The Big Cheese

 

There’s this woman at my work. Let’s just call her “Sandie”. On the surface, we really have nothing in common. She has spiky hair and a thick South Carolina accent. She doesn’t eat sweet stuff. She views a Saturday afternoon watching football with her significant other as, well, not the most fun or worthwhile thing to do on a Saturday afternoon in the fall.

Sandie has an eclectic taste, literally. I can respect that, even if I don’t get on board with her breakfast spreads featuring various crackers, hummas, and cheeses. It’s always an interesting sight walking by her office though, especially when she’s just back from the store. Don’t tell anyone, but sometimes, when she’s down the hall doing something else, I’ll even stick my head into that office and check out her stash of snacks.

She’s pretty much got all her bases covered. There are crackers, of course, and definitely chips (she seems partial to Lay’s Sour Cream and Onion, although also seems to be a Ripples fan.) In the nature of any good perpetual snacker, she also maintains a steady stream of Cheetos.

I never thought myself a big cheese snack guy, but I’d be telling tales out of school if I didn’t admit I sometimes snag a few puffs from the big bag on Sandie’s desk. There’s just something that seems natural –in, you know, a chemical engineered way — about the finger licking, buttermilk and cheese culture tang  that enrobes those puffed corn sticks. It satisfies a basic human need to suck on ones own finger, and quenches that innate craving for cheese in powder form.

Thanks to a sample bag of Herr’s new Crunchy Cheese Sticks, I’ve been able to quench that craving without robbing Sandie’s office. If you’re looking for the crunchiest cheese snack around, look no further. These things are delicious in that go-in-the-basement-and-devour way that we all seem to retreat to when gluttony rears its head. They’re not health food by any means, but I can appreciate the commitment to baking in the cheesy, salty flavor without the use of hydrogenated oils. But mostly, I can just appreciate the crunch. 

I’ve always been a big fan of the exotic flavors of snack Herr’s has put out, munching on everything from ketchup to Sloppy Joe to Hot Dog chips. But when it comes to cheese sticks, this is one case where deviation isn’t needed. Just keep me away from my keyboard when eating on them, because there’s no way your fingers are going to escape this bag without a complete and orangey makeover.

A free sample of these snacks was provided by Herr’s. Not that free stuff influences my opinion. If it sucks, I have no problem telling you.

Cheez-Its Provolon(e) are Okey Doki(e)

My cousin Michael and I consider ourselves to be something of baked cheese snack aficionados. We both agree that there is a superiority of flavor of Cheez-Its compared to Cheese Nips, and we both  find validity in the statement that Whales kick the shit out of Goldfish. “Slightly sweeter and crisper,” as Michael opines, and I agree (Plus, a whale could totally take a goldfish in an open-water battle.) Yet while we share many similar beliefs when it comes to baked cheese snacks, we differ on the hierarchy of Cheez-It flavors.

We were wandering around Target the other day when Michael spotted a box of Original Cheez-Its and lamented the fact that his mother never purchases the original, ubiquitous orange flavor. “White Cheddar is good and all,” he said, “But nothing beats these.”

I disagree. Personally, I tend to think highly of the Duoz Sharp Cheddar and Parmesan flavor, which combines sharp but sweet, salty, a bit funky, and the always necessary  lickable coating that makes serving sizes the joke they are. But after trying the new Provolone flavor, I may just have to reconsider what my favorite Cheese-It flavor is.

With Mozzarella and Italian Four Cheese flavors of Cheez-Its already in existence, I can understand those who may affirm a certain pessimism towards another Italian inspired Cheese-It. I assure you that such pessimism is misplaced, because the Provolone Cheese-Its are sufficiently unique to warrant the attention of any baked cheese snack connoisseur.

The first element of the flavor to capture ones attention is a pronounced and enjoyable smoke flavor. The cracker itself is far from mild, with a moderate sharpness and salty flavor which also benefits from a distinctly sweet flavor on the backend. I consider it to be everything I want in a Cheese-It, and the kind of small cracker which has enough flavor to be enjoyed either singularly, or in massive handfuls stuffed into one’s face. For those of you into flavor science and understanding what makes stuff just yummy, I submit to you the snack enhancing three-word ingredient which adds that meaty-salty-goodness to these: MSG.

