Pipers Crisp Co Wissington Spicy Tomato

I picked up these lovely crisps (made by farmers) at Luton Airport. A nice small 40g packet so you don't feel enormously greedy if you eat the whole thing, and if you don't like them then it's not too much of a waste. Except of course that buying anything at an airport is always expensive!

Anyhow, these are lovely crisps. The packaging is very simple; just two shades of tomatoey orange. Which is fine as the flavour is spicy tomato. Don't know what makes it Wissington spicy tomato though. Nice simple typeface. It's a simple smart design.

The crisps themselves are a little smaller than average which is no bad thing. I get a little fed up battling with gigantic sized crisps. And the crunch is just right. Quite a dark tomatoey colour and a terrific spicy flavour.

There is a little bit too much celery for me in the exciting selection of spices: coriander, cayenne, cumin, mustard, black pepper, clove, green cardamom, garlic and marjoram. Most unfortunately I am intolerant to celery so I couldn't eat very many of these crisps (don't want to swell up - best not really) but I do hope you will give them a try if you have the opportunity. They won a Great Taste Gold Award in 2010 and I'm not surprised.

The tomatoes are Norfolk plum tomatoes grown at Cornerways Nursery and (rather fabulously) pollinated by over 50,000 on-site bumblebees. I didn't know people farmed bumblebees but it sounds a great idea. They are such wonderful animals and we don't see anything like as many as we used to.

I'm going to look out for another flavour from Pipers Crisp Co. There are six more flavours to try so I hope to find one soon.

Very nice crisps. Top marks. Watch out if, like me, you can't eat celery. Otherwise.... What's stopping you?

Golden Wonder Transform-a-Snack Spicy

Oh my goodness! Who knew you could get transformer style crisps and build your own vehicle from the crispy parts? Apparently not me.

Transform-a-Snack comes in Spicy, Cheese & Onion, Beef, Spicy BBQ, Pickled Onion and Flamin' Hot flavours. I've never seen them for sale (where would you sell such an amazing crispy snack? sadly, it seems, not around here) so I've got all this info from the Golden Wonder website. Slightly disappointed to find that the transformers are all the same. OK, this is obvious from a business point of view; to make different shapes for each flavour would be prohibitively expensive, but it is a shame you don't get to make a different vehicle in Spicy flavour from, say, Flamin' Hot.

This packet was part of my exciting birthday present from the Family Vegetarian and the Graffiti Artist. I gather that the Graffiti Artist is a big fan of Transform-a-Snacks so I look forward to trying them.

Here we have the two shapes. The body with front and rear axels, and the wheels. And here we have the vehicle created by me. How fun is this?

I'm not sure what Spicy Transform-a-Snacks actually taste of but (according to the packaging) "they're on another planet". Most of the flavouring listed on the packet appears to be garlic but there's more to the taste than that.

The colouring of paprika and nutmeg seem to contribute quite a bit. It's an interesting spicy mix. Quite unusual. And the crunch of corn and potato together is rather good. The texture of each piece is bubbly, with that good crunch, perhaps a little oily and with a dusting of crunchy bits.

"Bringing you the biggest flavours in the universe, Transform-a-Snacks are baked not fried for a crunch that's out of this world" says the packaging.  I'd be interested to see what the other flavours are like so I can "transform my taste buds". If I ever find a shop that sells them....

Weird but in a really good way. The Chef and I liked these and finished the packet enthusiastically.

Space Raiders Spicy

Time to try another flavour from Space Raiders.  And another bag of crisps aimed at 8 year olds from the newsagent run by the amazingly cheerful man. Not much stock in just now: they're about to redecorate.

This time it's Spicy. Much to my surprise I really enjoyed the Pickled Onion flavour but the Spicy isn't quite so good. Very tasty, with a faint aroma of curry, good crunch, nice texture; nothing the matter with it at all and I was pushed not to eat them all at once. OK, I admit it, extremely tasty. Just not quite so good as the Pickled Onion.

I only noticed these "cosmic" corn snacks were faintly orangey brown when I read on the packet they are coloured with paprika extract and spice. What spice I don't know, and why paprika does not in this case qualify as a spice I don't know either. The flavour comes from soy sauce, curry powder, dried tomato, barley malt extract and barley malt vinegar.

Not much else to say really.
Good taste.
Not expensive (only 20p in case you missed the giant red strap across the top of the packet). Suitable for vegetarians.
Baked not fried.
Comes with advice on keeping fit; although the advice prints out at 10mm x 40mm (so very very small) it is a link to real website. Erm... but the health advice comes direct to you from United Biscuits who, guess what? make biscuits and snacks.
                                 

Oh well. You can't have everything.

18 January 2022 Update 

I just discovered there is a link to this page on Wikipedia! How surprising is that? Perhaps I am an internationally renowned food writer after all. Perhaps not.