Snack Review: Snack Patrol Cheese Jerky

Some words just naturally seem to fit with “jerky.” You know, like “beef.” Or perhaps “turkey.” Heck, even “soy” doesn’t seem too far-fetched. Even vegetarians get cravings for salty bits of high-protein chewing gum now and again.

On the other hand, there are some things most sane people never want to hear directly before “jerky.” “Sofa,” for instance… and I can’t imagine many people would be too anxious to try Cigar Jerky. Then again, most people wouldn’t touch a product called “Cheese Jerky” with a ten-foot pole, either. After all, cheese is basically rotten milk. How would someone go about drying that out and turning it into jerky?

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Snack Review: Deep River Asian Sweet & Spicy Chips

 

Deep River chips and snacks have been the “Snack of the Day” on the Rachael Ray Show, and magicianPenn Gillette called them a “damn good chip,” ranking their Rosemary and Olive Oil Chip third on his list of Top 10 Best Potato Chips.

With such endorsements, I thought I’d give Deep River a try. Besides, I’m a fool for quality kettle chips; I just can’t get enough. When I dug into the bag of their Asian Sweet & Spicy chips, I admit I was skeptical. Would these chips taste like cheap and greasy Chinese takeout? What do Rachel Ray and Penn Gillette know anyway? Apparently, they know a lot.

Oh Grasshopper. These were fresh and delicious.

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Snack Review: Kettle Brand Chips

The enlightened snack purveyors at Snackaisle.com sent us a huge box of assorted treats. It was a wonderful thing they did, but it transformed the Snackerrific Review Lab into a feeding frenzy of snack sharks. Chip dust everywhere, dry-roasted edamame husks on the desks, Lara Bar wrappers strewn all about - oh, it was ugly.

Based in New Hampshire, Snackaisle is an online source for tons of all-natural, low-fat, low-sodium, gluten-free snacks, too many to mention now. We’ll be reviewing many of them here over the next few weeks.

Kettle Brand Baked Salt & Fresh Ground Pepper Chips
It was only a 4 oz. bag, but the contents disappeared (during the aforementioned feeding frenzy) in about 10 seconds. I snagged enough chips for myself to know that they’re simply the tastiest potato chips I’ve eaten in years. It was all I could do to keep from licking the inside of the bag.

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Snack Review: Japanese Snack Three Course Meal Roundup

Maybe it was just that I couldn’t stand the idea of going out in the cold and rain again to go grocery shopping. But the box I got from our good friends at jlist.com looked like it contained all I needed for a balanced meal. I had a spicy main dish in these Tohato habanero flavored crackers, a vegetable in asparagus Pretz, and my starch and dessert all rolled up into one in Meiji Usuyaki rice crackers coated in white chocolate. What could be more efficient?

The Tohato crackers are very neat little rings with a reddish-orange color that warns of their heat, if you hadn’t already gotten the message from the evil grin on the drawing of the pepper on the front of the bag. My Japanese isn’t up to deciphering the ingredients, but I am guessing this is a wheat cracker. It kind of doesn’t matter, because whatever it is, it’s just a vehicle for the spice. They’re either baked, or fried really brilliantly, because they’re not the least bit greasy.

These are a really fun snack if you like hot food. They are hot enough to wake you up - good idea in this cold rainy weather, as it turns out - and the heat lingers but not so much that you can’t eat more of them.

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A Dissenting Opinion: Micheal Season’s Honey Chipotle Chips

The people at Micheal Season’s are masters at putting their products in the hands of capable snack reviewers, so both Rachel and I wound up with a bag of Micheal Season’s Baked Honey Chipotle Chips. Yet, despite our superior snacking skills, we’ve managed to come up with starkly different opinions on this product, just as experienced wine tasters often disagree on the best years for Burgundies (I still say the ‘92 was better than the ‘03, dammit!). So sit back and relax as I make a case for my new favorite chips, Michael Season’s Baked Honey Chipotle.

As I’ve stated before on this blog, I’m a spicy snack lightweight. This hearkens back to the days when my dad would pay me a dollar to eat a Blue Chip, and I would spend the next fifteen minutes with my tongue under the kitchen faucet (that dollar was totally worth it, though).

My fear of all things spicy was only reinforced by traumatic food accidents – such as the time I was eating fried vegetables at a Chinese restaurant, and accidentally swallowed a whole chili pepper. After losing hearing in my left ear, I sprinted out of the restaurant (sticking my friends with the check) and into a nearby CVS, where I ripped open a gallon of milk and chugged it until I felt nauseous. That chili pepper haunts me to this day.

So, imagine my surprise when I tried one of Michael Season’s Honey Chipotle chips and f’ing loved it.

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