Chips Notes

Loaded Chili & Cheese
- Beany!
- Fair amount of spice without being "hot."
- Cumin?
- Cheese undertones.
- Onion.
- Better than "fully loaded"
- Sturdy, thick chips



Molten Hot Wings
- Tangy
- Vinegar
- Hotter
- Sturdy, thick chips

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Mmmm....composty...

I haven't yet made it to Smorgasburg, Brooklyn Flea's all-food market in Williamsburg, but I was happy with the food options at the flea market itself, which I visited well before Smorgasburg opened.

Told I had to try one of the Compost Cookies from Momofuku Milk Bar's stand, I obliged.  It was tasty, but not as exciting as I was hoping it would be.  Perhaps the texture was too homogenized.  I'm looking forward to making my own version.

While there, I also enjoyed my favorite Asia Dog -- the Mash (not pictured).  Potato chips, spicy ketchup, jalapeno mustard? I have no complaints.  I've now had Asia Dog's food at a bar (where they originated), a flea market, a wedding (which they catered!), a pop-up soccer clubhouse (oh, the wasabi potato salad!), and their restaurant in Nolita.  I'm a fan.

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Poetry Tuesday: Fairer than Fair

Oh!
Fair Trade Cocoa, you
Spicy thing, you
Enticing dring
k:

I will mix you with milk.
I will take a photo of you in my cup.
I will smile at the farmer pictured on your packaging.
I will be there in the morning.

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Thighs n Thighs

I have a new favorite dinner at local favorite chicken joint, Pies 'n' Thighs.  Surprising as it may be, this doesn't involve pie.



My current favorite side dish is the watermelon salad, which includes cucumber and jalapeño.  This is significantly different from how I like to make watermelon salad (with red onion, feta, and black olives), but it's light and refreshing.



The horchata is my beverage of choice this summer.  It's cold and tasty and spiced, without being too sweet.  I've had it at several restaurants, but the mixture at Pies 'n' Thighs is one of the best I've had.

Here's the main event:




It's the "Chicken Biscuit," it's $5, it's decadent, and it's phenomenal.  What you see here is a sandwich of chicken breast with hot sauce and honey butter on a fluffy biscuit.   There's so, so, much butter.  It can't possibly be healthy.  Just watch it ooze:



I love it so much.  This is currently my go-to comfort meal, y'all.

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Not Quite Breaking News

File this one under "S" for "Should have Blogged about this Snack Ages Ago" OR "C" for, "Cripes! Remember to take your Camera to Events Like This. Your Phone Pictures are Worthless."

So, yes, my phone was acting up in the low lighting (check out the creepy picture of the beautiful Ms. H, below), but I did want to post a few pictures from the CSC soccer clubhouse opening and backpack launch party (which I apparently nearly attended with Susan Sarandon, who was photographed in front of Dan's Chinatown toile wallpaper) and mention how finely catered it was by the "Asia Dog" hot dog crew.

Yow!  Just look at that run-on sentence, will ya?!  Use parentheses and commas much, Jennette? Moving on (no sentence-slaughtering to see here):

Hey, CSC!  The foosball table was a nice touch.  You know what your clubhouse needs, though?  Couches.




Kevin told me NOT to get the hot dog topped with potato chips and spicy ketchup.  Kevin was wrong.  It was great!  So was the wasabi potato salad.  Kevin, maybe you had your potato chips on a veggie dog by mistake?  I think veggie dogs taste weird.


I call this photo of my beautiful, almost-two-year-old friend standing next to the foosball table in a lovely coat, "Horror Doorman."  The frightening effect was unintended:




p.s. Check out the team behind the backpack:




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Second Place

I spotted a canister of Sriracha peas at The Meat Hook/Brooklyn Kitchen. I like wasabi peas, and I like Sriracha, so I decided to take it home.

To me, they're not as good as wasabi peas, but they're interesting. Predominately honey/tomato sweet, the spiciness builds up over time but doesn't have the sharp, pungent burn of wasabi in the sinuses. There's also something a little artificial about their flavor -- something I don't notice with w. peas. But, overall, Sriracha peas aren't bad as a savory snack.

Crackin' Good

Chuao's Firecracker chocolate bar with chipotle, salt, and "popping candy" (think Pop Rocks) caused quite a tizzy around the office this afternoon. Angela sent it to me for my birthday, so everyone who got some is lucky I was feeling generous.

There's not much spice to the chipotle and not much saltiness to the salt in this bar, but that's good. The popping candies are doing enough; your tongue doesn't need anymore distractions.

