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From the Gourmet Repository Known As Canadian Tire

For the uninitiated, Canadian Tire is what you'd get if an automotive store had a threesome with a sporting goods store and a Home Depot. It is not at all known for its victuals; in fact, anything edible is constrained to a small rack of junk food offerings by the front tills, all of which feature brands not seen outside of Canadian Tire. Of course, I am drawn to off-brands like a moth to a suspect cheese puff.

DAM TASTY BEAVERS: HEMPNUT & LIQUOR FLAVOURS

There's a lot to unpack here, branding-wise. I'm not sure if the title is ironic or not, but I do feel bad for anything Canadian-based that wishes to identify with Canada's official water-bound rodent. (I almost went with "castor acer" for an online nom de plume until I realized that the expression "eager beaver" -- despite being an innocent and endearing expression at one point in time -- has become slightly sullied by the modern age, and people may misinterpret . . . . everything.

So while we're into questionable branding, let's talk about the Hempnut flavour, which features a Rastafarianish beaver on an island with palm trees because hemp obviously = pot and Jamaica and hahahahahahahahaha. *Stares expressionless into camera for 2 minutes*

Moving on.

Hemp has as much to do with pot flavour-wise as carob does to chocolate. I honestly don't expect to taste anything beyond chocolate and disappointment. (Disappointment regarding any sort of defined flavour, not disappointment due to a lack of pot. Pot -- and I fully grasp the irony of this statement -- makes me nauseous). By the way, you have to give points for the beaver molds. That is a very detailed, life-like beaver. There is a lot of filling inside these things (the haunches are very capacious!), so the chocolate doesn't overwhelm the flavour of the filling. That being said, the filling tastes like . . . a very slight thing? Not even nutty, just kind of sweet. Kinda. Have you ever had hemp mixed into your breakfast cereal? Did you taste the hemp? OF COURSE YOU DIDN'T.

The second beaver is "liquor" flavoured (or “alcool” in French, which sounds so much better); the subtitle illuminates that there's a whiskey filling. While I'm not a connoisseur of the alcools, whiskey is something I can get behind. When I bought these, I was with a friend, so I bought an extra whiskey beaver so we could try them together.

Being the castor acers that we were (stop) we tried them as soon as we left the store. I recall making a lot of sounds at the time, most of them featuring the letter H. As in "wahhhhhhhhhh" and simply "hhhhhhhhhhh". THESE. ARE. SO. STRONG. No lack of flavour here, these taste like 90% booze. And much like a child who was raised on Old Dutch salt & vinegar chips who grows to love any chip that sears off the top 3 layers of my tongue, my early connection to brandy beans at Christmastime has made me appreciate any chocolate + liquor combination that has an outside chance of getting me legally drunk. *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

The above passage was written almost exactly a year ago. Ever since, I've been dropping by the local Canadian Tire, hoping to reunite with a whiskey filled beaver (stop). Sadly, they never appeared again. My last hope was that they were a Christmas-only offering, but checking the Christmas shelves yesterday was a bust. However, as I was waiting in line to pay for a pair of windshield wipers, my eye fell upon an off-brand flavour of chip that was not of the usual “regular/bbq/salt & vinegar/sour cream & onion” quadfecta:

FRANK TURKEY STUFFING POTATO CHIPS

This is tremendously appealing because stuffing is the best part of a turkey dinner (indisputable fact, NO FURTHER DISCUSSIONS), and I feel like a stuffing flavour is actually achieveable; roast chicken chips have been a thing for years, then you add some poultry seasoning, onion salt and celery salt, right? Seems easy. Unfortunately, none of these spices are on the ingredient list, although they could be mixed in with the "spices and herbs", "seasonings" and/or "spice extractives". There are three different kinds of yeast in these chips which I'm hoping is to nail the bread flavour?

The scent of a freshly opened bag is one of  . . . . chips. Potatoes & oil. Fair enough. The taste . . . HOLY CARP, THEY NAILED THE TASTE!. I actually exclaimed a surprise, "Mmmmm!" upon trying my first chip. It does have that stuffing flavour that takes me back to childhood and smelling my mom frying onions & celery in butter with poultry seasoning in preparation of a big holiday dinner, which is one of my favourite nostalgic trips. The one drawback is that the chips are too salty, but that’s probably a good thing, as it will stop me from devouring a whole bag at once. The next time I need a new tail light, screwdriver or curling slide, I'm getting another bag of these!

[knickknacksnack]

I do not understand British snack foods

* Going back to the vaults and the time I raided a UK import store for intriguing British snacks. This was when I was still living on the North Shore, so I’m pretty sure it was one of West Vancouver’s many many many UK-themed shops because ex-pats & their descendents have more Britishy Britishness than the original print. (First place for Britishesquity in Canada surely goes to VIctoria, which is basically Britain, but with government workers and totem poles.)

SMITHS FRAZZLES CRISPY BACON FLAVOUR CORN SNACKS

I definitely smell bacon flavour when I open the package - emphasis on bacon flavour. And coffee for some reason, but perhaps that's a phantom association. The pieces look more cornish than bacony, although I see how they went out of their way to artificially colour, in barely visible strips, the cornish pieces so that they faintly resemble bacon. (Maybe peameal bacon that’s extremely heavy on the peameal?) They do taste like bacon . . . very, very salty bacon. I had to drink two cups of water and eat an apple to cleanse my palate afterwards to stave off hypertension. The ingredient list and nutritional information isn't horrible, but it isn't good either. (Saved again by decent sized packaging!) And this bacon snack is suitable for vegetarians! Hooray?

SKIPS TINGLY PRAWN COCKTAIL

There are several reasons why I picked this up, the primary one being the curious absence of a qualifying noun: tingly prawn cocktail . . . . what, exactly? The byline reads “flavour” but “Tingly Prawn Cocktail Flavour” isn’t much help. I'm pretty sure it's not JUST prawn cocktail inside this bag. No such elucidation on the back of the package** - just a playful font announcing that "Skips are the fizzy, light and melty tongue tingly snack. Experience the tingle, balance a Skip on your tongue and let it melt in your mouth!" So that's the second reason why I picked this up: all the "tingly" claims. If this is basically prawn Pop Rocks, then Skips gets +100 points for sheer WTF gusto.

When I open the bag, a familiar scent wafts upwards. It smells . . . . like fish. Fried fish, to be more specific. It smells like a fish & chip kitchen. How they even managed to scent these with seafood AND grease is impressive, though probably not what they were looking for.

Looking at the chips, they look very much like a shrimp cracker. They are totally a shrimp cracker, and the tingliness is merely the dry cracker sucking all the moisture off one's tongue as it dissolves into a very, very, very faint shrimp cocktail-flavoured wad of goo in your mouth. One day, ONE DAY, snack bags are going to live up to their hype. I hold on to hope as I scrape off my tongue.

