Walkers Quavers Salt & Vinegar

Quavers, a light curly potato snack, are usually flavoured with cheese. And I like them very much. I love the texture, I like the taste. 

But earlier this week, stopping off at a motorway service station in Kent, the Chef and I came across Salt & Vinegar flavour Quavers. It’s possible they’ve been available for ages but, for whatever reason, we haven’t come across them before.

And the verdict? Delicious. Really very good indeed. Although I wouldn’t recommend them if you don’t generally like salt & vinegar as a flavour. 

Highly recommended for everyone else. 

The Chef doesn’t really go for salt & vinegar, but he was pleased to admit they weren’t too bad.

I notice that grab bags have got a lot smaller since I last looked.

Peter’s Yard Suffolk Cyder Vinegar & Sea Salt Sourdough Bites

Here’s another little bag of sourdough bites chosen by the Ski Instructor and the Farmer’s Daughter. 24 grams and 105 calories. And mysteriously flavoured with “cyder” vinegar and sea salt.

Waah!! These are sharp. And once again the sourdough taste is bursting through. That’s a bit of a pity.

No palm oil: good. 

Baked not fried: not always a good thing. Yes I know it’s probably miles healthier if your snack isn’t fried, but but does it taste as good as it should? Not always.

Less fat than a crisps: again, this should be a good thing. But so often the healthier option doesn’t taste as nice. I think we should be focusing on eating fewer snacks in the first place. There’s no point buying a snack you don’t really like just because you know it’s the healthy option.

Sorry guys.

Peter's Yard West Country Sour Cream & Chive Sourdough Bites

 

So the (now ex) Ski Instructor taste tester and the Farmer's Daughter visited somewhere or other in the West Country (which for those of you who don't live in the UK can mean Gloucestershire or Wiltshire or Somerset. or maybe Devon or Cornwall, sometimes Dorset), and very sweetly picked up some packets of crisps as a birthday present for me.

it is a little unfortunate that all three packets are sourdough bites rather than potato crisps, but don't lets look a gift horse in the mouth. 

I thought this flavour a little thin. The sour cream and chive is pleasant enough, but not nearly enough to  battle past the somewhat thuggish nature of the sourdough base. That's a pity.  And the bite is rather dull for my taste. I really would have liked a a crisper snap.

Not nasty, not horrible. But not really my thing.

Still, two more flavours to try.

Made in Shropshire, which although it is in the west of England is not the West Country. And not quite far enough north to qualify as the North West. Perhaps you'd call Shropshire 'The Welsh Marches'? which somehow doesn't sound like a good marketing ploy. 

Well, anyway, you might like these sourdough bites. Everyone has a different idea of delicious. I think the Chef liked them better than I did but I know he prefers his crisps to be made of potatoes.

 

Jacob’s Mini Cheddars Classic Cheese Pizza Flavour

Why do crispy snack manufacturers keep producing “pizza” flavour snacks? I suppose they always hope their new pizza flavour will work, but 9 times out of 10 it doesn’t. And in this case I really think it hasn’t.

The reluctant taste testers always used to say that pizza flavour crispy snacks taste of the cheapest possible frozen pizza from the shop on the corner that you only buy in an emergency. And although I didn’t have the reluctant taste testers around to ask for their opinions, I do agree with what they had to say.  What a pity.

I think this Mini Cheddar flavour is supposed to be a flavour celebrating cheese. OK, well, maybe. But I am not convinced. Seriously, why mess with the perfectly good cheese flavour that you get with original (or classic) Mini Cheddars?