Grizzy and the Lemmings: Crunch Yeah

This top quality (and amazingly violent in a jolly fashion) Canadian animation is about a grizzly bear who moves into a park ranger’s house as soon as the ranger leaves - perhaps he goes home to visit his mum? we never find out - and a slice or gang of out of control lemmings determined to invade his space and destroy his peace. [Numerous online sources assure me that slice really is the word for a group of lemmings but I confess I really find this quite hard to believe.]

Grizzy mostly eats salmon (he also watches what looks like Salmon TV), and a Nutella-style spread called Yummy; sometimes he spreads Yummy on his fish. The lemmings love speed, and anything bouncy (or disco), and will do anything including destroying the entire planet for a jar of Yummy but they are also pretty keen on the would-be Cheesy Wotsit (or Cheeto) crispy snack Grizzy sometimes eats: it’s called Crunch Yeah.

This rather bad snap of Grizzy vaulting upside down to escape some ghastly fate shows a packet of Crunch Yeah tucked into his belt.Which is interesting as Grizzy never normally wears a belt.

If any crispy snack entrepreneur is thinking of launching a new Wotsit style corn puff type of snack I can’t help feeling that “Crunch Yeah” wouldn’t be a bad name. I would probably buy a packet. I think maybe the reluctant taste testers might too. I might suggest calling it Crunch Yeah! though. I feel an exclamation mark might help the marketing.

I have struggled to find a scene to grab a shot of the Crunch Yeah snack but if you know what Wotsits or Cheetos look like you will know just what I’m talking about, and here’s a photo of some M&S Cheese Tasters (very similar in style) just in case you don’t.

Sadly only ever seen on French TV.

Miss Vickie’s Sweet Chilli & Sour Cream / Poivron et Crème Champêtre

Here’s another Canadian crisp from Miss Vickie's. I see the Canadians follow the USA in their spelling of chilli: chili. (Or "child" as my always annoying auto correct would have it.) And again I look at the packaging and think 1887 when actually it says 1987. See what I mean though? It's the lacy edging that does it.

If you've read a number of my posts you may have noticed that I don't usually like sweet chilli as a flavour. And I don't think the sour cream part of the flavour is particularly evident here so that doesn't really impact on my opinion. In this case (unusually for me) I thought the sweet chilli was pretty tasty and I think the reluctant taste testers liked it even better than I did.

Sometimes it's hard to write a lot about a crisp that is quite nice. Not nasty, not fabulous, but quite nice.

So here we are then. A quite nice sweet chilli crisp. Which we quite enjoyed.

Miss Vickie's Jalapeño

A Canadian crisp from Miss Vickie based in Cambridge Ontario. I wonder if there ever was a Miss Vickie? I’d say perhaps yes if this was an old established crisp making company, but since it advertises itself as crafting crisps with care since 1987 I suspect not. 1987 seems a bit recent for a Miss Vickie.

I was, as ever, a bit dubious about the flavour but taken in small quantities I found I really liked it. In fact, all the reluctant taste testers seemed to like this crisp. But they all advised caution. Irish taste tester took a large crisp without asking the flavour and felt there should have been a warning sign. This is not a massively hot crisp but the taste does creep up and hit you if you aren’t careful. Maybe a sour cream dip would work well?

Tall Elegant taste tester thought there was too much salt but no-one else remarked on it.

The styling of the packet is unusually retro with a sort of lace edging to the cream band at the top and a watermark image of an old Canadian farm in pale grey. The packet says proudly kettle cooked in Canada with farm grown potatoes. Sorry. Farm grown? As opposed to what? I do like the bright green though. It’s quite unusual.

And I notice that (because it’s Canadian you get both English and French) the English kettle cooked is translated as cuites a la marmite in Canadian French. In French French this would be chaudron. You learn quite a lot of languages from crisp packets.

Miss Vickie's Applewood Smoked BBQ

Crafted with care since 1987 says the packet. Many of the crispy snack companies I have discovered have been set up far more recently so this probably qualifies as a fairly long standing brand of snack.

I read that Miss Vickie's started out as a farm house crisp made by a a couple called Vickie and Bill Kerr who farmed in Ontario (which is in Canada) but at some time it was bought up by Frito-Lay's. Which means of course that like so many crispy snacks it belongs to the mega marketing monster that is PepsiCo.

