Tales of the Salty Bag

Man, Ween makes some odd music. I was trying to remember what band sang Friends, and now I'm listening to La Cucaracha (which is the album Friends is on). Up until tonight I could only name one Ween song, you guessed it, Friends! Which is danceable and weird and triggers a fantastic dopamine rush (at least for me). I want to say it was the song that the friends section of Thanks, Brain! was edited to (might be another snowboard video, but I want to say it was at minimum in a Think Thank video [man, the Think Thank videos were {are? I haven't seen a new one in a while, but it looks like they're still sending it} dope. Thanks, Brain! was my introduction to their fun, inventive, just hype A.F. videos]). So yeah, a friend brought me back a bag of Slide Gourmet Potato Chips , Curry Garlic, from her recent trip to Wisconsin (thanks Top). The back of the bag has a quote "Hands down, the best chips I've ever had.". Well, Mr. Ryan Maurer, lets see if you've truly...

 I was strolling through the co-op chip aisle when I stumbled across a bag of co-op Gold Pure vegan cheese Protein Twists. Plant based (I'm not quite sure how they could be vegan and not plant based [that's sort of a side note though]). I figured I'd grab a bag for my walk home, paid for them and started on my way. For the walk I figured it'd be a good time to throw on the new Pip Skid album ( A Really Nice Day ) to accompany me and my snack.  I opened the bag of protein twists and took a whiff. To be honest, they smell funky, somewhere between a fart and a dirty sock. While Pip's abrasive yet catchy What are you Working On knocked around in my head with it's whiny sardonic hook I apprehensively threw a protein twist into my mouth. *Chomp chomp chomp* good crunch. *Chomp* cheddarish flavour. Pretty good lead into Pip's bouncy (I'm not quite sure if it's country or blues tinged...maybe both?) You're not the Boss of Me (ft. Leonard Sumner). Leonard...

 Gruff melodic punk, what more can you ask for. So about a month and a half (?) ago a friend texted me a picture of Cal & Garys Kettle Cooked Smokin' Sweet BBQ potato chips. "Best Served with Flames" that she found at a Calgary (get it, Cal & Garys) co-op. Co-op chips you say, smokin' sweet BBQ you say..."Made from 100% Canadian Grown Dark Russet Potatoes" you say. I had a pretty good idea what the back of the bag might say. Her and her family were out a couple weeks later and they were nice enough to bring me a couple bags to try. Flip it to the back, Great Grammy Albright would make homemade potato chips on her wood-fired pot belly stove with Grampy Aubrey's potatoes, yep. The Covered Bridge & co-op relationship is strong and we all benefit from it. Kettle cooked dark potato chips with skins abound which provide you with an earthy potato taste. The crunch is quite alright, mid to mid heavy. The BBQ seasoning is on the traditional more smoke...

 Old Dutch Ridgies has put out some interesting flavours. This past April I stepped into one of their more standard(ish) flavours (if you're Canadian)..Ridgies Extra Ketchup. As with all Ridgies, Old Dutch brings you the Ruffles style mini ridges on their chips. The flavour is slightly sweet with some fairly tart tomato. The crunch, well, the crunch is medium. There's something all dressed to these chips but I can't quite put my finger on it. I'd say that the 'extra' in this bag is the vinegar portion of the ketchup seasoning, which if you've read any of my vinegar based flavour reviews you'll know that I'm down with that. I dig these. I went to my first show since Feb(?) 2020 a couple weeks ago. I had the joy of catching Clipwing , MakeWar , Brendan Kelly (solo), and A Wilhelm Scream at the Park Theatre in Winnipeg. Here's a few of my observations: - Clipwing is a great band, I've seen them open a lot of shows in Winnipeg and they do it we...

 I enjoy tracing out band family trees in my head. It's crazy how you can trace Blink 182 back to Slapstick (who's the root of quite the family tree [extended family and all]). Recently I had my phone on random and a Banner Pilot song came on, it's probably been a year+ since I've listened to them....and they still bang. This took me back to the root of Banner Pilot, Rivethead. The tree that grew from Rivethead has provided me with a few in my top 20 all time albums. Even just taking a few of the first generation bands that they went on to form (Banner Pilot, Dear Landlord , House Boat, Gateway District) that is quite a hefty lineup. Then there's the bands that former members of Rivethead contributed to (Off With Their Heads, Slow Death), or Rivethead Cousins ( The Manix , The Soviettes). I'm not quite sure the point that I'm making in all of this, I just sort of wanted to bring light to Rivethead's Cheap Wine Of Youth EP and the undisputably great musi...

There's something odd about Old Dutch Arriba tortilla chips having a Mexian Street Corn flavour...but here I sit with a bag in front of me. They smell like yellow corn tortilla chips. Now this is quite confusing, I'm getting real cool ranch notes with a hint of spice...just a wee lil hint. These are like if Cool Ranch was walking down the street and Nacho Cheese stumbled into them but just kept walking...then immediately you picked up cool ranch and consumed them (did I mention Nacho Cheese is a bit of a slob and doesn't really shower and if they were in a cartoon they'd have stink lines emanating from them). Every once in a while lime shows up to the party, lurks around in the background for a minute..then decides this ain't their scene. The crunch is average to marginally thicker than average (yeah, I understand that those aren't necessarily the same thing, but I'm pretty sure you get what I'm saying). There's enough background noise to make these ...

 About a month ago I was shopping with one of my roommates and he picked up a bag of Miss Vickie's Sweet Southern BBQ. They looked good to me, with the lil hot pepper on the front of the bag. I tried a few chips from his bag but didn't make any notes...except for the mental note to pick up a bag so that I could write some words about them. So, about a week ago I grabbed myself a bag. Sweet and mesquite with a little bit of bite. It's not a heat that'll bring on forehead sweats, but just enough bite to add a nice heat to the flavour, gets the salivary glands going. The chips are just above mid weight kettle cooked, the odd trace of skin but in general they're primarily present to add a crunch to the seasoning. These are a nice tweak to the mesquite BBQ family. A party mix of these, Miss V's Spicy Ketchup and Miss V's Spicy Dill pickle in a bowl would be right bangin'. I was going to try to find something southern to pair with these, but nothing really jum...