Beer Flavoured Chips

The other day I made a visit to the gas station to tank up as normal. As I walked inside to pay for my HUGE purchase, I walked past the snacks aisle and saw something that made my jaw drop....

Beer flavoured chips... I could not believe it. I was confused, amazed, excited, a whole range of emotions rushed over me. I would have bought these chips if they had cost $20 a bag. I have always been a person to purchase the most unusual chip flavours I can find, just to see how repulsive they are.

There was no way these chips could disappoint me. If they were tasty, that would be great, but I would be equally pleased if they were the most revolting taste ever. I like to have extremes in my life, if something cannot be incredible, it better be soul-destroyingly bad. There is nothing worse than the bland, forgettable middle ground. I want chips that I will tell my grand children about.

Anyway, here they are. BEER FLAVOURED CHIPS! produced only for a limited time for the European Football championships.
Also, a close up of the beer-y goodness.
What hidden mysteries could be contained in the delightful foil packet. I saved these for days until the moment was right to begin the great test. I was thoughtful and a little nervous about these. It is hard to say what the last food item to so impact my life would have been...
I opened the bag and had good look inside. They seemed ok, no strange colours, the beer flavouring seemed to be completely camouflaged by the chips, or it was colourless. Anyway, I could not see any difference between these and unflavoured chips. The smell was nothing too crazy either, a bit malty, not too strong. Phase one of the beer chips seemed to be quite OK.
After the visual inspection and smell test, I went ahead and made the plunge. I tried a chip.
First taste was ok, no retching or gagging. It actually did not taste like too much. I was a little disappointed by the mildness of it. After a couple more single chips, I could detect a definite beer flavour. I would say that it was a sharpish, pilsner sort of flavour. It did not leave any aftertaste and the saltiness of the chips was probably stronger than the beeriness.

I made a second test, to try eating a few chips at once. This was a world of difference. With a few chips shoved in there, they tasted pretty strongly of beer right away. This was more along the lines of what I was expecting. At this point I was thinking they are actually pretty good.
I thought I needed another opinion though. An opinion of a chip connoisseur that had no preconceptions or expectations about chips. Someone with a pallet that was pure and fresh. A person who would freely give an opinion on the quality of a food without a second thought.

I am lucky enough to know just such a person.... Liam... professional chip hound. I think he may be one of the few people walking the earth who has an even greater love of chips than I do, joined to a pickyness with food that makes him a tremendous pain in the butt.

I just lay a few chips out on the counter top as bait for the chip hound. Then I made the call "LIAM CHIPS!" and he came strolling in to the kitchen. Here is what happened next:
He gave a few munches, looked up at me and then gave an enthusiastic call of "MORE CHIPS" success! The chip hound has spoken and deemed them to be good.

I thought of one final test to put these chips through. The ultimate test of a chip, one that all good snacks should go through. How do they go with beer and sports on TV? These chips were specially introduced for the European Football championships, so I thought that was the obvious choice of what to watch. It was also the night of Germany vs Poland, which I had planned to watch anyway.

Here you can see my test environment.
I settled down in the scientifically proven optimal posture for enjoying beer, sports and snacks.
I was drinking dark beer as I usually do, and I can fairly say that the pilsner flavouring on the chips in no way impacted my enjoyment of the beer. They went very well together and I would have to say that overall, these chips are a winner in my opinion. I think that they have no chance of taking the crown from my beloved Salt and Vinegar, and I would likely even still go for plain salted more often than not... but beer flavour would certainly enter the arsenal of snacks in my chips armoury.

Experiment complete, Beer Chips = good.

Barrie, Ontario

On the nicest weather day of the visit, we hopped in the car and drove a few minutes up the road to Barrie. Barrie is a really nice town on Lake Simcoe and we often go over there while in Canada to have a look around. It is a place that I have always really liked, they also have about the best hockey store in Ontario if you ask me...