**Afterwards, in very teeny tiny font, I find my answer: "prawn cocktail flavour tapioca snack". Okay. Well. I see why they left that off the front.

SMITHS SCAMPI FLAVOUR FRIES

"Cereal snack with a delicious scampi and lemon taste," announces the bag. I have no idea what scampi is, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t belong in cereal. I do know it’s an inherently funny word Monty Python used a lot, so I couldn’t resist giving these a try. It tastes of lemon and fish, with a small hint of spice. Surprisingly, they’re quite good. I don’t know how wheat flour and soybean oil can be made to taste like fried fish, but that’s human progress, I suppose. "Scampi" is nowhere in the list of ingredients, but I can ignore my inklings of worry and just enjoy them. At least it’s not tapioca goo.

WALKERS FAMOUSLY WORCESTER SAUCE CHIPS/CRISPS

Fun fact: Britons, in ongoing efforts not to pronounce half the letters in any given place name, have erroneously identified “Worcestershire sauce” as “Worcester sauce”. I can already feel the anger rising and angry comments about to rain down on my ignorant Canadian butt, so I shall direct you the Worcestershireshricesterians themselves. CHECKMATE, BRIT-CHES!

WorcesterSHIRE sauce smells like dirty socks at the bottom of a gym bag, tastes like I don't know because recipes only call for small amounts of it and I'm not sure that I've ever tasted anything else distinctively Worcestershire . . . ian? I suspect this is a sexy sounding flavour to put on a chip/crisp package, but an easy flavour to manufacture in that it's not too far removed from salt & pepper or paprika or roast ox or the like. Expectations: not high. Do they smell like Worcestershire sauce? Thank the heavens, no. They almost smell ketchup chip-y. The taste: it's a lot more complex than I thought it would be. It has a bit of a tang and it's not too salty, It tastes like 3 - 4 different somethings: kind of peppery, kind of vinegary, kind of tomato-y, spicy but not spicy hot. I'd definitely eat these again. Looking at the ingredients, I see these are not flavoured with Worcestershire sauce but with "Worcester(shire) sauce seasoning" which includes: "flavouring" (biggest ingredient . . . and shouldn't that be an adjective and not a noun?), salt, sugar, barley malt vinegar, citric acid, dried onion, dried garlic, fructose, cardamom, ground black pepper, ginger, clove & cocoa powder. Wait. What? These chips could be a half brother to gingersnap cookies.

CALBEE EUROPEAN TASTE BRITISH FISH TARTARE SAUCE FLAVOURED POTATO CHIPS

(IMAGE NOT FOUND)

So. I have notes for these, but no photos. I cannot, for the life of me and after a full day searching on Google, find evidence of their existence (although Calbee DID come out with a line of European Taste chips, some of which I’ve reviewed on this very blog, and I recall being distinctly sad that I didn’t get my hands on the lobster bisque chips). I don’t remember eating these at all and yet, I have notes. Probability that this could have been a hunger-inspired fever dream: 63% These are the notes, verbatim: “I don't know if they're going for the whole fish & chip meal flavour or just "tartare" (tartare or tartar?) flavour. Wait, if this is "fish tartare" isn't that basically sushi? If it's “fish tartar” then I expect a salt & vinegar with a slight mayo-ny flavour. I am hopeful . . . I do like a good tartar sauce, but it's kind of unfeasible to eat it straight out of the jar/bottle with no accompaniment. (Well, I suppose it is, but my life hasn’t become that desperate. Yet.)

There's no tart to the tartar sauce, which is disappointing but not surprising given Calbee's tendency towards timid flavours. They don't taste fishy, even though "fish products" is part of the ingredient list (I’m a little concerned about "fish products"). They do mostly taste like tartar sauce in a roundabout way. Another ingredient is "flavour enhancer" and these chips need more of that -  unless "flavour enhancer" is something that makes tumors far more likely to occur if ingested in large quantities.”

* I feel compelled to note something that I’m sure only I care about. My last entry was full of verb tense flip-flopping and it’s driving me crazy (though not crazy enough to compel me to edit the entry). This is a result of having six-year-old notes written in the present tense (because I wrote them while eating the snacks and not after the fact). I’m picking one tense and sticking with it, and yes, it’s weird to write about something in the past as if it’s happening right the heck now but . . . . no. I don’t have an excuse. You’ll just have to live with it.

[knickknacksnack]

PROBABLY UNNECESSARY AMERICAN SNACKS FROM WHATCOM COUNTY

In a simpler, less apocalyptic era, one of the great pastimes for residents of the Greater Vancouver Regional District was to cross the Canada/U.S. border, invade the parking lots of Bellingham WA, and keep the local Trader Joe's in business. And while I do enjoy an escapade to Trader Joe's for cheap spices, nuts, cider & speculoos bars (I HAVE A VERY SPECIFIC LIST), a trip to the local Target or Marshall's is also worth taking, just to remind me that the U.S. has an unreasonable amount of selection when it comes to snack flavours. I thought Canada’s half dozen Oreo flavours (golden, mint, birthday cake, cinnamon bun, carrot cake, chocolate peanut butter . . . . uh, those Oreos but with less Oreo) was a font of choice, but then you enter a U.S. grocery store with a mile-long cookie aisle and half of that aisle is dedicated to mad lib Oreo flavours like Jolly Rancher, buttered popcorn, or . . . cookie dough. Which: what? Eating a cookie dough cookie seems like a tautological exercise that can only end in a tragic existential quandary. (And now the mile long booze aisles in American grocery stores start to make more sense.)

Which, in a very long-winded way, brings me to Fruit Punch Oreos

So chosen because you couldn't pay me enough to eat Jolly Rancher anything. I did my time in the 90s; my taste buds are trying to escape through my teeth just thinking about them.

Fruit Punch Oreos are artificially flavoured because of course they are. The aroma is definitely one of artificial fruit, but it's familiar at the same time. Hawaiian Punch? Kool-Aid? Can't quite put my finger on it. Pink doesn't really work with the blond Oreo colour scheme. White, brown, even orange, sure, but deep pink looks so . . . inscrutable. The good news: the filling does in fact taste like Hawaiian Punch, which I didn't realize how much I had missed. The bad news: it's Hawaiian Punch sandwiched between two golden Oreo biscuits, and the overall taste just doesn't work. This would definitely be a cookie for those who twist apart Oreos and eat the filling first.

Larry the Cable Guy Tater Salad Flavored Tater Chips

Well, if I can't have redundant Oreos, potato salad potato chips will have to do. "Will knock out yer snack cravins like a cop kickin' down a trailer door" says the bag. “Boy, that's good eatin'!" says also the bag. I like the feasibly unmerited confidence.

