Well, it's BzzAgent time again! (It feels like it's been quite a while, doesn't it?!) This time, I was fortunate enough to get to try some of the new grilling line at Kroger! This has been right up our alley! (As soon as he isn't going to get frostbite from standing in front of the grill, Mike likes to turn that grill on and start cooking a fair share of the meals!) When the vouchers came in (I was given a coupon for free patties, free buns, free pop, and free chips to try and share my opinion on!), we couldn't wait. As soon as we found out about the campaign, we started stalking the products in our local Kroger figuring out just what it was we were going to try!
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| The rain started falling after we invited friends over and turned on the grill, but we grilled through it anyways! |
What did we end up with? Well, we decided on the new turkey burger patties, some wheat buns, plain wavy chips, and some Dr. K. On our way to our local Kroger, we called two of our friends (for the sake of the innocents I'll refer to them as K and M) and asked them if they wanted to join us in our test. They met us at our house when we got back from the store! Mike got his grill started, the burgers were tossed on, we we all sat around with pop and chips excitedly...and then the rain started! At least we only got a few sprinkles of rain (I guess there was technically a tornado warning for our county during all this with sirens going off less than 30 minutes away, but we had no idea!) Those burgers smelled too good to just abandon for a little rain. Huddling under trees and trying to bury the chips under plastic bags we toughed it out!
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| Mike prepping the grill. |
We had some great times sitting in the rain smelling our turkey burgers cooking. When the burgers were done, we all lined up and started constructing our "creations". Now, in all our excitement, we forgot to pick up extras. What we all ended up eating was a mix of turkey burger, bun, mustard, ketchup, and chips for those who wanted chips on the burger. We ended up having to cook the whole bag because everyone loved them (and with about 12 patties in a bag and there being four of us, we each ate about 3 burgers!) Overall, everyone loved them (my personal reviews of the products are coming in a bit!). Mike and M both felt like the preseason-ed patties could use a bit more seasoning, but K and I both were happy with the taste. As the sun set and the mosquitoes started to come out, M and K left to return home and Mike and I rested and talked about the great meal.
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| M with his turkey burger face :) |
So, I think I'll start my personal reviews in reverse order from how I listed them (because I feel like being slightly odd today :) ). When I drink pop, it's primarily dark pop. I've never been much of a light pop person. It's been quite a while since I've really had off brand dark pop. There for a while, my stomach was extremely sensitive to off brand pop (I still have no idea why) but brand name ones wouldn't make me sick, so I just stopped drinking non brand name pop. My favorite pop (of course) is Dr. Pepper, so Mike made sure we got the Dr. K to test! I found Dr. K to be slightly sweeter than Dr. Pepper (my guess as to what pop it is mimicking), but I enjoyed the difference of it rather than finding it lacking because of that. Dr. K not upsetting my stomach also went leaps and bounds as far as endearing it to me! (we've bought a few two leaders since we got the twelve pack and I'm still liking it!)
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| K giving her approval for the turkey burgers! |
The next thing I'll review is the chips! Mike and I don't normally keep snack foods stocked in our house. It's not that we don't like them per say, it's just that we normally forget to buy them. It's been a LONG time since I've eaten chips (even when we do things like subway, they either end up in my purse smashed to smithereens and then given to Mike or given to Mike right away). I know, I know, it seems like I just don't like chips. That's not it, I promise! I don't like the slimy residue that they often leave on your fingers. If I'm eating junk food, there's a good chance that I'm at my computer or reading my kindle. Nasty greasy fingers never adds up to a good equation. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Wavy plain potato chips were not only super tasty, but that they didn't really leave much of the greasy chip mess. Now, like I said, it's been a long time since I've eaten chips, so maybe the world of chip making has just come that far and I didn't know it, but I really enjoyed these chips. (I also might feel differently about the flavored ones since the flavor coatings tend to bother me as well for the same reason). Mike and I have actually bought a couple of bags to have around the house since the testing (and Mike immediately said "I've missed you junk food!"). These get a big thumbs up from us here at Adventures in True Love!
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| K and M eating chips and drinking pop before the rain started! |
Next up, the buns! I'll start by saying, I love bread. Really really love bread. That means that I hate nasty tacky (you know that feeling you get when while chewing your bread you suddenly feel like a cow?), tasteless, cheap bread. I make a fair amount of bread from scratch (actually I learned to bake so I could feed my good bread addiction!) just so that we don't encounter this! This is probably why we always forget to buy buns for grilling. We never seem to have hamburger or hot dog buns. (I'm guessing there's some repressed memories of terrible buns ;) ) Heck, nine times out of ten, I'd rather just skip the bun or use bread instead when I'm at someone else's cookout! That being said, the wheat buns were impressive. You know when you go to that nice burger restaurant and you order the gourmet burger that comes on the honey wheat bun and you feel like your burger is healthier just because you had the nicer bun? It was that good! It was good enough that if I can ever break my habit of forgetting to buy buns, I'd like to buy them again! If you haven't tried them, do so! (and if you try the adorable tiny little slider buns, let me know how they are! Anything small is cute!)
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| Frozen turkey burgers on the grill! |
That leaves us with the actual turkey burgers. These were tricky at first because we had a hard time locating them (for some reason our Kroger didn't have them in the frozen isle as advertised). I instantly flashed back to trying the unreal candy and struggling to find them. That aside, I don't know that I can say enough good things about these. As I mentioned before, I found the seasoning to be spot on with them (M and Mike both felt like it needed more salt and pepper). I love (yes it's a present tense since I have been buying them and currently have some in my freezer as I type!) that they have paper in between the patties and all I have to do is pull out how ever many I need for the meal and then I can cook them just as they are. These have become a go to for me when I forget to thaw meat out for dinner! They aren't a greasy burger and if you've never had a turkey burger, they do taste different than beef, but they are addictive. I've even cooked them for myself (I'm not a huge fan of cooking meals/food for one so these are really perfect for me) and as the patty thawed in it's cooking process broken it up and added veggies to it. These patties have become my new lunch time best friends! They are easy to store, cook, and especially easy to eat! I'm going to stop there because I could just keep gushing about how much I love these guys and I'm sure it would get annoying long before I felt I had said they are awesome enough times!
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| The total before my coupons were applied. A cook out for four people for 15 bucks? Not a bad price if you ask me! |
Now that you have my personal reviews, let's talk about the price of it all. As I said, I got my products for free to test and share my feelings on, but I did wait to apply the coupons until after I saw what they would have costed us without our coupons. 15 bucks to feed four people (who each ate three burgers, twoish pops, and chips). That is less than Mike and I can go out to dinner at the cheap family place down the street for! Let's be honest, money is tight for just about all of us these days and it doesn't seem like there's going to be any relief right away. Being able to enjoy friends and family without having to spend an arm and a leg (thus giving you the room to do it more often) is an amazing feat in it's own right! To sum it all up, I have to say I'm exceedingly geeked about Kroger's grilling products and I'm starting to see many Kroger visits and spontaneous grilling get backyard bashes in my summer's future!
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