2022 Snack Round Up

I have to make room on my phone, so I’m going through and finding photos, voice memos and notes about snack tastings that I have left incomplete. Here’s a roundup of stuff from 2022…

March 8 Hariboo Smurfs: Not worth the sugar.

March 15 Smartfood Cinnamon Sugar Cupcake flavored popcorn: These were delicious, but of course, limited editions with a scary amount of ingredients. After I finished the bag, I became a bit obsessed with sweet-salty-cinammony pocorn. So, I tried a couple of different brands of kettle corn with one addition: I sprinkled cinnamon on them. It’s a delicious combination. Boom Chicka Pop Sweet & Salty Kettle Corn worked the best.

July 8 Hippeas Organic Chickpea Puffs Bohemian BBQ flavor: Similar to the texture of a Funion with an easy crunchy and yummy BBQ flavor. I don’t taste chickpea flour base. I wasn't moved enough to consider buying any of these in the future.

July 28 Trader Joe’s Carolina Gold Style BBQ Flavored Ridge Cut Potato Chips – Upon bag opening, they appear very yellow - there must be a lot of turmeric. Upon first bite, you get mustard and then vinegar and then a little spicy kick… maybe Worcestershire sauce. The flavor is good, but the texture is too hard – feels like ridge cut plus kettle cooked. This flavor would be good on a regular smooth cut fried crisp chip and would be the perfect accompaniment to a hot dog.

August 

Lay’s Limited Time Flavor Funyuns Onion Flavored Wavy Potato Chips
Lay’s Limited Time Flavor Frito’s Chili Cheese Flavored Kettle Cooked Potato Chips

December Lay’s Adobadas Flavored Potato Chips, official USA snack of the FIFA World Cup 2022

7 Select Brand Spicy Guacamole Thin Tortilla Chips

The bag says “thin tortilla chips,” which is accurate. They are light and crispy and a nice texture for snacking. No jaw-shaking crunch or mouth-slicing shards of hard tortilla chips. 

The first thing that hits you is the spice. These are spicy, so those with a low tolerance for the heat, should avoid them, but the acclimated will think it nothing. When you start chewing and moving the chip bolus around you get a creamy nuttiness that I assume is supposed to be avocado. Then the smokiness comes in and brings it all full circle: a smoky, creamy spice. I wasn’t able to taste any tomato, although there’s tomato paste in the ingredients. But I think the sour cream, onions and garlic that really come through. There’s no avocado listed in the ingredients! 

Overall, these are good. I would eat them, again. I would serve them at a party. I will probably use them in my taco salad recipe. I give them three potatoes. 

My best friend bought these for me from 7-11, where they continue to offer interesting and often good flavors under their own brand. 

Oishi Ribbed Cracklings in Old Fashioned Salf & Vinegar

Dante and I went exploring at an Asian grocery store on Sunset Boulevard called Grocery Warehouse. We combed the aisles and I came across several items that I wanted to try including shredded papaya, Seasoning (that's what the sauce is called!) and this here bag of chips. I was intrigued by the "old fashioned salt & vinegar," but I was sold when I read that "'Beer Match' series of snacks are cut in big, big bite-size pieces. Flavors were selected specifically for a beer drinker's [sic] enjoyment!" Chips flavored and shaped for beer drinkers? I've got to try those!

When you open the bag you get a whiff of typical salt & vinegar smell, but these are not like any
S&V chips I've ever seen or tasted. First of all, these are not potato chips. They are starch chips made from wheat, tapioca starch, corn starch, oil and flavoring. They have the same texture as Shrimp Chips and even the same background fishiness.

The first taste...There is a spicy flavor as if there's some pepper in the mix, which there very well might be since listed "spices" as an ingredient. I feel like the tang is supposed to be the tang of vinegar, but the flavor chemists didn't quite hit the nail on the head. So instead of vinegary flavor, its vine-peppery!
There is not an unpleasant aftertaste, but the spicy flavor leaves a light tingly sensation in your mouth for a while. Also, after having ate a quarter of the bag, I feel like I have a slight balloon head going on right now. I'm not dizzy, just a little floaty. I'm going to blame that specifically on the MSG without any evidence or facts to back me up. Darn skippy!

