Chips (do you ever?)

How come chips are so dang delicious?  I swear I haven't met one person who doesn't love some kind of chip.  Wether it be a Potato, Corn or Pita chip, I love them all.
And you know what Pringles says:  "Once you pop, you can't stop."  And as Chandler Bing would say...Could that be any truer?
Currently sitting in my overhead cabinet at work I have some delicious Stacy's Pita Chips.  Parmesan Garlic & Herb to be exact.  YUM.  I find myself staring at the clock, waiting patiently until 11:35 so I can allow myself to break out the bag and have some with my home-brought lunch.  I have a little problem though and wonder if anyone else does the same (are you reading this, Colleen??).  I will usually pour myself my "ration" for the meal on a napkin.  I know that if I leave the bag sit open, there is a large chance the contents will be gone in the blink of an eye and i will not only be sad, but also depressed that I allowed myself to get so out of control.  Anyway, I pour out my ration and then as I am closing the bag, I grab a few more "extras" to shove in my mouth.  I tend to do the same thing when opening the bag.  My theory is that these "extras" don't really count as extras, because they have already been eaten and were never intended to be poured on the napkin and into the "ration" in the first place.  Does this make sense?  It's almost like they never existed.  I do this at home too.  I will make a grilled cheese or something and put some Cheeto's on a plate while I wait for my sandwich to turn golden brown.  Instead of putting the bag away, I instead eat "extras" form the bag sitting on the counter.  Why don't I just take the Cheeto's from the plate onto which I already poured them you ask?  Well that would take away from my "ration" and you know that's never a good thing.

Would you like to save twelve cents today?

No, actually, I wouldn’t. Because it’s not really SAVING twelve cents when you have to PAY more to save the twelve cents.

Here I was, on my way to my softball game Wednesday night when I decided to stop at the local Holiday to fill up the MINI and pick up some of my and my teams favorite Giant Sunflower Seeds (Salt & Pepper flavor). Now if any of you are familiar with Holiday and their wonderful selection of Giant seeds, you will know that they have been 2 for $3 for the past I swear, three years. Normally I am a sucker for the deal, but Wednesday, I refrained. I told myself that I only needed one bag…there is no reason to buy two. Don’t get me wrong; I was tempted. I had to hold myself back from buying that second bag…the yellow 2/$3 tag on the little metal post was just screaming at me to pull the second bag off of the bar, but like I said, I held back….or did I??

I mosey on up to the counter to pay for my gas and my seeds. As I tell the cashier my pump number and put the bag of seeds on the counter she smiles (as if she is sickly reading my mind and knows my weakness) and says “These are 2 for $2.88, did you want to get another one?” My mind instantly races to the yellow tag and I say to the cashier -- “they are two for $2.88, not two for $3.00?!?” Cashier: “nope, they are $2.88.” Me: “Ok, hang on.” I literally LEAVE MY WALLET, CREDIT CARD AND CAR KEYS on the counter and go to the back of the store and pick out a second bag. What is my problem??? Leaving my personal belongings on the counter of a gas station because I was flabbergasted by the fact that the sale price had dropped from $3 to $2.88! Wow. It was only after I got to softball and was discussing the situation with my teammates did I realize that it was a measly 12 cents I saved. And really, I didn’t even SAVE the twelve cents, because I had to pay a dollar and some odd cents MORE in order to get the second bag of seeds!
This should be a lesson learned; but we all know that it probably wasn’t.

Real Quick...

I have been told twice in the last two weeks that my blog has grown whiskers. I know, I have been a bad blog housekeeper. I am working on some pics from our family's version of the Royal Wedding that happened last weekend and I will try to get that up soon.  But for now, here is a quick post:

Cheddar Chex Mix
c/o General Mills
Minneapolis, MN

Dear Cheddar Chex Mix People:

If I wanted pretzels, I would buy pretzels.  I don't know if you realize this or not, but you can't get the deliciously flavored cheddar chex cereal in the box nor can you get the cheddar triangle snacks alone in a bag.  You can, however, buy a massive bag of original, dry, boring pretzels in virtually any store you walk into.
Please try to keep the over-loading of pretzels into your otherwise delicious snack mix to a minimum.  I don't like navigating through pounds of round circle pretzels in order to get to the good stuff.

No wonder the bag was on a Price Cut at Target this week.

Not-So-Sincerely,
Ex-Cheddar Chex Mix Lover

SunChip® Surprise

As I pulled out the small pile of my usual junk mail and the ever so irritating monthly bills from my mailbox tonight, I noticed an envelope that stood out and seemed to be smiling at me.  In the return address spot was the bright and sunny logo of Frito-Lay and the envelope was addressed to ME, not "Current Resident" or "Frito Lay Customer"...actually me.

As my mind raced for a split second as to what they could want, I quickly remembered what this was probably about... ahh... yes...those noisy, earth friendly, compostable bags that they used to package their SunChips® in.  You remember that bag, right?  That bag sent chills down my spine...I couldn't stand it.  Harvest Cheddar SunChips are probably my favorite chip out there but I would purposely not buy them because of that ridiculous bag.  When I did break down and actually purchase the chips, I would open the noisy bag and dump all of the chips into a freezer size Ziploc bag and keep them in there and throw the original bag away, not even compost it just to prove a point.  Sure, the chips started to taste like plastic after a few days, but it definitely beat not being able to hear yourself think while digging for the ultimate powered-cheese-covered chip at the bottom of the bag.

Back to my point...
I opened the personalized envelope to find a shiny white SunChips letterhead addressed to "SunChips® Fan".  They thanked me for sharing my thoughts on the noisy bag (I didn't mention in the above rant that I sent a complaint email to the Customer Service people at Frito-Lay telling them about my dislikes for the bag.  They responded back then very nicely and acknowledged that they have gotten other complaints and were working on resolving the problem.) and informed me that they have a new, quieter compostable bag and they want me to hear the difference myself.  To quote My Friends from the SunChips team: "We hope you will use the enclosed coupon to hear the difference for yourself."  That's right...a FREE bag of Original Flavor (I will settle for Original because they are free) SunChips just for writing an email.
Frito-Lay is forgiven in my book for one of the dumbest marketing ideas I have ever heard of---not just because I got a free bag of chips out of the deal, but I am happy that they came to their senses and changed their bags (rumor has it that their sales were down 11% during the annoying bags 18 month run) due to customer complaints and obvious boycotting.
It reminds me of the Great Doughnut Boycott a group of my junior high friends started in 8th grade.  The lunchroom doughnut prices went up, anti-doughnut t-shirts were made, petitions were signed, a boycott was on and after a few short weeks of low doughnut sales to hungry teenage boys, prices were back to normal.  It's great to be an American, isn't it?