Taste prediction: no idea. Sour cream and oniony? The photo of the tater salad on the bag looks like it's made out of potatoes, celery, and red onion. My favourite potato salad (my mother's) contains -- among other things -- Miracle Whip, yellow mustard, and lots of radishes. If these chips taste more like the latter than the former, then I shall be crossing the border soon to hoard these suckers. (SIMPLER TIMES --editor's note from the future).

The freshly-opened bag scent is kind of tangy, reminiscent of all dressed chips. First taste: mustard, ketchup and . . . celery? Celery might be my hopeful imagination. These chips are difficult to describe, and the ingredient list doesn't help beyond salt, spice, dry prepared mustard, onion & garlic powder and artificial flavours. They're kind of like all dressed chips except without the barbecue and with more ketchup flavour. What ketchup flavour is doing on a tater salad is beyond me, but I guess that's Larry the Cable Guy's tater salad style? Doesn't seem like much of a stretch.

Verdict: they're not bad. I think I like them better than all dressed chips because the various unidentifiable flavours aren't quite as incongruent.

Cinnamon Bun Bites

I don't remember where & when (or even why, to be honest) I got these, but I know I got them in the States due to the imperial weight measurement and the dedication to unilingualism on the box.

"Fresh From the Oven Taste!" it claims. They're not warm, so: no. But I was game to try, even though I wasn’t optimistic given they're coated with white chocolate. I had a feeling they'd be diabolically (diabetically?) sweet. The ingredient list was not too horrifying in terms of artificial colours, flavours and seemingly unrelated multi-syllabic components. One of the ingredients is actually listed as "cinnamon bun dough" which: unlikely. Also: who in their right mind would eat cinnamon bun dough? YOU CAN'T PRETEND RAW BREAD DOUGH IS RAW COOKIE DOUGH.

So there is white chocolate on the outside and what looks like cinnamon sugar in the middle. At first the cinnamon sugar is tasty, but then you realize that you're essentially eating a Cinnabun minus the dough. And it's precisely that sweet. Terribly sweet, plus with a slightly soapy taste that 1 in 10 candies seem to have. Verdict: in the 90 percentile range of awful.

[knickknacksnack]

A note about near future entries

During the 6 year hiatus (hiatus makes it sound like it was on purpose, which is why I’m using the term) of this blog, I continued to buy unusual snack items, sample them, photograph a few of them, and write down my thoughts in note form.The next bevy of entries will be me attempting to extract something coherent out of those notes & all-but-forgotten tastings. Bottom line: many things, not much text. Oh, who am I kidding. I am incapable of brevity. Actual bottom line: many things, same amount of text, more filler. Once ancient history has been dealt with, I can get into more recent history, namely the stuff I’ve been hoarding for the past 6 months. A preview of my to do list:

[knickknacksnack]

THEORY TASTING CEREALS OF PROBABLE DOOM

At the end of the breakfast food aisle at my local grocery store there lies a small cereal purgatory wherein half a dozen unlikely cereals are displayed with giant red discount tags underneath, begging shoppers to rid the store of these accursed non-sellers. Some of them are super off-brand boxes of museli, which is completely understandable. Others are the cereals of probable doom - products even the most sugar-fortified of children (or morbidly curious adults) will not go near. I am a morbidly curious adult, and I would dearly love to try these cereals for this blog. However, I cannot justify both the fiscal and dietary irresponsibility of buying an entire box of cereal that I will likely never finish. I blame my mom for this. Not only was she incredibly frugal (out of necessity, to be fair), we weren't allowed sugary cereals as kids and were raised solely on Cheerios, Rice Krispies and Puffed Wheat. PUFFED. FREAKIN'. WHEAT. When we got a box of Shreddies, it was considered a treat. As an adult, I give kudos to my mom for steering us away from childhood diabetes, but as a kid, it felt like a half step above breakfast gruel.

So I will have to rely on theory to walk these cereals to their likely flavour conclusions. Note: if anyone out there has actually tried these cereals, please do share the experience!

CEREALS OF PROBABLE DOOM, PRESENTED BY PROBABLE DOOM SCORE, LOWEST TO HIGHEST.

Eggo (maple syrup flavour)

In a world where we have cereals camouflaging as other breakfast foods (Cinnamon Toast Crunch, any cereal that purports to be based on "froot"), I suppose this was an inevitability. Of course, the big question is "Do they actually taste like Eggos?" Not waffles, but that unique, manufactured, waffle-adjacent soupéon space that only Eggos occupy. (Kind of like how watermelon flavour doesn't really taste like watermelon so much as it reminds you of something watermelonesque.) (And I'm not knocking Eggos - although I don't buy them for myself, I wouldn't say no to one if offered.) Sadly, breakfast cereals aren't notorious for faithful recreations of actual flavours, and given their shape, I feel like Eggo cereal is just Honeycombs in disguise. With maple flavour, because maple flavour is actually achievable.

Probable doom score: 38%

  Tim Horton's Birthday Cake Flavoured Timbits

I feel like every member of the international community has been lectured about Tim Horton's by a Canadian, but if you're one of the few who haven't: Timbits are doughnut holes, AKA tiny balls of doughnut.

Look, birthday cake flavoured anything can go to straight to sugary hell. Why you'd want to base any flavour on a white cake with white frosting with sprinkles that also taste like white is beyond me. But birthday cake flavoured Timbit cereal seems extra egregious because it's (probably) a bad cereal copy of a bad doughnut copy of a bad idea for cake. I'm a fan of sugar, but give it some flavour, at least. (And don't tell me vanilla is a flavour. Not in cake, it's not.) What I suspect this cereal tastes like: a cereal that used to be made with care and actually pretty tasty, but over the years it's deteriorated in quality due to corporate-mandated shortcuts and now it just tastes like the tears of minimum-wage workers who serve coffee & bagels to a never-ending line of ill-tempered Calgarians going through drive-thrus in their Dodge Rams on their way to work, all the while wishing the company would stop clawing back their benefits because "free water and soft drinks" doesn't really qualify as a "benefit". That, and a grocery store white sheet cake that is 75% icing, 10% cake and 15% "I wish I didn't have to eat this grocery store white sheet cake, but it's Cathy's birthday and I'll look like an ungrateful ass in front of the department head if I don't have a slice."

Probable doom score: 92%

Hershey's Kisses Cereal

WHY?

I was content to just leave it at that, but then I remembered how, every Valentine's Day, Hershey's Kisses are passed around willy-nilly and consumed by those around me without a second thought. This has always confused me because Hershey's Kisses are objectively terrible. DOES NO ONE ELSE UNDERSTAND THIS? They're grainy, they taste slightly soapy, and they don't taste like chocolate so much as chocolate's dubious bachelor uncle who lives in squalor and only eats food if it comes from a can. So why would I want to dry that out then pour milk all over it?! I mean, look at the box - the cereal itself looks like poop-coloured shark teeth. That's practically a dare . . . . AND I DAREN'T.

