Snack Review: Beer Chips

Beer and food. A tag-team combination enjoyed throughout the world, and the stuff of comedic genius captured on film in such modern day classics as Beerfest. Sure, we have Beer Nuts, beer cheese soup, beer-can chicken, and beer-battered-anything-you-can-fry. But chips?

Finally, an idea whose time has come. Beer + Chips = Beer Chips. So simple. So Zen. Right there in front of us all along and we couldn’t see it.

Available in three flavors, these thick-cut kettle style chips are bold, hearty, obnoxious and fun, just like your hard-drinking college buddy. These chips are your wingman and might even take a bullet for you. (Okay, that was really over the top - it’s just the beer chips talking.)

BEER CHIPS

The company’s signature chip, these resembled standard chips in size and color. The first bite revealed the unique flavor in a high note for the olfactories: a sharp essence of strong pilsner. The flavor receded quickly, replaced with a rather sweet and malty potato taste (ingredients include barley, hops, and yeast, of course).

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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!

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Snack Review: New Combos in Zesty Salsa and Jalapeño Cheddar Tortilla

In honor of their Ultimate ManCation Sweepstakes promotion, the good people at Combos decided to send me a few samples of their merchandise. Saturday morning, a FedEx man arrived with a decently large package which turned out to contain four bags of the beloved cheese and cracker/pretzel rolls. Three were family-sized (6.3-oz.) packs, with six (supposed) servings apiece, and the other was single-serve (1.5 oz.)

Two of the larger bags were reserved for the popular snack’s first and most beloved flavors, Cheddar and Nacho Cheese. The final large bag contained the newest variety of Combos to be released (Zesty Salsa-Tortilla). The single-serve bag held another new flavor, Cheddar-Jalapeno Tortilla. Until I searched for an image of the bag, and came up empty-handed, I had no idea how new. As it turns out, this variety of Combo hasn’t been released yet, so shhhh! Don’t tell anyone!

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Snack Review: Baji’s Papadums

Papadams (or papadum or pappadom – given that there are hundreds of languages in India there are probably at least a dozen ways to pronounce it that are correct somewhere) are those spicy cracker-like things that they often bring before your meal at an Indian restaurant. I was attracted to these chips first of all because I like papadams, but also because my latest favorite chip reminded me of papadams, as I will explain, in utterly fascinating detail, with illustrations, below.

If you’ve only had them in a restaurant, you don’t know the really cool thing about papadums. If you live near an Indian grocery, you can buy a package to cook at home. In their raw state, they are very odd, almost like semi-transparent plastic – you can see my fingers through the one in the picture:

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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!