No word yet on its melting capabilities, but this will be one I’ll be coming back for.

Cheese-It Provolone

• Price: $2.50 (Giant)
• Rating9.0/10
• Chances I’d Buy Again: 100%

New! Keebler Cinnamon Roll Cookies

Temptation isn’t hard to come by in the walkway between Concourse B and Concourse C in the Salt Lake International Airport. Somewhere between the always alluring sight of a Krispy Kreme donut and the smell of Stout BBQ at Squatters, wafts the the most siren of aromas known to mankind.

A Cinnabon Cinnamon Bun.

I’ve walked down the hallway there more times than I can count on my fingers, each time weighing the pros and cons of the hundreds of calories of empty sugar and fat in those rolls. I know I wasn’t the only one. Tausha would be there as well. Usually around the Holidays, and always while her husband waited in the terminal. We’d see each other, inevitably, and joke of spanish class the day before and how good it was to be getting out of Logan just as the storm of the century month was rolling through. General chit-chat between friends, to be sure, although masking the prevailing thought; you order first.

I somehow managed to avert the epic if not iconic tug of the Cinnabon during those two years in which I routinely passed through Salt Lake International, but the memory of those Cinnabon’s – or, should I say, those behemoth volcanos of richly sweet dough erupting with gooey cream cheese lava — still calls to me. Reminding me of the vague memory of a childhood encounters with the massive buns, which, while I cannot place definitively in time or space, must have occurred before the notion of a calorie ever crossed my mind.

Ignorance, they say, is bliss.

Enthralled by such memories of both youthful innocence and college nostalgia, I’ve since searched far and wide for a worthy replacement, if not somewhat restrained, replacement for the Food Court’s most destructive menu item. Fortunately, my favorite elves this side of Judie from The Santa Clause seems to have come up with just the remedy.

If Keebler gets points right off the bat for partnering with Cinnabon in this venture, than they lose points for still living in the 20th century of cookie packaging. Please, Keebler, take a note from Nabisco and invest in the resealable cookie bag. I have only so much patience for chip clips and tape. Regardless of this flaw, these cookies are your standard size. Slightly longer than an oreo in diameter, they look exactly like they do on the package, with a sweet confectionary and glycerin based icing rather than cream cheese frosting.

The taste is, in a word, classic. It’s almost unthinkable to think that after all the mediocre snacks/bars/cereals/what have you that Cinnabon has leant their iconic blue and white text to over the years, we should arrive at something which actually tastes like a Cinnabon. What’s great about these cookies is they work both a room temperature and heated in the microwave. On their own, they’re moist enough to mimic an actual Cinnabon, yet firm enough on the interior “roll” portion to give the impression of crystallized sugar and butter within the dough. Speaking of that “roll,” it’s done just right. More cinnamon and rich in taste than coying, it breaks down to a gooey, warm mess when heated. I even taste the eggs in the dough. No, like for real.

I thought the icing could have been a tad thicker, but once heated it takes on a sweeter and gooier state that reminds you of freshly drizzled donut glaze. My only complaint about the cookies themselves is what you’d expect; small. A hungry hand could devour one in a single swoop, and even a conscious eater (or, say, reviewer) has trouble getting more than three nibbles out of each. Knowing such, that whole “Health Halo” might just go into effect, completely mitigating the seemingly reasonable nutrition of this little guys.

I guess you could do worse than unconsciously devouring half a box, though. At least Keebler’s latest cookie will save you from the Mall Food court, and keep you from that guilty feeling of ordering a whole Cinnabon for yourself. What it won’t do, unfortunatly, is bring back those days of chilling with friends at the Salt Lake airport, or stuffing my childhood face without those little nutrition police hanging over my shoulder. I don’t mind too much though, because for a few nibbles, you can almost taste those days.

Keebler Cinnamon Roll Cookies

• Price: $1.88 (On sale at Weis)
• Ranking: 9/10
• Chances I’d Buy Again: 100%

Lucky Charms Cereal Bars

The 100 calorie bar is a miracle of modern food science. Oftentimes packing nearly its namesake number in ingredients, it walks a line somewhere between candy and snack, nutrition and novelty. The varieties read like the demonic catalogue of Milton’s Paradise Lost, with familiar faces of Chocolate Peanut Butter Pretzel, S’mores, and Cookies and Cream promising no less in temptations. Tempting is not how I’d describe many of these, however. From the 90-calorie Special K bars my mother included in my lunch during Middle School, to the ubiquitous and puny Quaker Chewy bars which come in dozens of varieties, the 100 calorie barrier of on-the-go snacking affords us little more than a few bites of relatively ordinary sweetness and texture.

