Walkers Max Flamin' Hot

For some reason a lot of people are deluded into believing that August is a summer month. Not this year it's not. What with the overcast skies, the dark, the cold, the wind, the rain (sometimes), the mugginess and the heat (sometimes) the weather hasn't been very nice. And we do wish it would make up its mind.

So what better time to try Walkers Max Flamin' Hot? According to the packet these crisps have a "deep ridged taste". Really? They certainly have deep ridges but I'm not sure that qualifies as a taste. But the Flamin' Hot flavour might do us good.

So what did we think? Well, I wasn't super impressed that the aroma on opening the bag was basically green peppers. Which I really don't like. And which do not appear on the list of ingredients.

This is a dark orange crinkle cut crisp with quite a hot flavour - brought about, no doubt, by the addition of Flamin' Hot Seasoning.

The taste is pretty hot. And, despite no green peppers it does have a pretty strong peppery taste. And none of the reluctant taste testers liked the taste much. But almost all of this 50g packet did get eaten. Mostly by the Dutch taste tester who somehow couldn't stop eating them even though she said she didn't like them.

We weren't madly impressed. But this is the first time in a long while I've featured the little guy throwing his rubbish away responsibly. And this is a very fine example.

Thinking about the nastiness of the weather recently reminds me of one of my favourite August holidays. In a haunted Gloucestershire farmhouse and about 40 years ago now. I didn't realise I'd got so old! No heating except the kitchen range (in winter only) and the big fireplace in the sitting room. I went to stay with a school friend while her parents were off somewhere else. And it was SO COLD. We basically only left the house to put the chickens out in the morning and shoo them back home at night. Every so often we bicycled into the local village to buy bread and milk and telephone my mother in far away London (from a public phone box) to let her know I was still alive. I don't even remember a television but we did listen to a lot of records. School friend's older sister had a large collection of vinyl and I learned to love Cat Stevens and Donovan.

But I don't remember having any crisps at all.