Probable doom score: 150%. Certain doom, laced with whatever filler they put into Hershey's Kisses. Potpourri sweepings?

[knickknacksnack]

Oh, hey.

I think it’s time to revive this blog. Step one: remember Tumblr password. No, sorry-- step one: remember password to email account that is the backup email account to the email account linked to my Tumblr account. I’ve forgotten a lot of passwords over the years. Well, that’s not entirely true. I’ve written down my passwords, but because they’re all SUPER SECRET, and I’m a VERY IMPORTANT PERSON FROM WHOM IT IS WORTH STEALING PASSWORDS TO BLOG SITES, I left a few letters/digits out of the passwords while writing them down. So I’ve only forgotten bits of passwords. The rest has been meticulously recorded. Obviously, I figured it all out. It was my biggest accomplishment today. Take THAT, aging brain! AT ANY RATE . . . Knick Knack Snack revival. Let’s do this . . . soonish. PLEASE KEEP ME HONEST ABOUT THIS. My resistance to writing is about as strong as my resistance against using all caps for emphasis. SERIOUSLY. IT’S A PROBLEM.

[knickknacksnack]

Canadian Themed Potato Chips

I have an inkling this happens in the US and the UK as well: once a year, Lays has a contest to introduce a new flavour to its line. Anyone can send in a flavour suggestion, and in the end four semi-finalists are chosen to have their flavour developed, created and sold for a limited time. The public then votes for the winner.

The Canadian semi-finalists have a "(stereo)typical Canadian" bent to them. Sort of. You can kind of count "typical Canadian flavours" on the fingers of one hand. The rest is well-intentioned stretching, as you will see. I have two years of flavours to get through here, because that's the benchmark of my procrastination these days. Impressive, no?

From left to right: Creamy Garlic Caesar, Grilled Cheese & Ketchup, Maple Moose & Perogy Platter

All four flavours sound agreeable to me, although I only tried three because Y U NO LIKE SMALLER BAG SIZES, LAYS?! One person buying four 235g bags is a bit excessive, unless that person is catering a weekend hunting trip and/or beer bacchanalia (in this country, more "and" than "or"). I decided to pass on the Creamy Garlic Caesar chips because I was pretty sure I knew how they would taste, plus garlic Caesar is not particularly Canadian. Bloody Caesar, yes. Garlic Caesar, no. Of course it was suggested by a Vancouverite - a people who have more in common with the Duchy of Portland than the Prairielands or the Kingdom of Toronto.

Grilled Cheese & Ketchup: a sodium staple for cold winter afternoons, to be sure although I do object to using ketchup as a substitute for Campbell's tomato soup. But fine, I'm rolling with it. My expectation: a cheese chip crossed with a ketchup chip, naturally. Nothing is more Canadian than a ketchup chip, as we are the only nation on earth who not only produces, but actually likes these things. Personally, I am not a fan of the ketchup chip. Between that, being a terrible skater, and never having been in a canoe, I live in constant fear of having my citizenship revoked.

The taste: ehhhrrrmmm. Kind of weird, and I don't think in a good way. There's a flash of ketchup & cheese, but the two together in your mouth don't taste like ketchup & cheese at all. It kind of tastes like Worchestershire sauce. STRANGE. It's kind of earthy, funky and soupy. And slightly spicy, which does not compute at all. Strike one, Lays. Maple Moose: I was pretty iffy on this one. Maple, okay . . . but moose?! Is that just a moniker for alliteration's sake, or are there scientists in a lab, replicating the taste of moose for beer snacks? I predicted a salty/sweet kettle corn-ish mixture. The actual taste . . . so much better than I thought it would be! I think Lays knows that Canadians are made of 88% sodium, so they balanced out the maple with some salty and a slight spice (which reminded me of my grandmother's moose sausage). In addition, there's a slight smoky finish, which is quite tasty. I like 'em! Perogy Platter: The flavour I was looking forward to the most because, well, PEROGIES. However, I did suspect that I would be disappointed. I anticipated a baked potato chip flavour that would taste somewhat sour cream & oniony, which is boring. To be fair, those are the two main components of perogies. I figured the amount of bacon flavour would determine the success of this candidate. Fortunately, they weren't as two note as I thought they would be. They're more sour cream & bacon than sour cream & onion. I am more than fine with that. There may be a hint of cheese in there too. The flavour is more subtle than your typical tongue scraping Canadian chip flavours, so it takes some getting used to.

My favourite of the three was definitely the Maple Moose . . . which ended up winning the competition for 2013. In tune with my peoples, I am.

2014 COMPETITION

Bacon Poutine, Cinnamon Bun, Jalapeno Mac & Cheese & Tzatziki

I opted to try the first two flavours only, because, again, I'm not eating four colossal bags of chips. I opted out of the last two flavours. The Jalapeno Mac & Cheese sounds like a combination of jalapneo chips plus cheese chips, both of which I've tried and have been aggressively meh about. Also: I know mac & cheese (AKA Kraft Dinner) has been branded as typical Canadian fare, but the addition of jalapeno? That sounds more like an idea conceived at 2 am by a group of guys in a man cave watching classic hockey games from the 80s on the CBC and drinking too much Kokanee. Okay. Super Canadian. Never mind. The tzatziki - been there, done that.

Bacon Poutine: to be fair, I was pretty sure I could predict the taste of a bacon poutine chip, but I really wanted to eat them anyway. Expectation: cheese flavour and bacon flavour, and hopefully gravy flavour, although I'm not exactly sure how one would describe gravy flavour. Salty meat pudding? I braced myself for disappointment in case of gravy flavour omission (because: come on!). Also, if the cheese flavour was cheddar (because: COME ON!!) 

GRAVYLESS CHEDDAR CHEESE POUTINE IS NOT POUTINE. IT'S AN INSULT TO HIGH SODIUM & HIGH FAT NATIONAL DISHES OF COUNTRIES WHERE PEOPLE NEED WOBBLY LAYERS TO INSULATE AGAINST THE -30 DEGREE MORNINGS WHEN YOU'RE FUMBLING WAIST DEEP IN A DRIFT LOOKING FOR AN ELECTRICAL CORD BECAUSE YOU FORGOT TO PLUG IN YOUR CAR THE NIGHT BEFORE.

Anyway.

Upon opening the Bacon Poutine bag, I smelled notes of gravy, so I was optimistic. The first taste is smoky, like barbecue, but without the . . . red flavour to it. So I guess that's the bacon. Nothing else really comes through besides that. It reminds me of Old Dutch bacon flavour chips from my childhood (do they still make those?), but much, much tamer. It isn't bad on its own, but it certainly does NOT replicate poutine flavour. Boooo.

