A Package in the Mail

I was heading out to do some grocery shopping late one afternoon last week when our concierge pounced on me, haranguing me at length for having not picked up the mail in the last two days.  Have you not seen all the letters piling up?  It’s starting to be stressful. 

Well, we shared the apartment with enough other people that I kind of started assuming that one of them was getting around to it before I was, but as it turns out,, a hefty pile had accumulated, including one big cardboard box from across the Atlantic with my name on it.

Well, I already had an inkling that my friend Joe K (yes, that K as in KOOL!), our average-every-day-Joe expert on the Somali language, space fleet tactics, hip-practical-and-outrageously-expensive hiking gear, piracy, Asian cinema, and Mac fanboyism (I’m definitely missing a few more here) felt that I was perhaps being deprived of some of the finer things of American chippery.  And, for all my see-the-bright-side attitude about the state of salty-snack foods in France, there really are truly a lot of finer things I am missing here.  Just imagine how the French feel when they come to our typical grocery stores and see what the selection of cheese and dry sausage is like!  (I don’t have to imagine, because I’ve been told on more than one occasion; I’m nearly over the sobbing by now…)

Well, Joe isn’t the kind of guy who would let a little obstacle like the Atlantic ocean stop him¸ (it’s the sort of geographic inconvenience he’s used to eliding on a regular basis.)  Let me tell you, the last time I got him stuck in the bathroom of a night club with a room full of orcs in leather trenchcoats, it was the orcs that were left crying in pain on the floor.

So I mistakenly assumed these were chips from Joe’s place in North Carolina, but silly me, they come from the region of his ancestral holding, the West coast.  All three bags are varieties of Tim’s Cascade Style Potato Chips, which according to the website, distributes to the following states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wyoming.  Apparently, they are also sold in Canada, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan.  So my Asian and Canadian readers should be able to get a hold of these, (yes I know you’re out there!), but sadly were I to return to my secret lair on the East Coast I will remain forever after deprived.

The questions poses itself: can I possibly review these chips without being biased, or at least tempted to please my benefactor?  Well, probably not.

But I will try really, really hard to be objective anyway- with luck, I can live up to the standards proudly set by Fox News.  Fair and balanced for the win!

(You can judge my impartiality by my first review of the Hawaiian Barbecue chips posted below!)