Tales of the Salty Bag

On a recent trip I picked up some records and some salty snacks. Of these records and snacks I picked up two based on packaging. Tasty Nuts (Haldiram's Nagpur, Taste of Tradition, Indian Snacks, Tasty Nuts, Spicy Peanuts, "Spiced coated fried peanuts" to be exact). I saw these gems in the store and thought, "Who doesn't want some tasty nuts?". They come in a maroon bag with a picture of the nuts taking up half of the space while lettering and the Haldiram's logo taking up the rest. When it was time to get to snacking I poured some nuts into my hand to view some peanuts that have a light yellow almost flaky coating sprinkled with a red seasoning powder. I popped them into my mouth and was delightfully met with peanuts covered in a light (almost flakey?) crunchy coating. The seasoning on the nuts is fairly spicy. Something like a hot chili powder with a hint of mesquite? and possibly a hint of lime? [I'm not great with labeling spice but these nuts a...

When I was a kid there only seemed to be 2 kettle cooked chip brands;. Dutch Crunch and Miss Vickie's. Miss Vickie's always seemed expensive and were a treat, for the longest time MV's Sea Salt & Vinegar were my jam (they're still pretty good). Then I either started looking around..or the market flooded and there were Kettle Cooked chips everywhere. Either way, Miss Vickie's eh? A while back I cracked a bag of MV's Balsamic Vinegar & Sweet Onion. When I took a whiff there wasn't really anything to write home about. The chips are Standard Miss Vickie's, nice kettle cooked chip weight and crunch without being overly greasy. When chip met maw my taste-buds were initially treated with some tangy vinegar flavour (it's present but not aggressive)..soon the vinegar tang becomes sweet letting it's balsamic roots shine through. Initially it wasn't until after swallowing that the onion became present with the aftertaste being similar to sour cr...