It’s physics, really, and asking something more of something which promises to provide the equivalent of roughly 1/25th my daily energy expenditure is asking a lot. But still, one can hope, can’t he?

Such was the case when I ran across a shopping cart full of clearance markdown Lucky Charms Cereal Bars before work the other day. Having decided to save the $1.15 I could have spent for a bagel at Einstein Brothers, I felt more than justified in an impulsive purchase of several of the bars – priced at 15 cents each – and decided to munch away. Small they may be, but my love of cereal likes portion control. Besides, I tend to tread carefully when purchasing childhood favorites labeled with the Big G Whole Grain promise. All due respect to the childhood obesity epidemic, but it’s my recent experience that cereals designed to counter this crisis – with their reformatted whole grain texture and lower-sugar ratios – pale in comparison to the titans of complete breakfast they once were. Lucky Charms seems particularly more sucky as of late, comprised of fewer marshmallows and less flavorful oat pieces. I blame Michelle Obama.

The bars overcome this defect with remarkable precision. They have just the right amount of sticky give that makes them the Lucky Charms equivalent to a Rice Krispie treat, and even more dexterity than their more compact elf-themed bar. Neither marshmallows nor oat pieces dominate, and, perhaps surprisingly, the dehydrated marshmallows in the bar hold a completely separate and fruit(well, not really) taste and texture profile than the marshmallow binder. What comes together is a sweet and crunchy (while still chewy) version of the classic cereal, which gets all the taste of milk and none of the hassle of actually pouring it with the yogurt coating on the bottom. ‘Yogurt’ of course, is a pretty liberal definition. But palm oil and nonfat milk notwithstanding, the marshmallows – still exhibiting a sticky glue and holding their original shapes – poke through the coating, gaining sticky and lickable crunch when kept in a lunchbox after a hard day of working the soft serve machine.

I can’t say I’d spring the 2.50 for a box of these, but I will go on record of saying that this was the best 15 cent purchase I’ve ever made at a grocery store. It’s also the most fun I’ve had with a Micro Machine Tiger Tank in a while, although I doubt the original panzers could have traversed such a treacherous environment. Clearly, had then United States deployed gigantic Lucky Charms cereal bars in Operation Overload, the war would have been over by the 4th of July.

Lucky Charms Cereal Bars

• Price: .15 cents each (clearence)
• Ranking: 8/10
• Chances I’d Buy Again: 50%

Lay’s BLT Chips

Sometimes, I see something in stores which awakens a sleeping food craving for me. Like Lay’s new Classic BLT Chips. I mean really, is there anything better than a meaty, crisp, sweet and smokey BLT sandwich on a warm summer day?

Nope. But good luck getting that iconic image from these chips. Read my review over at The Impulsive Buy, and have a great weekend!

 

Marmite Potato Crisps

Thanks to a steady dose of Kenji, I’ve for some time known about Marmite. The essential “umami bomb” of yeast extract has quite a reputation as being a “love it or hate it” topping for toast, but I’ve seldom encountered it in stores. Still, ever the curious eater, I just assumed I’d eventually stumble upon it, and what’s more, I assumed I’d love it.

So when my friend Melissa shot me over a care package from the Great White North (read: Canada) that included a bag of Marmite Potato Crisps, I damn near fell over in anticipation. That the bag touted the kindly attempts to cajole the taste buds through a supercilious claim of “good old potatoes supercharged with a heady dose of lovely marmite” certainly made me ready to give the crisps my stamp of approval, and all but provided the impetus to buy a plane ticket to England.

Much to my dismay, however, I must not “get” Marmite, because these chips seemed mundane and ordinary. Opening the bag, I discovered an odd aroma reminiscent of something I’d expect infecting the pantry of a hippie commune, and with the first taste of the crispy-but-not-crunchy “crisp,” I failed to detect much more than garlic, onion, and a weak potato flavor. There was a slightly “musky” aftertaste (for lack of a better word) with an odd lingering flavor, but the presence of the umami flavor element, if present, didn’t conform to any meaty profile.

