;DR Changing the question of “will it blend?” to include “…with milk and ice cream?”

Ah, Summer, and how better to welcome the summer than to to talk about stuff from Halloween last year? Yes, I believe in being current and in the moment. The kids love me for how modern I am.

You may well recall that I started discussing the contents of the now famous Ominous Box. If I say it’s famous, then sooner or later it will be and I’ll have a schtick, that’s how this works. It’s like Giant Ape Juice and Box 23, I guess. Hm, maybe I need twenty more boxes. As you can see, I’ve derailed again, just like I did when going through the Ominous Box that Dan and his wife sent me.

For the most part, my discussion of the contents has tended to be on a one-to-one basis with our friends Dan, Deej and Dio, but I really feel that it needs to be put somewhere for posterity, not to mention a bit of closure on everyones behalf. So, for your mental relief and my own, we’ll take a trip in to the boxes contents once more.

When I first opened the box, I was amazed at the mix and just how well Dan knew the perfect things for me. Things I’d heard of growing up, Halloween themed party favours and an awesome GI JOE two-figure pack! The full contents were:
18 sachets of Kool-Aid (varying flavours) (see entry)
Bag of Candy Corn (see below)
Witch-shaped Pez dispenser
4-pack of Batman themed Pez dispenser
Two packs of Halloween-themed Gummy’s
Bag of Caramel Apple Pops (see below)
Bag of funsize Three Musketeers (see below)
Latex Pumpkin Mask
Skull Straws
Bag of Jolly Ranchers (see below)
Bag of Jolly Rancher Sours (see below)
Box of Reese’s Peanut Butter Whoppers
Hot Wheels Fright Car
Dripping Nose candy
Set of 4 Badges (pins?)

Before I start, just because some people have trouble with how serious to take me. I thoroughly enjoyed the gift from Dan and totally appreciated both the actual gifts and the spirit behind it, but I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t take you down the dark path of the Ominous Box.

Jolly Ranchers and Jolly Rancher Sours

Jolly Ranchers were a huge hit a few decades ago, according to the older colleagues at work, and I recall them making a resurgence some years ago whilst I was still in school (so we are talking over twelve years ago now). Fruit flavoured boiled sweets, or as I gather they are called overseas ‘hard candy’, is pretty much a safe bet and even once the favourite flavours are gone, there’s always something for everyone. The grape struck me as weird, just as grape drinks did when I was away, because they don’t taste much of grape but it definately does taste of purple.

I had a lot of fun with these two packs though, because I took both bags in to the office, poured them in to the same container and let my colleagues and visitors help themselves – offering the slightest warning to check if they’d picked up one marked ‘sour’ first. The majority of the time it was those who failed to pay attention who happened to have the sour in hand, and they always produced the best facial expression.

Candy Corn

Dan warned me before I even opened the bag that the candy corn might be a little stale, but not knowing what texture or taste to expect I wouldn’t really have any way of judging. As it turns out, the corn was just a tad stale, but I was able to eat some just the same. I’m guessing that in the even of apocalypse candy corn, fruit cake and Twinkies will be the staple food of future generations once the canned goods runs out. Candy Corn has a weird taste, I’ve tried to describe it so many times and can’t really get my head around it, my first inclination was a cross between the harder Haribo mallow and marzipan, but that’s not right at all. It has a very familiar taste, but one that for some reason I can only assosciate with thoughts of the cheaper candies a friend of mine used to get.

I actually managed to get fresh candy corn when I was away, and though the taste doesn’t change any with time, there is certainly a difference in texture. The fresher it is, softer it is. The softer it is, the more you can get through regardless of how weird it may taste. I did actually get through the whole bag Dan sent, much quicker afterI got back and had developed the taste for it.

Caramel Apple Pops

Caramel Apple Pops made by Tootsie. I actually had a Tootsie Pop while at Fanime, thanks to Candice handing them out, and it was perhaps the weirdest lollipop I had ever had. Right up until I had these when I got back. Just like Tootsie Pops, these were a strange marrying of flavours, between slightly bitter green apple hard candy and solid caramel coating. Perhaps an early warning sign should have been recognised in the appearance, spots of green emerging from a pool of brown.

The bag marketed the candy as Green Apple with Chewy Caramel. Whilst I don’t dispute the green apple, as it certainly had a bite to it that was almost a sour Jolly Rancher and was definately a contrast to the sweet caramel, I do have to question the use of the term “chewy”. I’m not actually entirely sure if it’s physically possible to chew the caramel, as the moment your teeth penetrate it you find yourself unable to open your mouth again.

If you can remember the scene from the new Willy Wonka film, the Depp version, where Christopher Lee as the dentist throws the candy on the fire while speaking of the damage candy does to teeth – this one does it all at once. If you go for the long game of sucking, it’ll rot you to hell, but if you try biting your way through you’ll end up pulling teeth out. Halloween scare stories have often featured disturbed individuals putting apples containing razor blades into kids goodie bags to disfigure them, I’m assuming that one of those individuals got a job at Tootsie just before October.

