Snack Review: Dodekai Babystar Chicken Flavor Crispy Noodle Snack

I know, when I’m not complaining about the passing of the Good Old Snacking Days, I’m complaining that we don’t have such cool flavors as competing snack-making countries – not only exotic locales and their green tea mochi, but even our sedate neighbors to the north and their maple flavored cookies.

Internet, I am here to admit: this is a thing you can take too far.

I saw these chip-like things in the Japanese market and I thought, hey, why don’t we have chicken flavored snacks? Well, at least now I have my answer.

Here’s what these taste like: did you ever peel the coating off batter-dipped deep-fried chicken and eat it on its own? You know that chicken-y, floury, cooked-to-brownness taste? These have almost exactly that flavor, except with a disorienting lack of the accompanying greasiness – they’re just crunchy-chippy textured instead.

Read more

Top 10 Places to Find Free Snacks

Snacks: we eat them all the time… sometimes until no room remains for actual meals. But the term “snack” means different things to different people. While most of us agree that a snack is smaller and less filling than a meal, some would consider a Starbucks Frappuccino a snack, while others might opt for a pack of edamame or a half-order of buffalo wings. No matter what brings us individual snacking pleasure, there’s one other thing most people tend to agree on: snacks are even tastier when they’re free.

As a former poor college student, and a cheapskate in general, I’ve become somewhat of an expert in finding free food. Some of what I’ve found over the years has been atrocious, but I’ve found a fair amount of four-and-five star snacking destinations also. Below, I’ve compiled a list of my top ten places to find free snacks. My rankings are based on several factors including free snack variety, quality, and ubiquity of locations. May your taste buds be satisfied, and your stomach - and wallet - never empty!

Read more

Snack Review: Nish Nosh Mediterranean Herbs Crackers

This snack was actually embarrassing. It’s not often that I taste something and suddenly start jumping up and down going “Oh! Oooooo! Oh!”

I saw these on a trip to a local Giant supermarket which is bigger and nicer than my local Horrible Safeway. It has lots of ethnic food sections, including a section of geographically disparate Jewish cuisine including U-bet chocolate syrup and these crackers – a middle eastern flavor made by an Israeli company called Beigel & Beigel which was stated in Poland in 1880.

I admit that I was attracted to these mainly because “Nish Nosh” is a cute name. The front says the flavor is “Mediterranean herbs,” which didn’t seem all that fascinating – oregano and basil, maybe? – but when I picked it up and read the ingredients list, it said “zaatar flavored;” I popped them into my shopping cart without a second’s further thought.

Read more

Combos Nation Presents: The Ultimate Mancation Sweepstakes!

Life can sometimes bring you down. Family issues, financial woes, office stress and other factors can combine to make life undesirable at best, and miserable at worst. It’s only natural to want to escape from time to time, but vacations have a way of putting serious stress on most budgets.

Lucky for you, Combos and Nascar have teamed up to sponsor the Ultimate Mancation Sweepstakes. Not only does the Grand-prize winner of this Macho dream-getaway win a trip for himself and three buddies to the Daytona 500, the winner also gets to serve as honorary crew chief at the race! This Man-tastic, once-in-a-lifetime vacation opportunity comes complete with round-trip airfare and a six-day, five-night hotel stay to beautiful South Florida. Also included in the package: totally mantacular wheels in the form of a sports utility vehicle - and $1,000 extra spending money for all the totally hot dancers you’ll be taking for rides in that vehicle wink wink.

But wait, there’s more! If you don’t win the grand prize, Nascar’s giving away tons of mantabulous manora - I mean, memorabilia to ten lucky first-prize winners. Five hundred more will win $10 VISA gift cards - the better for buying lots of delicious Combos snacks.

• Are YOU ready? Enter the Ultimate Mancation Sweepstakes!

Top 10 Gas Station Snacks

Gas. Oil. Water.

Forty years ago, gas stations were called service stations, and that’s what you got. You’d sit in your car and the attendant would fill ‘er up with gas, check the oil and water, chat about the weather, you’d fork over a few bucks and then ease on down the road.

Today you can still get gas, oil and water for your car, but so much more for yourself! The possibilities are endless! Space and time are limited here, so enjoy the TOP TEN SNACKS you can find in a gas station. This list is certainly not definitive, but it’s based on my years of careful observation as a trained, professional snack critic.

In college I worked behind the counter at a gas station for half a summer, and the only person I ever saw eat pickled eggs was a homeless guy named Wig who washed them down with 40 oz. bottles of malt liquor. Maybe there’s a “Wig” in every neighborhood, ’cause someone’s eating these things. I’ve heard they’re popular in midwestern taverns, so maybe you have to be pickled yourself to properly enjoy them.

Read more