The more and more I venture into the forray of fried potato products, the more I’m convinced that keeping it simple is better. From the humble McDonald’s fry to a simple bag of crunchy Utz Kettle Classics, I’m much more apt to favor the characteristics which make the potato great (earthy, starchy, salty) than those which try to capitalize on potentially off-the-wall flavor combinations. That being said, I’d be these if I ever saw them. If only to feign a crummy British accent to the kid asking “what the hell is this?” at the grocery store.

Marmite Potato Crisps

• Price: $N/A (another greta gift)
• Ranking: 4/10
• Chances I’d Buy Again: 80%

Coffee and Candy

When I was a little kid and had the extreme pleasure of Trick-or-Treating, my favorite candy to get was always Kit-Kats. No, not these green-tea wasabi Kit Kats I hear you can get in Asia, and not the white chocolate or dark chocolate ones they seem to pack in “fun size” wrappers nowadays. I’m talking your straight up, four-stick milk chocolate and crispy wafer Kit-Kat. There was just something about the crunch that reminded me of the Voortman cookies I loved so much, and just enough balanced decadence with the hardened chocolate on the outside as to not overwhelm the pleasure of the snacking novelty.

I hardly eat candy bars anymore. At some point I more or less banished them as “junk food,” although given my love of cereal, chips, and useless carbs, it’s a label I obviously use in an incredibly loose sense. But there’s just something that deprives the joy from candy bars as you get older, as if that childhood need for a wrapper to open gives way to a sense of having been there, done that. granola bars, protein bars — those are the new unwrappables. Not the standard Kit-Kat we’d take to school in our lunch boxes for weeks after Halloween when we were kids.

Every once and a while something new will come about though. No, not from these shores, but from a strange, exotic land. One where chocolate and crispy wafer alone don’t suffice, and children and adults everywhere are met with the comforting and sweet taste of coffee between each crunchy bite.

Coffee Crisp, you have rekindled my love for the candy bar, and thanks to you and my friend Melissa, I may never open a granola bar again.

There’s something about a King Size candy bar which makes you slow down when eating it. It’s not like those sustenance-designed granola bars we scarf down in between classes or jobs. Probing the 50-gram Coffee Crisp bar like the alien creation of cocoa mass and soya lecithin it is, you soon develop your own style for eating it. Perhaps you start around the edges — licking the hardened milk chocolate coating before chipping the shards off with your front teeth, or maybe you work meticulously to extricate the thin sheet of coffee cream from each crispy layer, allowing the edges to fall, like raindrops, into your steaming cup of joe besides you.

Dipped in coffee, that  smooth, milky chocolate coating takes on a smokey-sweet earthiness that recalls the processed beans to an earlier state. Now you move to dunk the whole bar into the dark roast blend, imagining yourself as some Yukon-based Park Ranger doing the Canadian version of American cops’ favorite morning pastime.  As you bring the bar back for a taste, you’re seized by the aroma, textures and tastes. A synthesis of the three tablespoons of sugar and cream coffee drinker and the all black, Ethiopian brew consumer takes place in this moment, as a spectrum of initial sweetness and smooth cream gives way to the flaky, aerated crisp.

I have heard some people choose to take their coffee black so they can have their donut and eat it too. I don’t know about a donut, but I’ll gladly take Coffee Crisp any day of the week.

• Price: N/A
• Ranking: 9/10
• Chances I’d Eat Again: 95%

Garden of Eatin’ Sweet Potato Corn Chips

It seems like it was only a few years ago that the coveted sweet potato chip was something you could only find made by small batch specialty companies like Route 11. These days, thanks to the likes of UTZ and the boom of the natural snack industry, it’s pretty much impossible to walk into any grocery store and not find some take on a fried sweet potato snack. But sweet potato corn chips? That’s the kind of thing you’ve got to look in Big Lots for.

Garden of Eatin’ makes some solid corn chips as far as I’m concerned (respect for anyone cooking up con Blue Corn) but their website seems thin on the details of these corn and sweet potato based chips. I wasn’t sure what to expect after seeing a bag in Big Lots a few weeks ago, but given my fault of absolutely having to buy anything sweet potato based, I decided to give them a shot.