I kinda like them because the flavor is different and as a potato chip taster, it is so pleasant to taste something out-of-the-ordinary. But I will never eat them again, because I felt like I dropped a sample size LSD dose after eating them. Chips aren't supposed to give you balloon head. And finally, I try to avoid MSG and artificial pork flavoring as much as one potato chip eater can. A solid Two Potato for Oishi's Ribbed Cracklings.

Lotus Root Chips at Burma Superstar

I just got back from a weekend in California’s bay area and I had a blast! Did lots of dancing and came across some amazing tastes as well. One notable place in Oakland is Burma Superstar, specializing in Burmese cuisine, which is a mix of neighbor’s influences (i.e. India, China, Laos, and Thailand).



For an appetizer, I shared lotus root chips with my friend (Terrible picture, I know, but its what I got!). Thinly sliced lotus roots, which look like uncooked chicharones de harina, are fried until they turn a golden burnt orange, then seasoned to perfection with chili and salt. Delicious, simple and amazing! You can’t just have 5 or 6 of these chips because with the large holes in the root, you have to eat at 20 to equal a heaping handful of regular potato chips.

We also ordered the Burma Cooler: Ginger and lemon mixed into beer. At first we found all those bitter tastes too much for our palate. In fact, the Burma Cooler was bordering on unpleasant, but I’m not one to waste beer so I was drinking it anyway. After we started on our entrees and adding all the tangy, sweet, salty flavors to our tongue, and especially after the yummy garlic sautéed pea leaves (Say what? Yeah.), the Burma Cooler’s bitterness melted into a yummy, smooth palate cleanser. It was like a ginger-lemon wine cooler, easy to drink and flavorful, but not overpowering.

The rest of the food was great, too. They don’t have a huge selection of beers on their list, but a few microbrews and I don’t remember seeing any of the major brands available.

Burma Superstar!
4721 Telegraph Avenue
Oakland, CA 94609
510-652-2900
burmasuperstar.com

Sweet Potato Tortilla Chip Rounds

From Trader Joe's May 2012 Fearless Flyer:
Think of these chips as the comestible equivalent of a musical mashup, only instead of pairing the Beastie Boys with Adele, we’ve paired the venerable corn tortilla chip with the orange wonder of the tuber family, sweet potatoes. Trader Joe’s Sweet Potato Tortilla Chip Rounds have only four ingredients: stone ground yellow corn, sweet potato powder, oil and sea salt.

Sweet Potato Tortilla Chip Rounds (SPTC) are denser- less crispy than regular tortilla chips, making it really a perfect chip for nachos or other heavy chip toppings and/or dips. I'm not sure if that has anything to do with the addition of the sweet potato or not, because I've had thick tortilla chips before. Uhm....Yeah, I'll go ahead and venture to say its because of the sweet potato.

The exact ingredient is sweet potato powder: Sweet potato, maltodextrin, corn starch and sunflower lecithin. Sweet potato powder is supposed to be high in fiber, vitamin A, iron and calcium, which are all present in these chips, but not in any sort of exciting amount. Imagine a multi-vitamin tortilla chip? Ha!

SPTCs have a distinctive tuber-y flavor, that is not a mean, bully flavor. It blends very well with the corn flavor.

The question is: Is it worth it to pay $2.49 for chips just because they have sweet potato in them when Trader Joe's has tortilla chips for $1.99, or you can even get tortilla chips from the 99 Cent Store? I would say yes because I'm a chip fanatic, but if I were really being frugal, which I am with almost everything else, I would go with cheaper, 99 Cent Store tortilla chips because they're good.

Tonight I ate SPTC with my Black Bean Salad. They were great with the salad's mix of tangy flavors and mushy textures.