Cinnamon Bun: To be honest, there was a relatively high fear factor with these. While the Maple Moose had sweet notes, it was subtle and mixed with salt & spice. I just didn't know if I was ready for the weirdity of a full-on sweet potato chip. Even chocolate covered potato chips are heavily salted. So how much salt would these have? Upon opening the bag, I was hit with a full-on waft of cinnamon, which I enjoyed. I could see sparkles of sugar on the chips, which was slightly unnerving. After eating one, I couldn't quite make up my mind, so I tried another one, then another, then another. They're actually pretty good! I don't think they're salted (it's on the ingredient list, but you can't really taste it), but they're not super sweet either, which is smart. They don't feel like a dessert chip - I think you could put these alongside a chicken burger OR some chocolate chip cookies. Cinnamon is the strongest taste (and it's not particularly strong - these chips are mild enough to be placed into Japanese chip territory), but there is a hint of dough-ey taste as well. Actually, it doesn't taste like dough . . . it tastes what Cinnabons used to smell like. A really pleasant surprise!

[knickknacksnack]

Fair Food

Today I visited the local mecca of fair food (excluding state fairs across the border. I'VE HEARD STORIES), the Pacific National Exhibition. I think food stalls take up the majority of the grounds space . . . certainly more  than the midway & animal barns combined. Every year I marvel at the scarawesome food selections, but in the end I get my fair staple of choice: french fries loaded with gravy & topped with vinegar and pepper. But this year is the first year I've been to the PNE since starting this bloggy thingy, plus I was there with two adventurous gourmands, so I had no excuse not to embrace the scarawesome.

There was a lot of crazy to choose from: two-foot long perogy & pepperoni hot dogs, Japanese-style macaroni & cheese, head-sized onion blooms, maple bacon corn dogs, and more poutine variations than you can shake a cheese curd at. But it was this sign that caught my eye:

At the Gourmet Burger cart, they had exotic meat sliders. WHY NOT. I ordered a crocodile, ostrich & kangaroo slider, disappointed but not disappointed that the python sliders were unavailable. After I ordered, I noticed the regular-sized burgers, which included The Vortex (a burger topped with two fried eggs, four slices of cheese and five slices of bacon, then pressed between two grilled cheese sandwiches) (NO THANK YOU), and the Crazy Monkey (peanut butter, fried bananas, bacon & ham) (NO TH-- actually, that sounds pretty good!)

But I stuck with my sliders. Each one was 2 - 3 bites. The dressing was super minimal; each patty was on a buttered toasted bun accompanied only by lettuce and tomato. Pros: you can really only taste the meat. Cons: you can really only taste the meat.

The crocodile slider looked the least appetizing, so I went for it first. The photo above is actually pretty flattering - the true colour of the patty was . . . rather . . . palid. The taste? I honestly can't describe it. It doesn't taste like chicken. It doesn't taste like any kind of white meat (or red). It was a bit dry, which was surprising for an amphibian. It wasn't bad, just profoundly underwhelming.

I was not expecting red meat in an ostrich slider, but it was darker than the kangaroo! The patty was quite tough, dense & dry (maybe it's not so much the meat but how it was cooked? I suppose it's easier to petrify a slider patty than a full-sized patty). It had more flavour than the crocodile slider, but not by much.

The kangaroo slider was the best of the three. While still quite lean, it had the meatiest flavour. Mind you, I'm not sure what "meat flavour" is, precisely. Describe to me the flavour of unseasoned hamburger. Yeah. Not easy, is it?

Anyway, three more unconventional meats to check off my list. (Four for the year, as I had an awesome camel burger in Morocco.) I think moose is still king of atypical meat selection in my books.

I had my eye on a deep fried Mars bar for dessert, but instead I found myself pulled into the orbit of this:

So many quadruple digit caloric intakes to choose from! Before I could decide on the fate of my arteries, my friend had already ordered a serving of deep fried Oreos, and graciously allowed me to sample one.

At first, they're kind of intimidating. They look like soft fluffy pillows of golden grease, and when you think about it, the end product is over twice the size of an actual Oreo. So what are you actually eating?

It's not all that wacky, relatively speaking. The batter is like a sweet spongy dough, so the end effect is like eating an Oreo wrapped in warm cake with a crisp coating. That . . . is well thought out. I approve of the deep fried Oreo, although I don't think I could eat more than two in one sitting without a cardiologist nearby.

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Curiosities from the Middle East

Osem Bissli Smokey (Smokey what, I have no idea) When I opened the bag, I smelled something familiar, something I used to like a lot when I was a kid. Upon some ponderance, I realized it was the scent of dog food. I don't know why I've always liked the smell of dry dog food. Fortunately Smokeys do not taste like dog food smell (well, maybe a little . . .). They do indeed taste like smoke, but smokey barbecuesque-ish. They taste 90% like Hickory Sticks, except with about an eighth of the grease (and the fat. If you like Hickory Sticks, then for the love of saturated fat, DON'T look at its "nutritional" information). Texture-wise, Smokeys are as light as the Falafels were heavy. Very airy, but with a bit of grain . . . kind of like All Bran buds. There you go: Smokeys = Hickory Sticks, All Bran and dog food . . . but in a good way?

Achva Marble Sesame Halva I grabbed these at the local Iranian deli, although I think the country of origin for this bar is either Israel or Lebanon. The blocks of chocolate on the wrapper drew me in and the notion of chocolate & sesame seed, so I gave it a go. When I opened  the package, I got a huge whiff of dusty must smell. Not an auspicious start.

Doesn't look nearly as appetizing as wrapper picture. Conspicuously absent: THE CHOCOLATE. When cutting the bar in half, I tasted a few of the crumbs and was not encouraged. It tastes like it smells: very dusty and musty. The texture is dessicated-y - there's very little moisture in this bar, but at the same time, it's very heavy and dense & slightly sticky. At first taste, there is nothing. The immediate aftertaste is one of extreme bitterness (like the Chalwa bar), and then just the faintest hint of Sesame Snaps. Verdict: NONONONONONONONONO

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Strange Brews

                          Lester's Fixins Peanut Butter & Jelly Soda It's hard not to leap to conclusions before I even taste this one. If it doesn't taste like peanut butter & jelly, it will probably be gross, however, if it DOES taste like peanut butter & jelly, it will probably be gross. Also, someone has to talk to the marketing department at Lester's Fixins because the image of the PB&J sandwich on the bottle label is nothing short of horrific (let's face it: no photograph of a PB&J sandwich will EVER be appealing). The colour of the soda is sort of a peachy orange, very close to the colour of cantaloupe, which is a shade that has no business being associated with PB&J. The ingredient list is small: water, sugar, sodium benzoate and artificial flavours. I'd like to see some natural flavours in there, but I'm not really sure how you render peanut butter into a clear, carbonated liquid. In the first second of the first quaff, I taste something sort of fruity, and I think "grape jelly"? Actually I think more along the lines of "grapej--AAAUUUGHGGHGHGHGHBRRRLLLPPP" because after that first second all I can taste is chemical. Horrible, horrible chemical taste. I take a second dose, hoping that it gets better. It doesn't. Neither does the third and that's all I'm able to swallow. I'm now paranoid that three swigs of this stuff has somehow altered my body chemistry.

