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.

Snyder's of Hanover Pretzel Pieces Jalapeño

Well, we seem to have tried a good number of Pretzel Piece flavours lately and they've all been very tasty. And extremely crunchy.

This flavour  is just as broken up as ever (no surprise there) and has a strong taste of jalapeño peppers. Which I didn't used to like but have grown accustomed to. Not from eating real food you understand, but from trying all sorts of weird crispy snacks. Because (who knew?) eating crispy snacks is actually very educational. I'm generally a very picky eater and there are flavours I have tried as part of a crispy snack that I would never have considered trying in real life. In the end this has made me a bolder eater when it comes to actual food. Which is great. But I guess it tells you that I don't consider crisps and crispy snacks to be real food.Well, you know, not a major food group like fruit & vegetables. Just in case you hadn't read my alerts in the sidebar about eating healthily, I really am aware that crisps and crispy snacks should be eaten in moderation. Although sometimes you just can't help loving a crispy snack and eating a lot more than you mean to.

OK, I know the answer to this one. Try hard not to do this too often. It isn't good for you. I sometimes find an amazing snack and I want to eat the whole packet at once. but I try really hard not to do that. Please take my advice and restrict your intake too. Sharing packet with the reluctant taste testers helps a lot.

OK, back to the snack. Which the reluctant taste testers quite enjoyed and ate a fair pile of. It seems like quite a true Jalapeño taste.

And on another subject I'm really quite impressed that my computer inserts the little wavy line over the n (is it a tilde? I can't remember this morning) in Jalapeño all of its own accord. I bet it wouldn't have done that 10 years ago. On the other hand, it doesn't like the expression "all of its own accord" and wants to change it to "all of its own account"; this is annoying but at least it tells me that my computer has not yet learned to read my mind. Cause for celebration there I think!

Thomas J Fudge's Flaky Cheddar Wafers and Fiery Jalapeño Wafers

Perfect for Nibbling says the packaging.

What raindrops are to turnips nibbles are to friendship. Or it could be the other way around: nibbles are to friendship what raindrops are to turnips. In either case: what? There's quite a lot of weird stuff going on with the packaging.

These two biscuits were also chosen for the recent leaving party at work because we were looking for something a little bit posh. And a little bit posh they are.

Both have a soft crunch with almost a home-made feel, although I think you would struggle to make little biscuits quite this thin at home.  The Flaky Cheddar wafers have a gentle cheesy taste, and the Fiery Jalapeño wafers (which you can tell apart from the Cheddar by the little green bits of chilli) have quite a significant fiery hot bite.

Both wafers are rather good. And exceedingly posh.

Thomas J Fudge is a "remarkable bakery" which was established in Dorset in 1916 by the current owners' great-great-uncle Thomas J Fudge. According to the packaging he was a dapper chap with a distinctive moustache. His bakery is described as remarkable and Dorset is beautiful and bountiful. His buns were buttery, his bread was brilliant and his biscuits were the business. Or so the packet claims. And the family continues Thomas J's remarkable, edible work. Or so they say.

The biscuits come in a plastic baggie encased in a smart cardboard box. And in the side of the box is a scalloped peep hole through which you can see the wafers of your choice.

The family Fudge recommends ice cold white wine with the Flaky Cheddar wafers; delicious with a portion of witty banter. Or try the Fiery Jalapeño wafers with cooling yoghurt dips, bubbly beverages or something rich and red; perfect with plenty of hysterical laughter. So; many instructions on how best to enjoy your wafers.

Great to fancy up your drinks party. Some of these were eaten at the party and the rest were eagerly snapped up by the reluctant taste testers the next day.

ROKA Cheese Crispies Jalapeño Peppers

Another triumph from the lovely people at ROKA in the Netherlands. Yet another astonishingly tasty yet delicate (and somehow awfully posh) crispy snack to marvel at and try terribly hard not too eat too many of.

Oh dear how easy it is to fail if you don't want to eat too many ROKA cheese crispies!

Just lovely. A lovely cheesy snack with a hot jalapeño bite.

The original cheese crispies are on my list of all time favourite crispy snacks which tells you how highly I think of them. I had not tried these before: they were part of the wonderful food parcel sent me by ROKA (who seem to like me because I keep telling the world how fabulous their products are). I saved the jalapeño peppers flavour for a special occasion and brought them out this week when we had a tea party for our lovely reluctant taste tester who is taking maternity leave.

OK, so they had to compete with a Colin the Caterpillar cake from Marks & Spencer (although I gather this has recently been made redundant by the new Piñata cake from Asda), and a number of other goodies, but everyone knows how good ROKA cheese crispies are. Plus, I brought half the packet home for the Chef and me. Because it would be a terrible shame to put them all out for the taste testers who were really concentrating on the present-opening activities of the maternity leaver.

We are trying not to eat these too quickly so just going downstairs now for a small snack. Always supposing the Chef hasn't eaten them all when I wasn't looking... Yum!