All who tasted it seemed intrigued enough to consider eating it again or buying it for a friend, so I call this novel bar a keeper -- and I know first-hand that it makes a great gift!

Unhelpful Review: Blazin' Buffalo & Ranch

Spicier than my cat's snore.

I'm dreaming of a green New Year's...

Dear airline companies,

Please lower the prices of tickets to Miami so that I can spend a few days in Florida eating avocados (with hot sauce) as they fall off the tree. This habit is expensive up north.

With love,
Jennette

Dear Beyonce: If I like it then I'm gonna peanut butter it.

Banana bread with crystallized ginger and chocolate chips.




Toasted; with peanut butter.

In case you're worrying, peanut butter and ginger are rawther nice together.

Come over and have some! I'd rather apologize for the rough song lyric pun in person anyway.


[This snack is dedicated to Laura R.]

Thank you, Ian.

I don't normally snack on crystallized ginger. I like it, but I'd rather bake with it. However, Ian had wrapped them in a tissue like an avant-garde gift and he really seemed to want me to take a picture of them. So I obliged -- took the photo, ate one, and brought the second one home for a future baking project. And now I'm blogging about the whole experience.

I hope this is all working out the way Ian intended.

Disappointment, thy name is Spicy Chipotle Sun Chips.

Did that blog title seem harsh? It's just that I was really looking forward to this new flavor, having read about its existence on some blog or other. When I spotted it at Subway last week, I knew I had to try it.

My verdict? Not spicy enough. Also, not zippy or exciting. Where's the zazz?! ("Zing! Zork! Kapowza! Call it what you want, in any language it spells mazuma in the bank!")

Don't worry, Garden Salsa Sun Chips, my love for thee remains true.

From the Road

In the car with Giant Hot Cheetos.



Following the Colorado River with Giant Hot Cheetos.



(photo by Dan. T-shirt by Cody Hudson)

The aftermath of Giant Hot Cheetos.

Lost in Translation

Nick facilitated (via his recent trip to Mexico) a multilingual snack tasting. From left to right:




Tostachos: "Asi me gusta." "15% + Gratis." "No te quedes en las formas, llega hasta el fondo...El Sabor" -- Cheddar cheesy tortilla chips with just a touch of cardboard and a tiny spark of spice.




Sabritas KKWates Enchilados con Limón: "Son esos pequeños momentos en tu vida los que hacen La Gran Diferencia!" -- Very sour, sharp lime flavored peanuts dusted with chili powder, reminding me of my favorite treat I found on my own trip to Puerto Vallarta, which was a microwaveable package of chili-lime popcorn. These nuts would probably be too much for some people, as the lime's industrial strength (and quite likely artificial) but I dig 'em.




Vuala Minis: "Croissants con Relleno Cremoso Sabor Chocolate" -- It was a little creepy to open what looks like a bag of chips and find mini croissants. They felt moist, rather than flaky, and smelled like chocolate mini-donuts from a gas station (the inferior kind with the yellow insides). The texture was definitely off, as the "croissant" was more dense and moist than light and dry, but the chocolate cream inside tasted fine.




Papas Pa-Fut Sabor Cañonazo -- "La Selección Nacional ya suma más de 85 años de historia." -- These looked like regular, unflavored potato chips, but tasted far spicier and madder. Both sour and bitter, there was still a strong potato flavor coming through, as well as abundant saltiness.

All in all, an intriguing voyage of flavors. The nuts were my favorite, but something about the balls-to-the-wall nastiness of the Papas Pa-Fut appealed to me (even though they ultimately were a little much).

Thanks, Nick!

Lava Love

Volcano Sauce is a mixture of Kewpie Japanese Mayonnaise, Sriracha sauce, and vinegar. It is excellent on oven-baked sweet potato fries, even when some of those fries are a little burnt. I hear Kewpie has MSG, but it's also delicious. So there.


(photo by DanF)

p.s. Thanks to Jane, who told me about the Kewpie mayo.

Pennsylvania Chip Face-Off

(phone photo by Dan. pardon the shadow!)

R., who likes things spicy, brought 4 kinds of potato chips (1 BBQ and 3 Red Hot) back from a recent trip to Pennsylvania (all are made in PA). We found time to taste-test them this week.

Utz Red Hot Potato Chips - I think Utz brand chips almost always have an inferior texture, but the spice builds properly (the more chips you eat, the hotter they taste in your mouth). I believe R. preferred the flavor of this one.

Gibble's Red Hot Potato Chips ("Nibble with Gibble's) - This one was intriguing and a bit complex - my favorite of the three Red Hot chips. R. thought it had the best texture. I felt the heat was duller than in the Utz chips (the only drawback with this brand, in my opinion), but the flavor less sweet than the next two chips (which I appreciated). We identified the flavors of cayenne, onion powder, and paprika.

Munch With Martin's Red Hot Potato Chips - Everyone agreed that these were very sweet. Right away, I could taste cinnamon. C. felt these tasted like pumpkin pie spice. R. identified the flavor as identical to Red Hots candies and felt the company was going for that comparison.

Middleswarth The Weekender Hand-Cooked Bar-B-Q Old Fashioned Ket-L Chips - It's hard to compare these to the others, as they were true BBQ chips, and therefore not spicy in the same way that the "Red Hot" chips were. Most of us liked the flavor. R.F. felt that they were too sweet. He didn't seem to care for them much, comparing the taste to that of "a stale beer." I didn't mind the sweetness, and did think the kettle chip texture ("Made from carefully selected potatoes") was superior to the other varieties. The Weekenders managed to be a little spicy, too, but the Red Hots stole the show.



(phone photo by Dan)

p.s. unopened, smaller-sized bags of chips make a decent baby toy in a pinch.

I just finished baking my 7th cookie recipe.

Cocoa Snowflakes contain pistachio, golden rum, and orange zest. They are divine. I should have made a double batch.




Citrus Sizzlers combine lemon (juice + zest) and cayenne pepper. I made these last year for the first time and fell in love. They're a favorite of Ms. R's, too. A batch was well-received at her shower last summer. I can't bear to use the flash on them, so this is the best picture I can get for now.




Deluxe Sugar Cookies will eventually be decorated, but they're sweet on their own.


Cookie Count: 602

Poetry Tuesday: Cookie Count stands at 388

Better Eat A Couple(t)

One hundred and three Chocolate Wakeups are flowers
-- cocoa brown/cayenne-petaled -- are blooms she devours.

Don't take any wooden nickels. Buffalo Nickels are another story.

Spotted at a fancy-healthy-grocery-otherwise-store:

5 flavors of Buffalo Nickel Wingers, "The Original Potato Wing Snack." As the numbers on the packaging rise, so does the level of spiciness, so these #4 Caribbean Zing Wingers are the 2nd spiciest in the line.  Good heat!  Puffy, air-filled drumstick shapes are fun! Healthier than potato chips!  Loverly.

Still to try:

#1 No Bull Barbecue

#2 Honey Mustard Horsepower

#3 Nacho Chilichanga

#5 Fiery Buffalo Bleu

At the same grocery store I was reunited with a favored snack of yore.  I'm not a Pretzel Person in general (in snack mixes I eat the pretzels first to get them out of the way), but I could eat an entire bag of these Snyder's of Hanover Honey Mustard & Onion Pretzel Pieces over the course of a workday.  Years ago while temping in a church office I did just that. Several times.  And then I suddenly couldn't find them in my neighborhood anymore.  I miss you, honey mustard pretzel bites!

"Watch out, Texas!" (that's the chili talking, not me).

Apparently, the Pacific Northwest has its own take on chili. I know this because R+M came back from Spokane with a PNW chili mix for me to try.

Here is Buckeye Beans & Herbs' Rip Roar'n Lentil Chili mix (does it really save time to leave out the "i" in "Roarin'?") in the making. Ingredients: tomato, lentils, meat, onion, spices. No beans. Dan thought to add some mushrooms.

I say anything with lentils counts as health food. You know who makes the best lentils? Eat Records in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. But I digress. The chili was, perhaps, under-spiced, but quite good with scallions and a little cheese. Sour cream would have raised the volume even more.

Lentils in chili - a good idea. I wouldn't say Texas owns chili just yet. After all, if you don't know chilly, how can you really know chili? Washington State's got a lock on spicy soup/stew weather. That's for sure. And so, the Pacific Northwest remains in the game.


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Sidebar: I had the Food Network on in the background for a while this morning. One of the show hosts used the phrase "rock it out" far too much and also gave the instruction (more than once) to set food aside or let it cook without watching it by saying, "treat it like a stepchild." I disapprove. Even hearing her say, "It smells brown," which is the type of inaccurate statement I can find endearing in a tv host (if not overused), couldn't redeem her carelessness.