Waitrose Christmas Caramelised Salted Nut Mix

I made a stupid mistake not photographing the see through packaging of this nut mix before I started eating. Silly me, I failed to get a good pack shot. I have eaten everything: all of the nuts and most of the flavour dust caught in the corners, and there’s nothing left but an empty packet which doesn’t look particularly sexy.

Damn. 

Still, this is quite a nice nut mix, easy to eat (or even scoff - I might have scoffed), although I don’t think almonds and cashews genuinely count as a mix. I should think you would need at least three of something to qualify as a mix. The Chef, slightly baffled when I asked if you need three of something to make a mix, vaguely agrees with me.

Once upon a time, a dear friend who was living in Morocco, made the horrid mistake of very kindly bringing me a bagful of fresh almonds. Freshly picked from Moroccan nut orchards, and to my way of thinking, absolutely horrible. I don’t like almonds. I don’t like almond flavour. The almond drink orgeat, so popular in the Regency, fills me with horror. And I think marzipan, famously made with almonds, tastes very nasty indeed.

But an almond, especially selected by Mr Waitrose to be caramelised and/or salted is extremely tasty.

Although I do prefer the cashews. 

So, rather a nice “mix” of caramelised salted nuts.

M&S Chocolate Covered Pretzels

Hmmn… the chocolate coating on these pretzels is slightly sweeter than I expected, and the pretzel taste disappointingly fugitive. Really not enough crunch and definitely not enough salt.

If I were given the chance, I think I would adjust the sweet/salt ratio. Quite tasty, but I don’t think I would buy another packet.

The Chef liked his pretzels better than I did. He likes milk chocolate. But he agrees that there really isn’t enough saltiness.

Extremely handsome lime green and shocking pink packaging though. Very nice.

M&S Hand Cooked Hot Honey Pigs in Blankets Crisps

So, Pigs in Blankets? To be honest I had never heard of pigs in blankets until I was quite grown up. At Christmas my family had miniature (cocktail) sausages with the chicken (not turkey), and rolled up bacon. But not bacon rolled around sausages. I didn’t even know it was a thing. 

Anyway, this M&S crisp tastes nothing like sausages, nothing like bacon, and I would hazard, nothing like pigs in blankets.

But could this be the fault of the hot honey? This crisp doesn’t taste of honey either. Perhaps that’s because the oak smoked sugar is interfering. But it does feature a big hit of something hot. I expect that’s the chilli.

I definitely wouldn’t bother to buy these crisps again.

However, Cliffs of Moher Taste Tester came round to help built my Christmas tree, and after complaining that she really didn’t care for M&S crisps, graciously agreed to try this one. Apparently they don’t have pigs in blankets in Ireland, or at least not where she was brought up, but not to worry because she surprised herself by rather enjoying these crisps. A bit like smoky bacon she thought. Which explains a lot as I have never liked smoky bacon crisps and avoid them if I can. 

Anyway, quite a lot of the packet got eaten fairly enthusiastically. So I guess that counts as a sign of approval.

But what a waste of a potentially good flavour. Basically, to me, these fine cut crisps taste mostly of the something hot and, prompted by Cliffs of Moher, smoky bacon. And I’m not really very impressed by Marks & Spencer’s Christmas packaging either.

Waitrose Christmas Mandarin & Sour Cherry, Caramelised Nut Mix

I know this is not a packet of crisps, and it doesn’t really qualify as a crispy snack, so I guess it’s more of a chewy snack?

Yes, the slightly weird dried mandarin part of this snack mix from local supermarket Waitrose is a lot tastier than I expected. But definitely chewy. The sour cherries I mistook for large raisins or something, but they are tasty too.

On the crunch front there are caramelised almonds, a lot nicer than regular almonds because they don’t actually taste of almonds, and then there are cashews too.

So, an interesting mix of flavours and textures for this Christmas mix. Somehow a lot tastier than I expected, and the different textures work very nicely.

If you can’t get to a Waitrose you could probably make your own mix with freeze dried mandarins, sour cherries, some cashews and, with any luck, caramelised almonds. Maybe honey roasted or salted almonds would work instead. I really am quite surprised that I enjoyed this combination of texture and flavour so much.

Give this combination a try. (The Chef not so impressed.)

Proper x Netflix Netflix & Chilli Caramel

Well, this Proper x Netflix collab is a first for me. As is the flavour, which appears to be Netflix & Chilli Caramel. Sorry? Since when was Netflix a flavour? We don’t subscribe, but I am pretty sure Netflix is a well known streaming service.

However, never mind that, this is a very tasty popcorn, and I ate nearly the entire 90g packet all by myself. Over nearly a week though. Remember how light popcorn is? So that’s a lot more than 90g of crisps. But the packet has a high in fibre label (good fibres only) so here’s hoping this snack is fairly healthy as snacks go. 

And it is incredibly tasty. The Chef thought the chilli was a bit too hot, but I think it works very well with the caramel. Delicious!

The Netflix thing is some sort of a competition to win a home cinema bundle, and other stuff, but it seems that I ought to have kept my receipt. It’s not entirely clear. The terms and conditions are very complicated.