Flying Cauldron Butterscotch Beer Picked up at the local candy store. All I saw on the label was "Butterscotch Beer" and I was sold. I put it in my basket, and when my friend saw it, she remarked it was a beer for the Harry Potter crowd, which I didn't understand at all . . . until I looked at the label again. Ah yes. Butterbeer. I was sad to read on and discover the drink was non-alcoholic, but I bought it anyway, just to find out what carbonated butterscotch tastes like. The drink claims to be all-natural. The ingredients are purified carbonated water (as opposed to muddy puddle carbonated water?), cane sugar, vanilla extract, natural caramel, natural flavors and "stevia rebaudiana leaf extract". Uh . . . sure? The drink does taste like carbonated butterscotch, which is great. I'm not fond of cream soda, but this is cream soda-ish without being too cream soda-y (read: like sucking white sugar through a straw). There's a bit of a weird aftertaste, though. I don't know if it's chemicalness I'm tasting . . . maybe it's the stevia rebaudiana leaf extract?

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Bến Tre Durian Candy

Oh, how wrong I was . . . .

I was disappointed to find a chewy candy inside the wrapper. A hard chewy candy. I could tell I would have to chew on it awhile (with the high probability of having durian candy bits stuck in my teeth for the rest of the day). The second disappointment was how utterly greasy the candy is, which only seems to amplify the greasy smell already cavorting about my nostrils.

I chewed into the candy and tasted the coconut right away, followed by a slightly buttery aftertaste. And then, like panzers across my tongue, came what I presume is the taste of durian, which is like drinking a quart of motor oil. The candy came out (okay, be fair, was spit out). The flavours dissipated in reverse order, so I was thankfully left with traces of coconut in my mouth, but the memory of the durian prevented me from further experimentation to see if the flavour improved with time. Usually I'll try something that's offputting a few times to see if I warm up to it. NOT NOW, NOT EVER. As an experiment/sadistic exercise, I brought the candies in to work. They were flatly rejected by everyone in my department except for one guy who said he didn't mind them. In fact, he said he'd rate the taste a 6 or 7 out of 10. Huh. Perhaps durian tolerance is some sort of genetic trait, like being able to roll your tongue, or eat 15 pizzas without gaining a single pound.

Actual sign found at a Singapore rapid transit station. Personally, I'd rather stand next to a guy with a propane tank and a lighter than a guy with a basket full of durians.

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Mexican Gurchin Test

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Chocolate and Booze from the New World

How can this possibly be bad?

Hey! We still manufacture stuff in this country! WHO KNEW?

So is it any good, or will I learn to stop asking how something could possibly be bad, because it only invites disappointment? It . . . . is good. So very, very good. The dark chocolate balances out the sweetness of the filling, although the filling isn't terribly sweet. The cheesecake part doesn't have that cheesy, slightly dull and bitter taste that most cheesecakes have, so I think I may like it better than actual cheesecake. The fruit bit is surprisingly flavourful. This is available at any Canadian grocery store, sooooo . . . BUY IT NOW! Nutffles Red Velvet Truffles

So now we're into American sweets. Q: How can you tell? A: The penchant for portmanteau. "Nutffles" is a perfectly ridiculous word . . . and one I couldn't resist, hence why I bought something that A) employs white chocolate, which I am not a fan of, and B) contains red velvetness, which almost always disappoints. But who knows? Maybe a Nutffle will be fantastiawesome.

Upon studying the interior of the four small (quite small, actually) round clusters, I assumed I was looking at a white chocolate covered wafer dome with a Nutellaish filling around a hazelnut. What it actually is, according to the package I should have read ahead of time: a whole almond in a creamy red velvet filling surrounded by a thin, crisp wafer covered in cream cheese flavoured Belgian white chocolate (which: what? Cream cheese flavoured white chocolate? You're messing with me, right?) I'm not sure why I missed the obvious red velvet in my guesstimation, aside from the fact that the red velvet is more of a chocolate brown and I'm still unclear as to what red velvet is actually supposed to taste like. I've had red velvet cakes in the past, but they just taste like cake to me. Perhaps I need a more southern palette to appreciate the difference, like being able to appreciate sweet tea, even though I'm a frequent hot tea drinker. CURSE YOU, GOOD HOST, FOR RUINING MY ICED TEA TASTEBUDS! Verdict: kinda meh. Anything covered in white chocolate automatically becomes white chocolate flavoured. Planet Bee Honeymoon Mead This mead originates in a town I visit all the time, but I had no idea it had a meadery. (Thanks, C, for the tip!) I had had mead once before, during my tour of northern England, but I found it underwhelming. Still, I wanted to give this a try. I headed up to Planet Bee with my sister, mother, grandmother and great aunt, and we nearly drained PB's mead reserves with our shameless sampling, from which I selected two bottles to take home with me.          

This particular mead is, in essence, honey wine, which is made from the honey they collect at Planet Bee. The price for a bottle is reasonable: it's more expensive than wine, but it's much, much cheaper than ice wine, which is the closest comparable thing, taste-wise. Fortunately, honey meads are sweeter than wine, but not as sickly sweet as ice wine, which is right in the pocket of where I want my wines to be. (Honey mead, where have you been all my life?!?!)

The Marnier Metheglin, according to my accompanying fact sheet "is a spiced mead with vanilla, orange and cinnamon." Upon drinking it, I couldn't taste any orange at all, but I did detect a hint of vanilla and then a whoooole lot of cinnamon. Fortunately, I'm a fan of a whoooooole lot of cinnamon, so I quite liked it. It's a bit dangerous, though . . . the bitter alcoholic edge is sanded down quite a bit, so it doesn't really feel like you're consuming alcohol, but at 13.3% alc/vol, it packs a punch! I drank my Metheglin chilled on a hot summer day, and it was perfect, although with the cinnamon, this would be a nice post-Thanksgiving, autumnal drink as well. The Parad Ice Berry Mead (clever, clever) is less one-note than the Metheglin. From the fact sheet: "A complete mead with nuances of honey, aromas of ripe raspberry, boysenberry and black current. Bold, yet elegant, with a berry forward flair." (If my snack reviews ever start sounding like wine descriptions, someone please break my fingers). I liked this one the most. It almost tasted like a mixed fruit juice or berry cocktail with just the faintest hint of a bite. In fact, this could be dangerous to have around kids . . . . most alcohols are kidproofed on account of them tasting horrible (sweaty socks = beer, rubbing alcohol = spirits, old vinegar = wine. You know it's true. We only drink them because we learn to tolerate the taste) . . . not so the honey meads . . . keep away from the children!