Here is a nice look out on the lake from where we stopped to have our walk..It starts our quite rocky here, but then moves along into a nice beach front area. There is swimming in there in summer, but as you will notice from our jackets, it was still way way too cold to even think about swimming. The beach area also proved to be a great place for Adam to annoy some birds. Seagulls are something we don't have in my part of Germany, and I quickly recalled that I don't miss them one bit. Horrible creatures.
There is also a boat launching area right here that has a small concrete pier next to it. This of course was the perfect spot for the boys to run along and throw sticks and rocks in the water. Throwing stuff in the water is a great interest of many small kids I have noticed. Liam calls it "Make a splash"
Here is a nice picture of Claudia and Mum at the waterfront. I liked the way the wind was blowing around Claudia's hair. I told her that we should buy a giant fan to always position in front of her when getting her picture taken to make this effect. There is a pretty large playground here too, filled with slides and roundabouts and climbers... but best of all is a big digger for Liam. He monopolized this for AT LEAST 30 min, it could have been much more. When we did finally pull him away, he screamed like a madman until he discovered the joy of throwing handfulls of sand in the lake.
Among the nice playground equipment was something I found a little strange, a very large
plaque that taught kids how to read braille. Not something I had seen in a playground before, but what the heck, learning braille can't really be a bad thing can it?
And here is one just for Dave, who complains I am never in enough photos. Claudia managed to take a decent shot of me sitting on the bench in the park. Too bad I chose that day not to shave and dress in a sweat jacket.

Liam and Jersey

I think the single biggest highlight of the Canada vacation for Liam was the meeting of Jersey the dog. Jersey is a Chocolate Labrador (hence the name Jersey Milk,) and is the first dog that Liam has had any extended contact with. Before the holiday, he liked dogs, but he mostly like pointing at them and yelling DOG.

As you can see here, Jersey is a dog that likes to get up close and personal.
I think that Labradors have quite a good reputation for being a dog that is very good with children. I think my sister's dog can cement this in fact. This dog takes all kinds of crap from three little kids bugging her all day and never bats an eye. Tails pulled, constant prodding, and at least one instance of Liam trying to ride her.

Liam also took great pleasure in telling the dog what to do. I would like to think this was the first time in his life where he was giving the commands to something that carried them out without question, then I realized that I probably follow orders even better than the dog...

I am pretty sure that Jersey also quite liked Liam, but she is a pretty friendly dog as I mentioned. My sister took this photo, and I think it is one of my current favorites.
Liam also learned that dogs can be all about action. On the first day or so, we went out in front of the house and he observed my sister playing energetically with Jersey. Liam learned that you can do more with dogs than pat them.
He got the courage to kick the ball over to Jersey himself.
And eventually brought another ball into play, as he worked his throwing skills. Note the ball in flight, this ball is actually Super Mario's head. At this point Liam also expanded his ever growing English vocabulary to include the command "JERSEY GET IT! GET IT!"
After all this action, poor old doggy had enough hubbub and went for a little rest. One thing Liam did NOT learn from this experience is that dogs (and parents) do not have nearly as much energy or staying power as a 3 year old. I think he would have happily played for another 2 or 200 hours if Jersey had been up for it.

Board Game Treasure trove... Part two

Ok, back into the basement for the second batch to come out of the boxes...

This time, I will break out the Warhammer stuff. Back in the old days, my friends and I were pretty dedicated miniature gamers. Our drug of choice was Warhammer fantasy battle. I covered this in an older post here. This was back in December 2006 though, although I am sure you all fully recall which of my friends had an elf army and which had the rat-men.

Anyway, my old Warhammer book was in here and I had a flip through, fondly remembering the many many hours in Kelvin's basement on the ping pong table as our armies clashed next to bowls of Miss Vickies chips.
I also have the two "Realms of Chaos" books that I did not take photos of, and now on reflection I felt a pang of guilt as I realized that we should not really have integrated the Chaos army lists in with the other normal ones. The Chaos books were intended to fight against each other and really made massively overpowered units, the core game had a "standard" Chaos army that we should have used. I feel as though I just wrote a paragraph that will only be understood by about 1% of the people who ever read this... My only response is "tough" I write about what I want.

Around the same time, I bought the science fiction version of the game, