Go Max Go Vegan Candy Bars, Millennium's Southern Comfort Dinner, & more Brownies!

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We've all perused the candy aisle at our local store, reading ingredients, only to find most everything is not vegan or filled with questionably sourced items. Well, no more! Go Max Go Foods, a vegan owned & operated company, is aiming to fill your candy void with their four new candy bars in varieties similar to those you may remember! I was lucky enough to get my hand on all four flavors & thought I'd give you a run down of each one.

I started with the Buccaneer, a candy bar in the style of 3 Musketeers. Thick, sweet, nougat covered in a rice-milk chocolate coating, this bar was delicious. While the nougat isn't as fluffy as I remember the non-vegan version being, I was still more than happy to eat this!

Next, I broke open the Twilight, which also contains nougat, but it also has a layer caramel in rice-milk chocolate, ala Milky Way. I loved the caramel in this, as I'm a big fan of anything caramel! Both of the bars were very sweet, so I was able to reign myself in & eat them over a few hours, instead of devouring them in one fell swoop.

I tried the Mahalo, a sweetened coconut candy bar topped in roasted almonds & coated in chocolate, but I'm not the biggest coconut fan & I didn't like Almond Joy bars, so I passed this on to my husband. We both agreed, it tastes like German Chocolate Cake filling, which is his favorite, so he was more than happy to take it off my hands.

Finally, the Jokerz bar was liberated from it's wrapper & headed to my stomach! While I wasn't a huge Snickers fan in my pre-gan days, this one sounded the best to me, hence saving it for last. Roasted peanuts, rich caramel, & peanut nougat in rice milk chocolate? Yes, please! I have heard people say it has too much caramel, but I'm a fiend, so I was thrilled. While I enjoyed all of the Go Max Go Bars, I think this may be the one I find myself craving most.

These fabulous candy bars by Go Max Go are still being added to stores around the nation, so check out the webpage to see if they're sold near you or get over to Food Fight, Cosmo's Vegan Shoppe, or Vegan Essentials to place an order!

Every year, Millennium, San Francisco's vegan fine dining establishment sheds their formal gear & goes country for the Southern Comfort Dinner. I've attended the past two years & this year was another night of fun, food, & friends. This year our table of 9 included friends old & new, including Megan from The Sisters Vegan & Jenna from Vegan Dance Machine.

While some of the table started off with the uber classy bucket of beer, the whole table was treated to a bread assortment from jalapeno corn bread to bacon beer bread with a chive butter, as well as complementary "squished lemonade" & "sun tea".

Next up, a platter of "Branson's Style Nachos Supreme" hit the table with chips piled high with "Cheese Whiz", chorizo, black beans, guacamole, olives, & scrumptious Fried Green Tomatoes! It's funny how a gourmet restaurant can make something so basic taste so good! As we finished our nachos, the "Iceberg Wedgie" arrived. While most people aren't iceberg lettuce fans, this wedge topped with tomatoes, cucumbers, honeydew melon balls, & strangely realistic tofu "egg" crumbles, & house-made 1000 island dressing could tempt just about anyone.

With a selection of entrees to choose from with names like, "Muther Tucker's Oyster Dog" & "Pee Wee Epstein's Shake & Baked Seitan" it was hard to make a decision! I landed on the "Danielle's Hamburger Help Her Sheppard's Pie", which turned out not to be much of a pie, but a small bowl of walnut & mushroom filling with English peas & maitake & morel mushrooms, topped with mashed potatoes. While I was skeptical of the presentation, it was delicious! All dishes came with a side of buttered vegetables, (very strong) bourbon baked black eyed peas, & poppy seed & currant slaw, although none of them really grabbed me.

For our final course, we had a choice of "Muff Cake", something between a muffin & a cake, to take to the DIY (Decorated It Yourself) Bar. While this was similar to last year's Brownie sundae dessert, the toppings bar was lacking in options this year & although our reservation was early in the evening, some options had already run out. Thankfully, the "cherry popping" ice cream was good, as none of us were impressed with much else on the sweets side. That being said, the Southern Comfort is a creative & kitschy yearly event that I always look forward to attending. Look for me next year!

While it seems all I do is travel & dine out, that's not the case! Most of the food I have been making at home is less than inspirational, but I did whip up another batch of brownies, this time for the birthday of my girl Laura B. over at Vegansaurus! Having a few more Dandies Vegan Marshmallows on hand, I decided to use them for Fluffernutter White Chocolate Chunk Brownies! These deep, fudgy brownies with marshmallows, white chocolate chunks, & a peanut butter swirl top were so rich, they were cut in to bite size pieces, a perfect way to keep everyone from sugar overload. They flew off the table fast, so I'm guessing that means they were a hit!