This week’s post is a little dog-centric.  Sorry cat people.  Feel free to use this time to knit or knock out a few pages from whichever Wheel of Time novel you are currently reading.

I have a dog.  He’s a Westie.  His name is Windsor.  And he’s been kind of a tool lately.  I don’t know what it is.  It might be that we can’t walk outside in daylight hours for fear of having our internal organs boiled in our body cavities before we reach the corner of the building.  It might be that it’s summer and I’m home more and disrupting his daytime sleep patterns, or whatever it is he does when I’m not around.  I like to think he trolls on the IMDB message boards commenting scathingly on Brett Ratner movies.  Or it could be that I’ve been watching a lot of Next Generation in the living room lately and he’s an Original Series kind of guy.  Short of helping him kill and bury a cat hooker, I don’t know what to do to cheer him up.

However, all of those reasons should not come close to discounting the awesome life he has.  He gets walked twice a day.  Our apartment complex has a dog park with all the mud rolling and butt sniffing one could ask for.  He’s got his own chair in the living room, complete with blanket.  Granted it is one of those weirdo college bachelor chairs that folds out to make the world’s thinnest most uncomfortable bed, but he doesn’t know that (he went to trade school: air conditioner repair).  And he gets all the treats he can stomach (more on this later).

My sister brought these Rancheros back from Ireland.  They are made by a British company called KP Snacks which produces other intriguingly named delights such as Hula Hoops, Meanies, Frisps, Nik Naks, and Space Raiders (please someone send me these!). 

As the bag says they are a “Bacon Flavour Potato Snack.”  What the bag doesn’t tell you is that they smell like dog treats.  The nosegrope is not bacon, just vaguely meaty and barbeque-ish-y.  And you know the treats I’m talking about.  They are those orange and red spongy ones that are usually shaped like bones or little steaks.  They also probably smell like those strips from the commercial with the Asperger’s dog that keeps yelling “Bacon!”, but I don’t think I’ve ever smelled those.  Not really a sense memory you want to recall when opening a snack designed for human consumption.

The taste is not so great either and is surprisingly weak.   The potato base takes up the majority of the flavorspace.  The bold, hopefully American cowboy on the bag would be disappointed by the yellow-bellied bacon’s cowardly ways.

 

These are light and airy and crispy and forgettable.  I would love to compare the taste to a dog treat, and even though, like most people, I’ve contemplated it, I’ve never had the guts to pull a Martin Riggs.  However, my dog loved these.  He probably ate more of them than I did.  Which made me mad.  If there is a human snack that is pretty closely comparable to what I believe dog foods taste like, then he really doesn’t have the right to complain.  I assume that dragging his butt across the carpet is a form of non-verbal complaint.  What else could it be?

So in summation, Rancheros are a great snack for your dog, I want to eat a Space Raider, feline prostitution is always a last resort, and you should go rent Lethal Weapon.  That is all.

Chips

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July 8, 2011

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