As someone who puts copious amounts of high fructose corn syrup, sucralose, and the occasional partially hydrogenated oil molecule into my bloodstream, I could honestly care less that these are organic. Nor do I care that they’re gluten-free, which apparently has become all the rage these days. What I care about is that they’re a worthwhile take on sweet potato chips, and don’t come out burnt like the chips from Terra Exotics.

The texture is somewhat weird. The chips flake quite easily, and aside from the orange hue, more or less pass as corn chips. They do however display quite a bit of crunchy sugar granules on the surface, which give an odd contrast to the blackened spots you usually find on corn chips. Few come out as completely intact triangles, instead displaying a battered chipping (no pun intended) as the pyramidal object shows.

The initial taste is pure corn chip, albeit with a cinnamon-sugar sweetness. The corn has a strong toasted flavor, but the contrast in sweet and salty doesn’t seem as natural as plain old corn nut chips and chocolate chips (take my word for it, an addicting combo!) The chips themselves don’t have the usually strong crunch you associate with pure corn chips, and you can tell there’s some starchy element in there which has kept them from being as sturdy as you’d like. The sweet potato taste is there, but it’s neither earthy nor caramelized, spicy or intense. It comes together better when you eat several chips at a time, but it’s nowhere near the near flawless execution of the UTZ Sweet Potato Kettle Chips I’ve grown to love.

It’s interesting that the Garden of Eatin’ folks didn’t look to use the smokey backheat of chipotles in the seasoning blend, and I’m kind of at a loss why they wouldn’t. It seems a natural fit given that chipotle has been employed in both chips and sweet potato fry applications, and given the otherwise disjointed flavors of the chip, it would make a good bridge in flavor profiles. As it stands though, this is a corn chip at odds with itself. Too sweet to dunk in salsa, but too corney to eat unadorned like a regular sweet potato chip, its best use may be providing an accurate representation of how the Pyramids of Giza would look if dusted in cheeto powder.

• Price: $1.05 (Big Lots)
• Ranking: 5/10
• Chances I’d Buy Again: 15%

New Sun Chips 6 Grain Medley: Parmesan & Herb

This time last year, I was basking in one of the most solidly enjoyable times of my life. As senior in college, I had the perfect schedule. I had busted my butt for three and a half years to get a cakewalk final semester, and I’d spend the majority of my days hanging out at Utah State sporting events, the local coffee shop, or the dining hall.

Ah yes, the dining hall. Where a fresh-faced, post mission Mormon studying education could order “The Adam” (Whole Wheat, Roast Beef, Spinach, Craisins, Red Onion, Tomato, Provolone) and where a bag of whatever kind of Frito Lay chip you wanted awaited you. As many as you wanted. All you can eat. All prepaid before the semester thanks to a academic scholarship. And, while I’d be flirting with the Armenian student serving me my Adam, all mine (the chips that is, not Ani or Ania or whatever her name was.)

Damn I miss those days. While you technically weren’t suppose to take food outside the dining hall, lets just say more than a few bags of chips would accidentally fall into my backpack. Favorites included Funyons and Baked Cheetos, but the 2 oz. bags of Sun Chips soon stacked up in my dorm room “stash” in no time. I’m not proud of what I’ve done, but to be fair, I kept the starving freshmen supplied.

Such began my love of Sun Chips. A love, I should add, which has taken a permanent hiatus since I graduated in May. There are just too many other snack options available these days, and given that my access to Sun Chips is no longer “free” nor offered in snack size bags, I haven’t had reason to return to even time-tested flavors like Harvest Cheddar and Garden Salsa (my favorite, Peppercorn Ranch, is apparently no longer sold). That was until the other day, when a coupon and grocery sale led me to grab the two “new” flavors of 6-Grain Medley chips.  You’ve no doubt read Marvo’s account of the medicore Creamy Garlic flavor, and like my fellow snack food aficionado, I can’t find much redeeming to the less-than garlicy seasoning blend. But given that no one else has chimed in on the Parmesan and Herb flavor, I figure it was my fourth generation Italian duty to fill the world in.