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South African chocolate bars

Pre-note: a quick Googling has me thinking Milo bars are actually Australian in origin. I suppose when I've found an Australian grocery import store, I'll know for sure. For my purposes, I'm going to ignorantly forge on ahead and keep waving the red green and blue (and black and yellow and white) over the Milo bar. I've seen a lot of Milo products about, and one thing they all have in common is photos of people playing sports on the wrappers: professional soccer players, kids in sweater vests learning how to play cricket, and long distance runners (not pictured: long distance runners dealing with the intestinal consequences of eating "healthy" chocolate bars before a marathon). Unfortunately, such pictures don't really hint at what's inside the actual chocolate bar (unless it's creme d'athlete). So that's why I thought I'd give this one a try. Mystery! The packaging does say "Milk Chocolate with Chocolate Malt" which I erroneously read as "Milk Chocolate with Chocolate Milk" at first, which sounds stupid, then intriguing, then boring, but, no, intriguing. Countries of the world, get on this! I thought a Milo bar had to be at least halfway decent because I like malt balls. I could eat Whoppers by the truckfull when I was younger and in my prime sugar tolerance years. But the malt in a Milo bar is underwhelming. It's ground down into very fine chunks, actually, almost a powder. It gives the bar some texture, but doesn't influence the flavour all that much. In that way, it's comparable to a Nestle Crunch bar - you don't taste the rice bits, they just provide a small amount of crunchiness. In terms of the chocolate itself, it's better than North American chocolate, but that's damning with faint praise. I can taste more chocolate than wax, but it does possess a sort of fine grit that I've come to associate with Nestle (in any country). Verdict: meh.

Nestle Chocolate Log

Perhaps the latter two words in conjunction aren't as snicker-worthy in South Africa. Those two words would never, ever be applied to a chocolate bar here (which probably confirms that we're just a bunch of 12 year olds here in the New World). The prosaic description on the packaging doesn't lie: this is indeed marshmallow on a wafer (covered in chocolate), although the marshmallow is more like a marshmallow creme (though a bit brown in colour. Don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing). The wafer is crisp and thoroughly cardboard flavoured. (I think all the Russian chocolate wafers are spoiling me). The milk chocolate is milk chocolate, although not a particularly good milk chocolate (hello, Nestle). Once again, pretty meh, and a bit too sweet for my tastes.

I don't know if this bar had a rough trip across the sea/continent, but minus points for presentation. There's a marshmallow breach!

Actually, it looks like the entire marshmallow portion is trying to run away and escape the cardboard crisp.

Beacon TV Bar

To be honest, I bought and pictorally recorded this so long ago, I don't really remember much about it, which makes me think that I had the same reaction as the above two bars. If it tasted the way it looks . . . .

Yeah. A mehlange of brown. Surely we can mass produce chocolate bars with just a smidgen of quality and effort. Perhaps scientists should get off their particle accelerators and get onto the stuff that really matters. Nestle Peppermint Crisp

This was the bar I was most looking forward to trying. Peppermint . . . crisp? Crisp peppermint? An illustration of the bar on the package that looks remotely fungal? I'm on board! To describe this bar in one word: weird. It's weird. It's unlike any other peppermint chocolate theme I've had before. The peppermint inside is like hard candy, but it's shaped like some bizarre geological experiment:

And it's hard, but it isn't hard, and it's chewy, but it isn't chewy. A description for it is as elusive to me as trying to convey a Tim Tam Slam. It's interesting, but I wouldn't necessarily classify it as good. First of all, when you start chewing on the peppermint, it sort of wads up into a sticky ball and affixes itself to your teeth. Secondly, it doesn't have a very strong peppermint taste (a particular pet peeve of mine). I will give it credit for the pleasing turquoise colour. I almost don't mind that whatever agent used to attain that pretty shade of aquamarine probably increased my likelihood of cancer by about 200% I really have to ease up on the "conventional" chocolate bars, no matter how exotic their origins may seem. They almost always disappoint. Or maybe it's just Nestle. I've never been a fan (which is unfortunate, since they own everything this side of Mars).

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Banana Bread Beer & Roasted Beef Chips

I have a decent patio now . . . with a doubled seating capacity (2!!), and the word has gone out. Thing is, I realized the other day that if company drops in, the only beverage I have to offer is tap water. That and a buttload of tea, but that doesn't really jive with the summer patio vibe. So it was off to the local liquor store, where I like to peruse the international beer section (I'm always looking for Belgian beers so I can relive my sudsy days in Brugge). In doing so, I found banana bread beer - not from Belgium, but from Britain. Buhwhatnow? Gotta try that! Sampled on a sunny evening after work, for full effect. According to the label, this beer is direct from Bedford, UK, and is in fact made with bananas (fair trade, for Vancity cred). Bananas and something called "banoffee aroma" and yes, I totally had to look up "banoffee". And . . . I need some of this immediately. I do wonder, though, at what kind of laboratory does one extract banoffee aroma from banoffee pie. I also wonder how you can stuff bananas into beer without some tropical turbidity.

I didn't have great expectations because I've tried flavoured beers in the past and they all end up tasting like beer flavoured beer. But the first thing I noticed when I popped off the cap was a banana aroma. Impressive! And the taste? At first, it's 100% beer . . . and not great beer at that. This one is kind of . . . . acidic. And kind of tart and metallic. But once that goes away there is a pronounced banana aftertaste. "But what about the bread part?" you ask. I have no idea why they didn't just call this banana beer, since that's all you really get. I'm not really sure what other flavours the bread half brings to the table anyway. Walnuts? Dough? Maybe if this was a hefeweizen . . . . So it's interesting and I'm glad I tried it (if nothing but to restore my hope in flavoured beers), but the beer itself isn't good enough for a second try. Sorry, Wells! Calbee Japanese Style Roasted Beef Flavoured Potato Chips

More meat flavoured potatoes! I was eager to try these because of the photo on the outside. When I was in Kyoto I spent an evening stuffing my face with street food, including BBQ beef on a (chop) stick, which was grilled over an open flame on a wire mesh much like the one in the picture. And it was delicious. Yet again I knocked down my expectations a couple of notches, although I figured that teriyaki flavour could easily translate to a chip spice.

One thing about Calbee chips: they are not covered in a lot of flavouring crud, which makes them a nice snack-while-doing-other-things chip because you aren't leaving a trail of sour cream & onion coating over everything within reach radius. On the other hand, it makes for a weak flavour. But perhaps my tongue is twisted from all the Old Dutch salt & vinegar chips I ate as a child (and, be fair, adult). I remember my eyes watering tears of artificial vinegar at a few points in time . . . . Anyway, these chips don't taste like teryaki at all. They reminded me of roast beef. Faint roast beef. A smidgen of roast beef. Maybe more like . . . Yorkshire Pudding. Something that reminds you of roast beef while being mild and not really roast beef. So I suppose it's a partial success. Once again, not bad. Out of most of the Calbees I've tried so far, this and the Okonomiyaki are the ones I'd most likely to go back to.

