Hmm, is this a trend? This is the second snack I’ve eaten lately that tastes like an odd part of some other food that isn’t usually eaten in isolation. There were the chicken crackers that tasted like fried chicken crust, and now these.

These are allegedly “Sharp Cheddar Sourdough Twists” which are “baked twice.” The “baked twice” might be what does it - what these taste like is the almost-burnt cheese on the top of a quiche or a casserole of macaroni and cheese. You know those dark brown parts you get if it’s cooked enough, on top or on the sides of the dish?

They actually don’t taste much like sharp cheddar, though. Also I don’t taste anything particularly sourdough. I don’t see anything in the ingredients that would make them taste that way, and I suspect that food companies use “sourdough” as a way to evoke vague associations with fancy artisan breads. But I do appreciate that they are made of real food - no multisyllabic ingredients or fake sourdough flavor.
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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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I have no idea why I bought these. I never, ever met a granola bar that I liked. I don’t know what I was thinking.

I might hate granola bars because I never met a granola I liked, either. But lately, I have found one exception, which is a Trader Joe’s Maple Pecan Granola with Flakes. They have the same cereal in several other flavors, but when I tried another – hated it. So there is really only one single granola on earth that I can eat.

That wouldn’t seem to bode well for these: they are not Trader Joe’s maple pecan granola bars. So when I put them in my basket, either I had lost my mind at the moment or… gained psychic powers?
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Trader Joes, sometimes you break my heart. If you’re going to make a snack that I can’t live without (Popped Potato Chips, I’m looking at you), you have to have them in stock every time I shop! Otherwise, I end up with something weird like these.

Here at Snackerrific, one of the four senses tends to be neglected. We write a lot about how things taste, of course, and there’s plenty of talk about how they smell, look, and feel in the mouth. But I am pretty sure this is the first snack I bought because of how it sounds.

Really. When I picked up the bag, it jangled in the oddest way. So I shook it, just to check. Yes, it made a sound like a sack full of light pieces of hardware, or maybe even decorative jingle bells. I’d never heard a food sound like that.

It was good that I was thinking about how they sounded instead of how they compared to my beloved Popped Potato Chips, or they would have been even more of a disappointment.
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I bought these because everyone should sometimes eat a snack that they can’t pronounce.

No, really, it was that I was suckered in again by the romantic foreignness of it. Look at that little crown-shaped, brown, sort of shiny thing in the picture on the box. Doesn’t it look so terribly European and traditional?

And the text on the back was just the sort of thing that I can’t resist. It’s “a specialty pastry of Bordeaux on the southwestern coast of France.” Not all over France, mind you, in every highway convenience store - no, a regional delicacy! Something grandma made, only if you came from just the right neighborhood!
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