And yet another article about crisps…

Both images grabbed from the Internet 

And yes, here’s another article about potato crisps, this time from The Guardian. 

It does seem that crisps are very much at the forefront just now. My local supermarket has suddenly broken out fresh supplies of retro crispy snacks that they don’t normally stock, and others that have appeared for Christmas. Although, very sadly, this same shop stopped selling Cheese Footballs years ago and I know they are a firm favourite with you lot, and they don’t even sell Cheeselets!

This of course means a traumatic visit to a different shop which has really difficult parking with useless signage, and of course a completely different layout making it hard to find what we are looking for.

If you like handbags and have loads of money to spend, keep an eye out for crisp themed bags. Obviously they are not always available new, but second hand sites sometimes have something fabulous to discover.

Don’t forget the book mentioned in the article: Crunch by Natalie Whittle.

Cheez-It Snap’d Double Cheese

I don’t find myself particularly impressed at the very small size of the Grab & Go! bag of Cheez-It Snap’ds. Can I turn a Cheez-It Snap’d into a plural? I’m going to anyway. 

And I still think this Grab & Go! bag is very small. It’s only 40g. Which not so very long ago was an ordinary size for a packet of crispy snacks. Grab & Go! used to mean considerably larger than this.

Still cheesy, thin & crispy, still quite orange, still parallelogram shaped… I am only going to quibble at the cheesy. Because they don’t taste of cheese. They taste of a cheesy snack. And that isn’t the same thing.

Plus, the Chef was not impressed at the amount of crummage at the bottom of the packet.

Don’t want to sound whiny but I don’t think I will bother with another packet.

Cheez-It Snap’d Cheese Sour Cream & Onion

So, these days we get Cheez-It Snap’d and Cheez-It Puff’d and all sorts of Cheez-Its. With stray punctuation thrown in just for fun. And this is a packet of the strangely parallelogram shaped biscuity snack that is a Cheez-It Snap’d.

This is a very fine snack, as in very fragile and thin. Cheesy, thin & crispy says the packet. And easily broken, and the bottom of the packet is sadly full of too many broken bits. And I do mean broken bits. More like crumbs. Which is a shame.

I like the flavour though I think it’s a bit odd mixing cheese flavour with sour cream and onion. I found it tasty. I really like sour cream and onion, possibly because it’s not a common flavour here in the UK so I don’t get the opportunity to try it very often. The Chef complained the taste is not cheesy enough. So we will have to agree to differ.

Check out the shopping page on the Cheez-It website! Special Cheez-It nail polish or socks anyone?

Walkers Wotsits Crunchy R-R-Really Cheesy

I’m not really sure what to say about this r-r-really cheesy flavour from Wotsits Crunchy. Strangely, if you ask me or the Chef, we think this crispy snack tastes less cheesy than a regular Cheesy Wotsit. 

I suspect the basic Wostsit Crunchy recipe tastes different to the basic Wotsit recipe, and the cheesy tasting flavour dust doesn’t have the same effect on these crunchy snacks. It might be the exact same cheesy flavour, it might be extra r-r-really cheesy but there we are.

Here’s what we thought about another flavour of Wotsits Crunchy.

Honestly I really don’t know why Walkers thought it would be a good plan to mess with the fabulous traditional Wotsit recipe. Yes, of course, this newer crispy snack may appeal to some… but I think I will stick with the original. 

And if you really want to know, yes they are cheesy, but I am not convinced they are r-r-really cheesy.

I don’t know why anyone thought to put this crispy snack in a Hallowe’en themed packet. Who knows? No bat or ghost shaped snacks here. And as so often these days, quite half the packet was filled with nothing but air. 

Proper Chips Ghost Chilli & Yuzu Chickpea Chips

We all know that the Chef prefers potato crisps to corn chips or other crispy snacks, but have we before encountered the Chef’s younger brother who really really prefers potato crisps to any other style of snack? I asked him to attempt these New! chickpea chips, and I gather (I wasn’t there) he was not impressed.

Apparently they don’t taste of anything, they are too hot for his taste, too citrusy and he didn’t like the texture. I am not sure that he entered into the spirit of reluctant taste testing.

Cliffs of Moher taste tester came for dinner and found them weird.

And what do I think? Well, the texture is a surprise. It’s sort of prawn cracker or very fine Quavers style texture - only not. Presumably a slurry of chickpeas is extruded to form roughly crispy snack shaped shapes. That’s a charming way to put it, I know, but I imagine that’s how these chickpea chips are made.

And the taste? Surprisingly citrusy. Surprisingly, because that’s not what you expect of a crispy snack. All the bright lemony flavour comes from yuzu; an East Asian citrus fruit a bit like a clementine but with a sharper more grapefruity taste. And the ghost chilli is a very hot chilli, once the hottest in the world, but now overtaken by the Carolina reaper in 2013, and Chilli X in 2023. The internet tells me it originated in Bhutan and Assam. But it’s not too hot in this crispy chip.

This is an extremely exotic combination of flavours for a crispy snack sold by conservative supermarket Waitrose in North London. Proper Chips have certainly been working hard to find us new flavours. But perhaps a little too weird.

Tongue tingling! And yes, they really do tingle your tongue.