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Saft Rabarber and Japanese Borscht

Upon closer inspection, the main ingredient of Saft Rabarber is sugar, so this is more like a syrup than a concentrated fruit juice. I made a pitcher according to the directions and . . . . meh. Both my mom and I agreed that it's too much sugar and not enough rhubarb, so even if you added more concentrate to the mix, it wouldn't really help. So what to do with the rest of the bottle? A trip to the local farmer's market provided some unexpected inspiration. At one of the booths that was selling homemade preserves (because you can't have a farmer's market without several booths of jammery), there was a billboard of adult beverage suggestions one could make with jam. In the mix was a drink that called for sparkling water, lime juice, gin and rhubarb jam. I just happened to have all those ingredients at home, so I decided to try the recipe substituting the syrup for the jam. The measurements went a little something like this: Some Saft Rabarber Some sparkling water, but more A bit of lime juice A shot of gin

I probably should have garnished it to make it look fancier, but all I had on hand at the time was some arugula and a potato.

This? This incarnation of rhubarb syrup is really, really tasty. Alcohol DOES make things better! And I suspect the lime gives it a kick that the syrup is missing. This is a great summery drink that I intend on making again. Back to Ikea for more syrup! And let's look for cheap shelves at the scratch & dent while we're there!

Calbee Borsch-Flavoured Potato Chips

First of all, European Series?! As in "more than one"? I am so on board with that. I'll have to keep trawling T&T. I look forward to some vichysoisse, hochzeitssuppe, fiskesuppe, gazpacho and goulash in the future. Don't let me down, Calbee! I had to try these with my mother because she's the borscht expert. I have not eaten borscht since I was a child and was forced to eat it by, yes, my mother. There are few foods in this world I am not fond of, but beets is one of them. Especially pickled beets. I mean, the colour. It just isn't natural. I'm a bad Ukrainian. I suspected beet taste wouldn't exactly translate over to a potato chip, so I was confident that I could try these without having traumatic flashbacks to my childhood, sitting all afternoon at the kitchen table, not allowed to leave until I finished my soup, adding more and more sour cream to the bowl until it became a pink, goopy mess. Ah. Good times. ANYWAY. Here are two takes on Borsch flavoured chips. Mom: They smell like salt & vinegar chips. Me: They smell like ketchup chips. Mom: Ew. No way. Mom: They definitely have a vegetable taste. It's pungent and it "hits you like whammo!". They taste like borscht, if you think about it. Actually, it reminds me of borscht when it's made with beet leaves. They taste like the beet leaves. Me: They're somewhat reminiscent of the minestrone flavoured chips. They sort of taste like Campbell's vegetable soup crossed with a ketchup chip, but not really. It's less tomatoey. It definitely tastes like a vegetable . . . or maybe several vegetables cooked down and mashed together. Kind of like V8 juice without the tomato. The verdict: they're okay. They're not horrifying (despite the beet implications), but they're not awesome. It's very Japanese in that its vegetabley and mild. What's especially nice about Calbee chips is that the bags aren't huge. They come with as many chips that should be in a small, snack-sized chip bag, if it wasn't 80% air. I'd be more willing to review all of President's Choice's weird chip flavours if they came in sizes other than "gigantobag."

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Oddities and Decadence from the Canadian Pacific Isles

Just got my new weapon. The weapon of choice.

Actually, I find these candy apples remarkably restrained for RMCF. The one in my old neighbourhood had candy apples covered in jumbo marshmallows AND whole graham cracker squares. But there are more weapons in the armory:

These cookies will CRUSH YOU.

In case this doesn't look impressive enough for you, those brownie paddles are big enough to accommodate a spirited game of ping pong.

While beholding all the lethal majesty, I came across this:

Yeah. Chocolate covered Nanaimo bars. WHY NOT? I had no idea these existed. I've never seen them in a RMCF store and I didn't spot them on the official Nanaimo Trail scorecard. Under normal circumstances, I would never attempt an item like this, but now I have a blog where I occasionally eat scary things, so I felt kind of obliged. I'M DOING IT FOR SCIENCE.* So I bought one chocolate covered bar and one mysterious white bar, which the clerk told me was "tiger butter" which he had to translate to me as "white chocolate and peanut butter". I also asked the clerk if these bars were unique to the store. He replied that other stores can make them, but usually don't. And they had invented the chocolate covered Nanaimo bar at this particular outlet. I was absolutely terrified to try these. I've eaten insects before and they weren't half as scary as . . . this. This which made my blood sugar spike on sight. But I am nothing if not intrepid.

The bars with my awaiting teacup for scale. I had a whole pot of hojicha tea ready to go, hoping it would dilute my blood, which was about to turn into sugar slush.

One of my burning questions was answered upon dissection. Would they bother with the top layer of chocolate on the bar, or would they just pour chocolate on top of the chocolate? Yep, the latter. And as you can see, they did not skimp on the coatings. I attempted the tiger butter one first, since I was sure it was going to be the sweetest. I wasn't wrong. Unfortunately the tiger butter is more white chocolate than peanut butter, and in conjunction with the butter cream? HOLY SWEDISH NOUGAT. The only way I can articulate the experience is the sound I made while chewing: "Bluuuurrrruuuuuueeeerrrgggghhhhhuuuuuhhh." And that was just one small bite. Three cups of tea and several wheatgrass cleanses later, I was up to trying the chocolate covered Nanaimo Bar. This one was a lot more tolerable, and the taste made a lot more sense. What didn't make sense was the construction of the bar - it made it really difficult to eat, because the coating didn't want to break and the buttercream squirted out any opening it could find. You know when restaurants serve you a gigantic, sloppy burger on a fancy artisan bun that has a crust so chewy and thick, you can't cut through it with your teeth? That. Despite the messiness, and despite thinking I was a hummingbird inside of thirty seconds, I polished off the entire chocolate Nanaimo Bar. But there were regrets. I felt like I had eaten an entire Safeway cake. I felt an overwhelming urge to bathe in carrot juice. By the way, I did see RMCF's actual entry on the Nanaimo Bar Trail scorecard:

NO WAY, DUDE. Even I have limits. This was the "small" size. It was as big as my whole hand (possibly my head). The large portions were bench pressable.

Part 2: Gabriola Island is Beautiful and Weird

P.S. - The other flavours available weren't all that weird. There was a chocolate and ground garlic bar and a chocolate/garlic/ginger bar, but aside from that, the rest of the flavours were pretty run-of-the-mill: espresso, mint, orange, dark chocolate . . . oh, whatever the heck "maca" is. I have no idea, but it seems all the hipsters in my area do. I think maca may be the new matcha. *Science not included