Tag: Kirkland

Black Irish Irish Cream: Taste Just Like Baileys

We are not huge alcohol drinkers, but I do like cream liqueurs from time to time, and Baileys Irish Cream is our “default.” Irish Cream consists of Irish whiskey, cream, cacao and sometimes other flavorings. It was invented by an ad agency back in 1973, but the Irish seem to have adopted it as their own.

We usually buy Baileys when it’s on sale, or Kirkland Irish Cream, the Costco brand, if we shop at Costco. But I saw that Safeway also carried O’Connery’s Irish Cream Liqueur for just $8-9, and I figured it was worth a try. It gets fairly good reviews and is made by a well known distillery. I do most of my purchasing online, however, and despite the fact that I always ask for no substitutions, Safeway invariably substitutes unavailable products for ones that much more expensive. So unsurprisingly Safeway sent me this Black Irish Irish Cream instead of the O’Connery. At $25, it was over 3 times the price I expected to pay, but fortunately Safeway gave me a refund. I kept the bottle, however, and today I gave it a try. It tastes just like Baileys.

I don’t really know how to describe Irish cream, and there might be some minute differences that a connoisseur could tell, but to me they taste pretty much the same. The same can be said about Kirkland Irish Cream, btw. Unfortunately, both Black Irish and Baileys cost approximately the same – at least when not on sale.


Doing some digging online, I found out that the Black Irish brand is owned by singer Mariah Carey, who realized you can make far more money selling alcohol than singing. Given the very commercial origins of Irish cream, I don’t think anyone can be upset. Still, no reason to buy it or not buy it instead of Baileys – if I had to choose between the two, I’d go for whichever one is on sale.

Kirkland Signature Chicken Street Tacos Review

Surprisingly tasty dinner is not the best deal in town

In the last couple of years, I’ve tried a few of Costco’s ready-to-heat meals and I have generally been pleased enough with them. I don’t remember exactly what tempted me to get this particular kit, but it got fairly good reviews online, it wasn’t as carb-heavy as Costco’s pastas and I probably had no other plans for dinner that night. In all, I was fairly happy with it but I found it to be overpriced at the $19 instacart price, so unless I’m actually at Costco and it’s significantly cheaper, I don’t think I’d get it again.

The kit consists of moderately spiced cooked chicken, shredded cabbage, shredded Mexican cheese, a quartered lime, pots of salsa and cilantro lime crema and 12 small flour tortillas. The chicken had a pretty good flavor and it was fairly moist. To warm it up I simply heated up some oil on a skillet and cooked it, stirring often, for a few minutes. It didn’t dry out but it did acquire a nice charred flavor on some parts. The salsa was pretty standard and also a tad spicy – I would have preferred pico de gallo myself, but then again, I often do. The cilantro lime crema was OK, but I also would have preferred plain old sour cream and chopped fresh cilantro. Now, I understand the difficulty of including cilantro in a kit like this, but the crema was really not a good substitute. Finally, I did miss the kit not including guacamole.

Altogether, the ingredients put together on a tortilla made very tasty tacos. Perhaps not as good as those from my corner’s Mexican restaurant, but still tastier than I had expected.

The main problem with the kit is that it’s just not very large. I’d say it feed 2 hungry people or 3 if you use up all the cabbage and tortillas. Now, that’s not bad for $19, but not great either, in particular when compared to the just-cooked and ready-to-eat fiesta packs from El Torito – which cost twice as much but give you more than twice the food, plus which you don’t need to heat up.

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