Product Review: President's Choice

I recently had a big box delivered to my door, containing a variety of very different President's Choice products to try out and share with my readers. The selection of items was wide, from drinks to snacks to breakfast. Including chocolate, which you may have already read about here.

Beans and Caviar already sampled and reviewed the chocolate, the oil and the soy beans, so I thought I would go in a different direction and tell you about some completely different products.

Let's start with the tea, the Fair Trade Orange Pekoe Tea.

For those who don't know, a Fair Trade product is one where everyone involved, including the planters and the harvesters, receives a fair wage, not the pittance that is frequently paid to the workers. Yes, this can drive the price up for the consumers, but it is, as the name says, a fair trade. I'd rather pay a bit more for a quality product, knowing that my purchase is helping to provide for a decent wage to another family somewhere in the world, then pay a lower price where the profits are going to a sweatshop.

And now that I've gotten my "views" out, lets to back to the actual tea. For years when I've had Orange Pekoe tea, it has been Tetley. It probably won't be Tetley anymore, I like this tea and I like it alot! It has a nicely balanced flavor, no bitterness in it at all. And I imagine it would make a very flavorful tea bread. I'm not a tea expert, or a tea snob, I only know what I like and I like this tea, both for its flavor and its stand on fair trade practices.

Taking the same stance is the President's Choice Fair Trade coffee - my package was of a medium African roast, fine grind.

Now I don't drink coffee, I don't like coffee. But I know people who do, I work with several, so I brought the coffee to work with me and made them a pot.

And they raved about how good the coffee was, how nice it smelled and how smooth it was.

I'll take their word for it. They would be very happy if I left the entire bag their for them.

In addition to some fair trade products, the people at President's Choice are also in ongoing developement of many new products for their Blue Menu line. These are products that are healthier, have lower fat, higher fiber, products that are just better for you than the regular version of the same product. I already am a regular user of one Blue Menu product, their whole wheat spaghetti, which is our standard pasta and my families favorite.


New to the Blue Line is the 100 calorie cookie packs, including this one for the Ginger and Lemon cookie. These cookies have a nice, bright flavor, with the lemon being front and center, just how I like it. Bitting into one of these little crunchy cookies is a burst of lemon flavor. That said, after that first bite, I did not like the texture, finding it similar to a meringue, sticking to my teeth.

My children, on the other hand, overrulled me and said they loved them and did we have any more? While the 100 calorie packs are just fine in size for me, two hungry boys after a substantial after school snack found them too small.

Now I have a confession to make here: as much as I liked some of the products sent to me, and I appreciate the chance to get to try them, my absolute favorite was probably not one of the "products" that were on the list of items for review. I can't help it though. When my box arrived, with all the President's Choice items in it, they were all nicely packaged up inside one of the improved PC Green shopping bags.

I love these bags. I like the size of them, the length of the straps (the right size for slinging over your shoulder), the weight of the fabric, the color of the bag. And that they are machine washable.

Plus, at $0.99 a bag, they are a good price, a very good price.

Which is why before this one came into my home, I already owned six of them. There is one at my feet now, filled with my recipe binder that I am working on sorting through. There is one in my vehicle, holding my shoes for work tomorrow. And one on my oldest son's bedroom floor, holding his drum lesson supplies. There are 2 in my grocery bin at the front door, and the last one is in the laundry room right now, waiting for me to do a load of laundry.

These bags are so versatile and useful that the last time I participated in a Blogging by Mail, I included a bag in my package.

My thanks to the people at President's Choice for the bag of goodies, and as you can guess, most especially for the new bag to add to my collection.