I would argue that I am a person of refined tastes. I am able to appreciate the perfectly simple pleasure of an unadorned potato chip without extra flavor powders sullying its spudly purity. I scorn fancy ice cream flavors with seventeen kinds of chunks and swirls mixed in. I of course feel this shows my culinary sophistication, rather than being evidence that I have never outgrown the three year old’s dread of having different foods touch on my plate.

One combination that always works for me, though, is banana and chocolate, whether it’s that Starbuck’s Vivanno thingy that they aren’t allowed to call smoothies, or else my own frozen banana concoction – which has taught me the virtues of the frozen banana. So I was attracted to these, although the name Banana Babies seemed a bit gruesome. And they didn’t let me down.
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I am deeply suspicious of snacks that make health claims. Healthy eating doesn’t mean giving up pleasure in food. That won’t make you live forever – it’ll just feel that way. As long as you get all your fruits and vegetables and so on at meals, there is nothing wrong with a snack that’s just junk once in a while.

What’s more, I’ve lived through enough bogus food trends – oat bran, low fat snacks that ended up having twice as much sugar, people eating nothing but bacon and meat and thinking it is a health diet – to have learned that any health claim is going to be used as a way to make money by companies whose only interest in your health is whether you have the strength left to take your wallet out of your pocket.

So when I was asked if I wanted some samples of these to review, I was all, “Bring them on! You can’t fool all of the people all of the time! I wasn’t born yesterday! Etc.!”
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This mystery is part of a series set in Sicily, which has been made into TV shows in Italy that I have been watching on an obscure cable station in my area. It finally occurred to me to go and try to read one of the books that the series was based on. And when I saw that my bookstore had the one called “The Snack Thief,” of course the choice was easy.

The series features as its main character Inspector Montalbano. Montalbano is both an individual and a classic character in many ways: loveably difficult to his devoted staff, strictly moral but willing to tell a lie in a good cause – even if sometimes that cause is less about solving a case and more about standing up his long-distance girlfriend on New Year’s Eve because his cook is making rice dumplings (arancini di riso).

Montalbano has an intense appreciation of good food. He’s not much of a snacker, but given the meals that are described in the books, it’s easy to see why – he can’t possibly have any room left for anything between-meals:

He gobbled up a saute of clams in breadcrumbs, a heaping dish of spaghetti with white clam sauce, a roast turbot with oregano and caramelized lemon, and he topped it all off with a bitter chocolate timbale in orange sauce. When it was all over he stood up, went into the kitchen, and shook the chef’s hand without saying a word, deeply moved.

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This was tough. What with all the excitement over the election - I never thought I’d live to see people celebrating an election in the streets like a sports win - I was feeling unusually patriotic.

So, comparing these Vermont-made cookies to the Canadian Dare maple cookies, I wanted them to be better. I expected them to be better. They were prettier, for one thing. And larger. And had a nice rustic effect with different amounts of cream in each one, not so factory-made looking. And, Vermont. What could be a more maple-y, all-American place?
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Cape Cod makes the best potato chips on earth. Hey, I’m some person who writes stuff on the Internet - you know it must be true. And potato chips are the best salty snack on earth.

But, for that very reason, I don’t like flavored potato chips, and don’t understand why Cape Cod ever started making them. Why would you want to take the greatest snack on earth, already perfect exactly as it is, and add stuff to it? How can you improve on perfection?

So normally, I would never have tried these. But the other day I found myself eating a sad, boring bag lunch while sitting next to a large box that was half full of tiny bags of these chips. They were free for the taking, and it was a very lame lunch indeed that I was eating. And the bags were so tiny that even if I had to throw away most of the contents of one, well, I would not feel very guilty about not being able to send them to the starving children in whatever country modern parents threaten their offspring with the starving children of.
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