Whole Foods Finds: So Delicious Cococcino and Kite Hill Ricotta

I have a confession to make: I no longer have any self-control when I go into Whole Foods.

Today I felt like they could have used a video of me doing my shopping in there as a training exercise for advertisers, entitled “How to Make the Customer Want to Buy EVERYthing.”  The secret?  Put a vegan label on it and This Girl will buy it.

Like seriously, I was waiting in the express line, which is bordered on either side by a 5 foot wall of snack products, and as I moved down that aisle my arms would just shoot out left and right, grabbing whatever was nearby.  So many amazing products, both familiar and new, were just staring at me, waiting to join the heap in my basket.

Included among my haul were some Primal Strips (one of my guiltiest pleasures and something I always have in my purse for emergencies) and some chocolate chip cookie dough Larabars (can’t ever have enough of those, right?  Plus they were on sale for only $1!).  I did manage to resist the bags of Kale Krunch, because even in my weakest moments I can’t justify paying $5 for what is essentially two bites of food.  [As always, these are not affiliate links.  I simply link to the products’ webpages in case anyone is curious as to what I’m talking about.]

And then I turned the corner and saw this:

Oh ye shining beacon of beauty.  I think I actually stopped dead in my tracks and simply stared at it for a moment.

Quick back-story is that I first started drinking coffee during my sophomore year of college at NYU, when I would grab one of those bottled Starbucks sugar-bombs frappuccinos before my late afternoon classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays from the cafe across the street (which accepted Declining Dollars, natch).

I guess I never thought I’d live to see the day when there would be a commercially available vegan equivalent.  And this thing is amazingly delicious.  With 22 grams of sugar (cough), it is definitely sweet, but less so than the Starbucks one, which has 31 grams.  It’s not something I am going to buy every day (neither my waistline nor my wallet can afford that), but I figured it was worth trying as a special treat and as something to share with you all.  I guess I’m just really happy it exists, and that more and more vegan products are coming out every day that are every bit as good, if not better, than their non-vegan counterparts.

Case-in-point: Kite Hill’s vegan Ricotta cheese, which I finally spotted in my local Whole Foods last week (and immediately purchased of course.  Have you been reading along this whole time?) 🙂
This stuff is a creamy, salty dream.  Since we’re all about confessions today, I’ll tell you that I ate about a quarter of the contents straight out of the container upon opening it.  I think my brain had to process how delicious it was before I could start coming up with ways to use it.

My favorite application so far is to make it into a yummy, satisfying snack with cucumbers and slivered raw soaked almonds, with a little cracked pepper on top.
Obviously it would also be beautiful in pasta.  I don’t have enough left from this container to do a lasagna, but I have grand plans for one of those next time around.

If your Whole Foods has started carrying this cheese, I highly, highly recommend it.   You can find it in the fancy cheese case.  Yup, right next to the dairy cheeses.  It’s partially off-putting and partially awesome, really.

Are you a sucker for Whole Foods too?  What are your favorite new vegan finds?