I Like My Pork Rinds Plain

I needed a change of venue. My home office is piled high with Ian Fleming books, James Bond reference books, and other flotsam and jetsam of my collecting habits so I went to my real office which is piled high with the detritus of thirty-seven years of engineering research.

I tend to get groggy mid afternoon and, unless I am on one of my intermittent health kicks, I wander down to the break room to get caffeine and salt in order to raise my blood pressure so that I can cruise Facebook and check my blogs with a lot more gusto.

Much to my surprise, the snack food fairies took away our old vending machine, which required buffalo nickels and Indian head pennies, and put in a modern, 1970 vintage, vending machine with a lot of newfangled features:

1) It is digital – you have to use your digits to push the proper letter and number code to get your junk food;

2) It has a really cool (by pre-Apollo Mission standards) quasi-robotic mechanism that drops your junk food as far as it can, insuring that your choice is delivered in tiny pieces – this works particularly well for Life Savers and Hershey Bars;

3) It charges 33% more than the old machine did – digital costs more;

4) And, it has a very large glass front so you can observe all the junk food choices at once and watch your snacks either fall to their demise or get stuck on the way down.

I was excited by all the new possibilities for my salt and fat addiction. I intently studied my opportunities.

Whatever happened to plain, ordinary snacks? There were three full rows of chips (crisps for my British friends). We have:

• Sour Cream and Onion Cracker Chips,
• Cheddar and Bacon Potato Skins,
• Chili Cheese Fritos,
• Nacho Cheese Doritos,
• Flaming Hot Crunchy Cheetos,
• Cheddar and Sour Cream Ruffles,
• Garden Salsa Sunchips, and
• Chili Flavored Pork Rinds, to name a few.

 Ok, ok, I admit, I am from the flatlands and cornfields of Illinois in the middle of hog country not far from Peoria. I learned to eat my food unflavored – some say bland. But good, well made, plain corn chips, potato chips, and pork rinds all have real honest flavor. I have not ruined my taste buds by eating artificially flavored chipotle nacho bacon sour cream onion cheddar flaming chili salsa chips. Nor do I intend to start at my advanced age. Adjectives describing chips should only be words like “plain,” “salted,” “natural,” or “fattening.”

Flavored pork rinds really upset me. Fried fat has no carbohydrates but it does have a lot of natural flavor. There is nothing any better than salty pork rinds and a cherry Coke to lift your mood on a dreary day or a long car drive.

The only simple salted snack in our new highfalutin machine was Dirty Sea Salt All Natural Potato Chips. I finally figured out that “Dirty” is a brand name.

So … out of frustration, I bought the Healthy Chocolate Covered Mini Donuts.