Tales of the Salty Bag

This past winter homie and his (then) fiance took a little trip to India/(and Southeast Asia?). I believe they went there to pick me up a bag of Lays India's Magic Masala chips, but they also did other non chip related activities. Since they don't live near me it took a minute to get the bag into my possession..but finally last month I got em in my grubby little hands. I was actually pretty excited to try 'em, I dig me some East Indian food. Tonight as I tore open the bag and a breeze of formerly trapped air escaped to tantalize my nostrils I was greeted with a somewhat familiar scent...these chips smell very similar to Mexican Chili which honestly didn't raise my level of excitement. Since scent is just the tip of the iceberg I paid little attention and tossed one of these little thangs in my mouth. The chip is very much like a (slightly more dense) Ruffles (small ridges on a medium weight chip). The flavouring, which is fairly well distributed throughout the chips, i...

It's not hard to make an acceptable plain salted potato chip. From my experiences, chip salt is chip salt. They might say sea salt, they might say lightly salted..original, etc. at the end of the day they're just an inoffensive salted snack. For that reason it's rare for me to write about them very often on here. That said, this past week I cracked open a bag of Covered Bridge Sea Salt kettle cooked potato chips. When I took a whiff they smelt like salted potato chips. I tossed one in my mouth and initially they tasted to be on the lighter salted side of plain salted chips. As with all covered bridge chips, the crunch is a fantastic kettle cooked (not too crunchy, not too weak) and the chips are on the dry side of the kettle cooked grease spectrum. Covered Bridge always brings their A game and the sea salt chips aren't an exception with just the right percentage being well cooked brown chips and enough skin to add some real flavour to the chips. Now comes the real test ...

Sour Cream & Onion isn't the most exciting chip flavour. In my opinion it's a flavour that often gets overlooked due to it's lack of flash, bang, POW! SC&O is an inoffensive flavour..which makes my next statement all the more surprising. A month ago I was on a road trip and I stumbled upon a bag of Sour Cream & Onion in a gas station, I grabbed them and have been pretty excited to pull open the bag since. The reason for this excitement..they're Covered Bridge. When I cracked the bag tonight and took a whiff, well..there isn't much to be said, SC&O is not the most fragrant flavour. The chips look like standard Covered Bridge, some skins and just the right ratio of perfectly browned chip to potato yellow. I tossed one in my mouth and was met with an evenly flavoured somewhat thick creamy SC&O seasoning. Every once in a while the actual potato chip shines through with some skin or browned potato flavour which just adds to the the SC&O flavour ra...

I've been looking forward to? this post for a while..I think? Pringles, I believe they once went by a slogan of "Once you pop you can't stop". I have never agreed with that slogan, for as long as I can remember they've been the mountain dew to my crab juice. Whenever I see someone with a can of Pringles I seriously question their sanity. All that aside, I haven't crunched on a tube in I'm guessing 10+ years and maybe my tastes have changed. I figured that in order for me to make a serious post regarding \em I had to get me some tubes and crunch away. You know, have a fresh take on these formed and tubed "potato chips". There have certainly been Pringles flavours that have intrigued me so I snatched up a handful of tubes when they went on sale; Spicy Guacamole (actually pretty good flavour wise), Jalapeno (meh, not enough Jalap too much Pringle "chip" flavour), Pizza (kind of tastes like 3 cheese pizza pops, weird tasting faux "ch...

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...

The annual Lays "Do Us a Flavour" contest has a similar plus/minus as the weather man so when I saw that one of only four Canadian flavour contestants last summer was Wavy Lays Cowboy BBQ Beans it should go without saying that I was less than enthused. My inner monologue when I saw them, "Yay, an unrecognizable salty flavour that will taste like faux bacon and nothing, all at the same time. YOU GO LAYS!!". Why did I even pick up a bag you might ask? Well, addiction doesn't discriminate. Being that I had pretty low expectations it took me a while to get around to opening them. A couple weeks ago it was finally go time. *Snatch* *Tear* *Sniff*..well, they smelt like a can of brown beans. Into the mouth with ye, and I was met with what I had assumed, smokey "bacon" chips..there was however a hint of sweetness. Did my taste-buds deceive me, were these chips better than I thought they'd be? Yes. Were they good? Meh. Salty slightly faux smoke flavour. Af...