Today is the last day of chip-free January (yippee!), so I thought I’d share some info about my favourite food group: snacks. I mentioned how much I love Walkers (or Taytos, but that’s only in Ireland) Cheese & Onion Crisps. That’s the most common flavour of crisp in the UK. Many of the other flavours are similar to Canadian flavours: salted (what we call plain), salt & vinegar, and, hmmm. . . maybe not that many. I know we have lots of flavours of chips back home: Sour Cream & Onion, Ketchup, Dill Pickle, All Dressed, Barbeque, etc.. I can’t tell if there’s more flavours here or that they’re just different (I’m not counting the bizarre Christmas Dinner or Pigs in Blanket flavours that come out only at Christmas – I’m still not fully over that experience). But there’s Paprika, Roast Chicken, Roast Ox, Haggis, Chorizo, Tomato, Sweet Chilli, Pheasant, Ham & Mustard, and of course, Worcestershire. And those are just from the major producers – I haven’t touched on the niche market producers with their Truffle, or Iberico Ham, or Chardonnay Wine Vinegar crisps.
But really, it’s British snack food that fascinates me. It’s quite different from Canada.
Skips are prawn flavoured crackers, shaped nothing like a prawn, but instead like a clam shell (association of ideas?). Yum. Quavers are sort of like a potato curl with powdered cheese. Again, yum. I know I have seen Pork Scratchings back home, but they are everywhere here, and come in all sorts of flavours. Wotsits just seem to be Cheesies – I haven’t tried them.
Then there are the three that I buy the least but love the most. Well, sort of. The first is Twiglets (it’s the ‘sort of’ – I have a love/hate relationship with Twiglets). The first time I bought Twiglets, I didn’t look too closely at the packaging. When you see them in the store, the main things you see are the words ‘Twiglets’ (obvs), and ‘oven baked’ (also obvs, they are pretzels), and there’s a picture of the dark brown pretzel sticks on the bag. So, I bought a bag of the chocolate-covered pretzels and took them home, thinking, “well, I don’t really love pretzels or chocolate, so it will be easy to monitor my intake of these.” Yes, it is indeed easy to limit my intake of Twiglets. Because they’re pretzels covered in Marmite. Not chocolate, Marmite. Have you ever tasted Marmite? You’ve heard the song lyric, ‘ gave me a vegemite sandwich’, right? Same thing. A paste made out of yeast extract, the waste that comes from beer-making. They dip the pretzels in this delicacy, bake ’em and bag ’em and sell ’em to idiots like me. And I can’t believe I’m saying this, but . . . I do kinda like them. I usually have a bag in the house (mainly because it takes me weeks to finish a bag of Twiglets) and when I want something crunchy but don’t want to eat more crisps, they’re a good alternative. Apart from being high in sodium, they are actually among the healthier junk food choices out there and I’ve developed a taste for them.
And then we have Bacon Fries and Scampi Fries, my faves. Oh dear. The Bacon Fries are shaped like little strips of streaky bacon (sort of like Purina Beggin’ Strips, but smaller & crispier. And for humans.), and tasting vaguely of bacon. With their big brother, Scampi Fries. My youngest sister remembers both of these from her years in England which is also when I first came across them, and like me, will pick them up if she sees them in the Best of Britain store in Mississauga. The Scampi Fries are like little square hollow pillows and are supposed to taste like the scampi that come on a plate of scampi & fries. Scampi & fries are on pretty much every pub menu in the UK, and refer to a very specific way of serving shrimp: battered, breaded in electric-orange bread crumbs, and deep-fried. These little Scampi Fries pillow snacks are also electric-orange, but there the resemblance ends – they don’t really taste of anything identifiable. That could be because there is not a single natural ingredient in these snacks. They are made of chemicals and they taste like it. And I don’t care – I love these little things. LOVE THEM! Thank God they only come in these peedie wee bags – I never allow myself to buy more than one bag at a time.
But tomorrow is February. Happy sigh.