Cool Summer Drinks: Taste Testing the McDonald's Frozen Strawberry Lemonade and Seattle's Best Iced Canned Coffees

"Hot town, summer in the city..."

As the weather starts to warm up (well...in Boston, EVER so slowly), nothing makes me happier than chilling on my apartment complex's rooftop with a nice cold beverage. Since one of the (awesome!) job duties as EIC of financefoodie.com is getting the scoop on all things new, cool, and yummy, I decided to do a little taste test of two new summer drinks that have hit the market: McDonald's Frozen Strawberry Lemonade and Seattle's Best line of Ready to Drink Iced Coffees. So what did I think? Read on and see!

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McDonald's Frozen Strawberry Lemonade
Calories: 270cal / 16oz small
Retail price: starting at $1.69

So I had HUGE expectations for the frozen strawberry lemonade (SL) cause I'm such a big fan of the rest of McD's McCafe menu. And I left the taste test...well...a bit disappointed. Now don't get me wrong, this lemonade ice slush swirled with strawberry syrup wasn't horrible, but it definitely comes in last compared to the rest of the McCafe lineup. The sunrise-colored SL has a nice tangy / sweet combo, but the after-taste was really cloying. The drink reminded of my childhood Slurpees from the local 7-11 -- complete with a brain freeze and glucose high. Now that I'm old and less tolerant of insulin roller coasters, I definitely needed a nice tall glass of ice water to wash the SL down.

A word of advice: be sure give the drink a good stir before consumption as the lemonade slush is added on top the strawberry syrup -- I forgot to do this during my first test and I ended up with a mouthful of pure strawberry C6H12O6.  Bottom line: the SL is a pretty drink, but I'm sticking to the McCafe smoothies.

Seattle's Best Ready-to-Drink Iced Canned Coffee

Calories: 130cal / 9.5oz can

Retail price: $1.49

Following a successful West Coast test in 2010, Seattle's Best decided to roll out their line of iced canned coffees nationwide earlier this year. So I know I was supposed to have given up coffee, but I lasted about a month before I returned to the IV drip (hey, E is for effort!). I tried all three flavors in the SB lineup: Iced Latte, Iced Vanilla Latte and Iced Mocha Latte. My favorite? The Iced Vanilla (not pictured -- drank it too fast!) -- the nice subtle vanilla flavor really "jazzed up" the drink. Plus, at about a buck fifty a can, this is a lot cheaper than my usual tall iced coffee from the 'Bux -- given my hefty grad school tuition the next two years, I'm glad to be saving some dough wherever possible.

I also liked that the aluminum can the drink was served in made it easy to quickly chill and enjoy (I literally can throw a warm can into the freezer and it's chilled within 5 minutes). Bottom line: a great pick-me-up throughout the day and a cheaper alternative to going to the coffeehouse for a caffeine fix.

**********Giveaway**********


Prize Pack #1 - Congrats #45 Foodtex 
Prize Pack #2 - Congrats #134 MrCoffeeBean

Since obviously all opinions are subjective, I’m giving two lucky readers the chance do their own summer drink sampling on financefoodie.com's tab!

Prize Pack #1

-5 coupons for a free small McDonald's Frozen Strawberry Lemonade

-$25 Arch Card 

Prize Pack #2

-Nine cans of Seattle's Best Iced Canned Coffee

You can enter up to THREE times:

1. REQUIRED: In my comments section, tell me what prize pack you want and why.
2. Follow Finance Foodie on Twitter (leave a separate comment telling me this)
3. Reblog / Retweet this giveaway (leave a separate comment telling me this)

Contest ended Friday May 27 at 5pm EST. Winners will be chosen via random integer generator on random.org announced on the financefoodie.com site shortly afterwards that night!

[Full disclosure: giveaway provided by McDonald's and Seattle's Best. Arch Card was purchased by financefoodie.com]