The grain taste is certainly prominent when you take your first bite. Six grains might be new to Sun Chips, but I’ve always found the initial multigrain corn and wheat taste to be kind of dull, and this tastes a lot like it. That said, there’s a pleasant and altogether earthy sweetness with nutty and even meaty notes that comes on the backend, a seemingly real step in convincing me that the $2.50 spent on the bag wasn’t a lost cause.

I take a pause for that cause, but find it waning as I lick a chip and hardly notice the seasoning. At first I detect only a weak taste of parmesan and an even lesser taste of not-quite-defined ’herb’, and despite getting some seasoning on my fingers, I’m getting absolutely nothing when I lick the chip. What gives?

FYI, if you dip them in marinara sauce they taste like marinara sauce

The structure, that’s what gives, and the lack of surface oil to facilitate the transfer of the seasoning. The ridge lines seem to deflect a lot of the seasoning impact, and obscure what otherwise is a decently sweet and umami flavor of the parmesan. When I lick it from my fingers it tastes like something I’d expect to get on a bag of chips with Mario Batali’s red clogs on the label, but when I bite through the chip it’s amazingly absent. All this begs the question, of course, for why we even need chips like this to get our Parmesan kick on. My suggestion? If you’re really a fan of good Parmesan and Herb flavor, just go buy yourself some good parmesan and fresh herbs and have yourself a nice toasted baguette party while watching The Chew. It might be more pretentious than that shirt Clinton Kelly has on, but hey, sometimes there’s no substitute for good old-fashioned snack food snobbery. Decent, but hardly authentic, and probably not the best way to try to rekindle my old flame for Sun Chips.

• Price: $2.50 (Weis)
• Ranking: 5/10
• Chances I’d Buy Again: 8%

Terra Zesty Tomato Chips

February, I think we can agree, is kind of a dull month. The College and NFL football seasons are over, March Madness has yet to begin, and the only exciting ”in season” produce item in grocery store seems to be the green cabbage. It’s cold but not snowing, light but not sunshining, and mostly just kind of “ugh” outside.

In an effort to boost my spirits and avoid a steady diet of processed grains and ice cream, I decided some vegetables were in order while at Big Lots a few weeks ago. Terra (aka land, thanks to my intermediate level college spanish education) chips bill themselves as exotic, and their Zesty Tomato flavor seemed to call to me like a Mediterranean cruise, only cheaper and with less chance of suburn. With a FULL SERVING of vegetables in every serving one could do worse nutritionally, while the allure of a seasoning blend of Worchestershire and celery appealed to the aristocratic snacker in me.

When I first bought these I was hoping for something Italian-themed, but the flavor itself is far from it. But that doesn’t mean the seasoning blend is anything short of exceptional. It seems a perfect hybrid of the cloyingly sweet Herr’s  ketchup chip powder and the celery salt and herb spice of a really good, kettle baked “Old Bay” chip that you’ll find at any seafood resteraunt in Annapolis. Likewise, there are strong notes of a sour a fruity tang which really brings out each of the spices, while the Worcestershire and tomato powder add a level of zing and even umami I can appreciate. All in all I’m feeling that the proper balance of salt and sugar has been met, and find myself imagining this to be a great meat rub.

The problem is the chips themselves. The sweet potato chips are almost offputting, with a less than distinct crunch (almost a crumble) that is too earthy to mesh with the tomato. For the most part, the cut of all the different vegetables is too thin to support a really strong crunch, and while a few are crisp, there is too much variability in texture. Some are even annoyingly jagged, and there while others come accross as overfriend and still others as baked. Not the most pleasent chip likable mouthfeel, of course. Above all the seasonings just don’t match the flavors. Each of the chips has a distinct flavor profile, and the almost southern/Chesapeake style seasonings — while a favorite of mine — can’t come through in vegetables that aren’t native to the region of flavor the seasoning is based in. Total fusion fail.

I was lucky enough to pick these up on sale. Call in an out-of-season special if you will, or just dumb luck at Big Lots. Based on the seasoning alone I’d almost be tempted to buy these again if it weren’t for the exotic vegetables, which, contrary to whatever claims Terra may make, probably won’t fool your kid in a blind taste test with actual fried potatoes. Zesty and exotic? Yes and yes, but so is the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, and thankfully that doesn’t come with jagged edges and less-than-crunchy sweet potatoes.

•  Price: $1.50 (Big Lots)
• Ranking: 5/10
• Chances I’d Buy Again: 25%