Twitter can be an awesome thing.  I’ve connected with a bunch of different food bloggers via twitter, as well as a number of companies.  When I saw that Wayfare Foods was offering up free samples of it’s vegan cheese, We Can’t Say It’s Cheese on twitter, I jumped at the chance.  I had heard good things about this product for a while, but I’m hesitant to shell out a bunch of money on a product I’ve never tried.  They sent me a coupon for a free tub of the vegan cheese, which I picked up the other day at Whole Foods.

Whole Foods had both the Cheddar Sauce and the Cheddar Spread.  I bought the Cheddar Spread.  After tasting it my itself, I didn’t love it.  It has a cream cheesy tangy taste to it that I found a little weird.  It almost reminded me of that port wine cheese food that my grandma used to buy in the plastic tubs?

The color was also a little weird.

I decided to spread it thickly on some whole wheat bread slathered with Earth Balance for a vegan grilled cheese.  The problem with many vegan cheeses is that they don’t melt.  This definitely solves that problem, because it’s already a spreadable consistency.  The texture was good, but I just didn’t love the taste by itself.

I’m going to look up some other recipes because I think since the texture is really nice, and the taste certainly isn’t bad, this will taste much better mixed into another dish.  Maybe a casserole of some sort?  Mixed into mashed potatoes?  Heated and poured over broccoli?

What do you think?  How would you use a vegan cheese spread?  I’m in need of some advice.

I have a quick product review for y’all on some veggie mock-meat products I got to try when I was in Florida for the holidays.  When I first went vegetarian, I ate a whole lot of boca burgers and chick’n patties as a substitute for meat, but these days I’m not the biggest fan usually.  That being said, I had heard gardein brand products were pretty good, and figured I would give them a shot.  I found them at Publix in St. Petersburg, and picked up the Classic Style Buffalo Wings and the Beefless Tips.

I first tried the Buffalo Wings.  I baked them in the oven per the package directions, and my initial reaction was that these looked nothing like they did on the package.  They looked pretty disgusting, actually.

Appetizing presentation?  Definitely not.

Great taste?  Eh.  The texture was great, but they were unbelievably spicy, and that comes from a girl who pours Sriracha and Frank’s Red Hot over everything.  I could barely handle the heat, and my guess is that most people would find them too spicy.  The sauce just wasn’t good.

I don’t have a photo of the Beefless Tips, but they were much better looking and tasting than the wings, perhaps because they didn’t come with a sauce.  The texture was great, and the flavor was neutral enough that they tasted great both in a stir fry that my sister made and a “beef bourginon” that I made for myself for Christmas dinner.

Overall, C- on the wings and B+ on the beefless tips.  I probably won’t buy them very often, but I might pick them up every now and then.