Peanut Butter Whoppers

When I first heard of Malted Milk Balls, there were two products that went through my head the chocolate Malteasers (chocolate balls) and Malted Milk biscuits (a type of rectangular cookie). As it turns out, I was closer with the biscuits. Malteasers in the UK are chocolate covered balls with a malt honeycomb centre – this honeycomb is apparently known as Sponge Candy or Sea Foam in the US. Whoppers, however, seem to be malted milk biscuit balls surrounded by chocolate, or in the case of the ones sent by Dan, peanut butter flavoured candy shell. This was definately a surprise when Dio, Jonathan and Candice took me to a candy store and I tried malted milk balls for the first time, although those were the softer centred variety.

Peanut butter isn’t really that big a thing over here, I’d imagine that most peanut products that are bought at the moment in UK are either salted nuts or as part of an Indian dish, so there is a degree of rarity for a peanut flavoured candy. They are quite tasty too, though I’m only able to eat a few a time before the taste of peanuts gets a bit much for my under-exposed taste buds. Still, they are good.

Funsize 3 Musketeers

There’s a lot of confusion at times between similar products with different names in the UK and US. This has led in the past to bars like Marathon being renamed Snickers, and a failed attempt to oust Coco Monkey from Coco Pops by renaming it to Coco or Choco Krispies, a move which met severe backlash. One of these questionable brands is the 3 Musketeers/Milky Way/Mars Bar, where, if we start with the 3 Musketeers it is known as a Milky Way in the UK, but the Milky Way is known as a Mars bar in the US, but a Mars bar in the UK is a completely different thing.

There is however a couple of differences between the US 3 Musketeer and UK Milky Way, in that the chocolate on the US version is a lot duller and a tad darker than the UK milk chocolate equivalent – a common occurence with US chocolate, as there tends to be a lot less milk used – and the UK version has a much creamier and fluffier centre. This can actually be seen as well as tasted when you look at a cross-section. Before anyone comments, I am aware I’m comparing a full-size Milky Way to a fun size 3 Musketeers, but I did actually do further research whilst away to confirm – though I wasted half a candy bar because it just tasted too wrong to finish.

The best bit of the 3 Musketeers bar is the slogan though, because no-one can deny the levels of awesome involved in “Whipped up, fluffy chocolate-on-chocolate taste”. That’s almost hardcore pornographic. How can UK candy compete with something like that?!

OMG Mars-gasm by ~GuiseDugal on deviantART

TL;DR We test Halloween candies and gifts in the summertime here, because that’s how we roll.

As KB pointed out over on her blog, July is National Blog Posting Month with the goal of posting each day in your blog or journal – I imagine producing podcasts and vlogs count too – and like Kristiane, I too am starting off behind with this endeavour. Though unlike KB, I’m starting off five days in instead of her two. I’m hoping as long as I hit a minimum of thirty-one posts, then whichever day they fall on won’t matter too badly.

I had planned from a while back to write about Summer in the UK, and specifically in my home town of Weston, and it usually isn’t until July and August that summer really starts. Occassionally the first creeping signs of Summer arrive in the later parts of June, from a few sunny days to the sale of disposable barbeque kits, but for the most part July is where the rain starts to peter out and the clouds become a little whiter. This year we already saw a few heatwave warnings when temperatures were hitting the 70′s in Farenheit.

I guess this is a good time to mention an ongoing observationist joke about the British and temperature, in that we have a habit of choosing measurements based on which we’ll be able to make sound worse. When we want to complain how cold it is, we’ll use Celsius (Centigrade) and when we want to moan about the heat we’ll use Farenheit. Yes, we did adopt decimalisation and metric systems, but we’ll still want out food weighed in pounds and our distances in miles, even if we want our cabling measured in metres and our fluids (other than milk and alcohol) in litres. Although schools started to use centigrade across the board for science classes and the like, I’m starting to use Farenheit more these days so that I can actually discuss weather with my American friends. This is one hell of a bitch though, because to convert degrees C to F, you have to multiple by nine, then divide by 5 and add 32. What sort of system is that?!

I do, of course, have some issues with the concept of a summer blogathon, in that really there isn’t that much to talk about for summer, and what there is seemed rather inconsequential when I compared in my mind against sunny San Jose outside of Summer. I guess that is rather the nature of England though, being rather downscaled and quaint. I’m going to try avoiding filler, but I know it will happen if I want to avoid missing posts.

I’m also going to do a Norb and try to sum things up succintly, though not as a basis for an entire blog, so while Steve does his excellent and highly recommended In 10 Words…, I’m going to include a tl;dr (too long; didn’t read) to the July versions that I will try to keep under 15 words – though not strictly at it.

It aint exactly Matt Caracappa’s Summer Mega-Party from X-E, but hopefully it’ll be a fun ride. We all like a fun ride…as the actress said to the bishop.

TL;DR: I may be biting off more than I can chew with this challenge. Stay tuned.