Tales of the Salty Bag

A month? or so ago the mysterious Ri cky left a present in my mailbox; a lil bag of MACKIE'S of Scotland haggis & cracked black pepper (naturally grown & seasoned) Potato Crisps. I've been intrigued as shit ever since I laid eyes on the bag. A quick skim revealed that these are 'thick cut potato crisps' (lets see if they hold up to standard set by Brannigans for thick cut perfection). As soon as I cracked the bag I took a whiff..animal feed? Visually they look like a nice slab of off-white potato goodness with dark specs of flavour. Snatch, chomp..they're on the puffy side of crunchy (I personally would've liked them cooked slightly longer. That said, they're a 3.5..maybe 4 out of 5 on the Brannigans thick cut scale [so not too shabby]). From chip to chip the flavour varies somewhat. Some have a strong initial black pepper..some the pepper doesn't come on until the 2nd half of crunchtime. Either way there is a lot of black pepper in the seasoni...

If you listened to punk in the 90's I assume that you're at least aware of the "Short Music for Short People" comp that Fat Wreck put out in '99. I'm also betting that you assumed the joke died with that cd.  Well, This past spring when I was going through used 7"s at Sloth Records in Calgary I came across a 45 (from 2006) that I vaguely remember hearing of before; Short Attention - (This isn't written anywhere on the jacket, it's only shown on the actual record label...or when you purchase it digitally) Clever, Maddening & Annoying. Yes, short songs are a novelty..but when done right can be quite enjoyable. Short Attention is an east coast pop punk all star team consisting of (now mostly) former members of Dirt Bike Annie/The Slaughterhouse Four/The Ergs/The Unlovables and The Steinways. Short Attention takes short songs to an extreme delivering 29 pop punk blasts in less time than it takes to finish a bag of chips (or 8 minutes and 8 secon...

BURTS, THICK CUT HAND COOKED POTATO CHIPS...GUINESS FLAVOUR. The bag's black and the overall design makes me think of a basement beerhouse [like one with those rustic wooden tables made out of massive wooden planks..one that you might find a boot at]. When I opened the bag I found some tasty lookin' chips that didn't appear to be very greasy with visually generous powdercoating of 'Guiness' flavouring. I popped one of 'em into my mouth not really knowing what to expect. What I got was..sort of bland. I'm not a huge fan of Guiness, I'll drink it if it's there but I won't go out of my way to partake in consumption. Luckily for me these chips taste more like a salty beef broth flavour. Every few chips I think I get a faint bitter taste. Once in a while it seems like Mr. Sweet, who wasn't invited to the party [and hasn't showered in a week] but found out about it and is lingering outside the window allowing his b.o. to waft by without really ...

As I stepped out into the bright hallway from the darkness of the chip cellar I had only two things on my mind: Skinny Genes and salt and vinegar chips (Covered Bridge Sea Salt & Vinegar Old Fashioned Kettle Cooked [Dark Russet] Potato Chips [to be exact]). It was only a week ago when I opened my most recent (at this point it seems like quarterly if not bi-monthly) package from It's Alive Records . It contained two 7"s: B-Sides 4 Way Split [a cleverly themed/titled lil' guy from Rad Girlfriend Records] and IAR 's most recent release, Ugh [I can't currently find a stream of it] from Skinny Genes . I enjoy being relatively blind when listening to new music so the only thing that I knew about Skinny Genes was that they released an EP on IAR. When I put on UGH I was treated to some absolutely top notch pop punk..some of best songs that I've heard thus far in 2015. I had no choice but to keep flipping the record when the needle returned to it's resting pla...

This past week I was going through a drawer in my house and I came across an old CD binder. There was a bunch of burnt full albums in it with a few mixed cd's. One of the mixed cd's was a rap compilation that I culled together in...99..2000. I thought, 'I don't remember this being my best work, but why not take a stroll down memory lane' and popped it into the cd player in my car [it's sad that in the digital age of smart phones/ipods that kids won't get to experience the joy of narrowing their music selections down to an 80 minute masterpiece that will last for years..decades..probably not centuries..and can't be altered to suit their ever-changing taste]. Opening track; Busta Rhymes - Gimme Some More. This was followed by a Wyclef track, Black Rob's Like Whoa, some late 90's quasi-mainstream rap and then..Ice Ice Baby. Ice Ice Baby is an odd track; if you drop it in the middle of a bunch of disposable pop [say at a dance/social/etc], it can be ...

I've had a bag of Kettle Brand Sweet Onion chips in the salty cellar for a while. It took me a while to get to them because, through writing these blogs, I've come to the realization that I'm not super into Kettle Brand chips as a whole..they're generally too greasy (in both touch and taste). When I cracked open the wine coloured bag, to my surprise the chips weren't glistening in standard Kettle Brand fashion. I stared upon the "kettle cooked" slices of potato. I grabbed a crispy little one from the bag and tossed it into my mouth. [I didn't have any preconceived notions as to what the flavouring would taste like] When I got to the crunching I was greeted with a familiar taste...sour cream and onion [I've come to the conclusion that sour cream and onion chips are basically just onion but the creator didn't want them to sound that plain so they added sour cream into the name just for kicks {it should be noted that I haven't eaten sour cream...

A few months ago good ol' Ricky was in some store in Winnipeg and he stumbled across bags of Tyrrell's Hand Cooked English Chips; WORCESTERSHIRE SAUCE & SUNDRIED TOMATO FLAVOUR. He was nice enough to snatch me up a bag of these delicious sounding salty treats. The bag looks like it's trying to evoke a feeling of days gone by. The front of the bag refers to England and the back explicitly states "MADE IN ENGLAND" but they refer to the chips as, well, chips (this confuses me, if anyone from England/UK reads this, please explain to me why they wouldn't refer to them as crisps). Anyway, today I went downstairs and grabbed my bag of Worcestershire Sundried Tomato out of the salty stash..continued on to the beer fridge and pulled out a Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout (because when in England, amiright) and popped a squat on the couch. I opened the bag; yep, kettle cooked lil' things, the seasoning is pretty light based on visual inspection. I gingerly tossed a ...