So far I have only tried one packet of Miss Vickie's crisps and that not very enthusiastically. Partly because as you probably know I'm not mad for barbecue or BBQ as a flavour. I know a lot of people who love barbecue but I could live without ever tasting another BBQ flavoured crisp. And then there's another reason. As I write I have 7 pills to take each day and one of them, I forget which, has a depressing side effect: it affects your appetite. And in my case it means I don't really fancy crispy snacks just now. I'm just hoping I get over it.

These are the Miss Vickie's flavours listed on Wikipedia: 24 of them and only 2 discontinued. I'm a bit sorry I shall never get the chance to try the Honey & Roasted Garlic flavour. which sounds rather interesting.

• Miss Vickie's Original Recipe (1987)
• Miss Vickie's Sea Salt & Malt Vinegar (1987)
• Miss Vickie's Jalapeño (1998)
• Miss Vickie's Hand-Picked Jalapeño (1999)
• Miss Vickie's Country Onion with 3 Cheeses (1999)
• Miss Vickie's Roasted Garlic & Herb (2001)
• Miss Vickie's Harvest Onion (2002)
• Miss Vickie's Sweet Chili & Sour Cream (2003)
• Miss Vickie's Lime & Black Pepper (2004)
• Miss Vickie's Smokehouse BBQ (2005)
• Miss Vickie's Honey & Roasted Garlic (2005) (Discontinued in 2009)
• Miss Vickie's Roasted Red Pepper Grill (2006)
• Miss Vickie's Vintage Cheddar & Red Onion (2007)
• Miss Vickie's Creamy Buttermilk Ranch (2008)
• Miss Vickie's Unsalted (2008)
• Miss Vickie's Mesquite BBQ (Discontinued in 2008)
• Miss Vickie's Rosemary & Basil (2008)
• Miss Vickie's Crinkle Cut Original (2009)
• Miss Vickie's Balsamic Vinegar & Sweet Onion (2010)
• Miss Vickie's Reduced Fat (2014)
• Miss Vickie's Applewood Smoked BBQ (2015)
• Miss Vickie's Sour Cream & Caramelized Onion (2016)
• Miss Vickie's Harvest Cheddar and Herbs (2017)
• Miss Vickie's Farmhouse White Cheddar (2017)                               

I am going in to work about 6 hours a week now (don't knock it I can't manage any more just yet) and took this packet in to see what the reluctant taste testers had to say. I'm sorry to have to tell you that most of them quite forget they need to tell me what they think, but Slightly Red Haired Bristolian was pleased to approve these crisps.

Not very large crisps, with a slightly heavy bite and a very bright colour, these crisps seem to me to taste strongly of applewood (which I wrongly imagined to be one of the ingredients - it's not). Strange and not really for me. Still, Smokehouse BBQ (on the list above) sounds a lot nastier.

PS The Chef tried one of these crisps and thought it was horrible. He absent mindedly had another and before he knew it had eaten a whole bowlful.

Ruffles Chili Cheese / Chili et Fromage

My very first Canadian crisps!

Brought home from British Columbia by the Ski Instructor, who has come to stay for a couple of weeks, these crisps are a little bit broken... but it's difficult to fly with crisps. Unless, as the Ski Instructor put it, you are prepared to sit the packet on your fold down table for the entire flight (not really feasible), crisps are likely to get a little crushed.

Now why has no-one invented a light weight but rigid crisp-packet protector for bringing your foreign crisps and crispy snacks home? I'm lucky: I often fly home from Switzerland to get back to work and the Chef drives home in more leisurely fashion with a pile of crisps in the boot. The cavity under the boot which used to be the home of the spare wheel (I gather no-one has a spare wheel these days) is a fine storage space for crushable items like crisps.

Anyway, slightly crushed or no, these crinkle cut crisps are rather tasty. In fact, fairly yum. And I am selfishly eating them on a Sunday morning so it seems the reluctant taste testers are unlikely to get a look it.

I read that on the packet this is a Limited Time Offer. Does that mean the flavour is a limited edition? The Ski Instructor confirms that this is indeed the case. And a little online research shows me that Chili Cheese is not a regular flavour and without trying any of the other flavours (I guess I need to visit Canada), I want to know why?

Could be all Canadian Ruffles flavours are fabulous so it's hard to add a new one (I guess I need to visit Canada).

Nice little ridges/crinkles, lots of flavour dust, rich orange colour and a nice crunch. Slightly unnerving that the packet says simulated flavour. Perhaps this is Canadian packaging law. But although in the UK increasing numbers of crisps appear to be made from more natural ingredients than you might suppose, there are still plenty of crispy snacks that are made of mostly maltodextrin and MSG. But they do taste good.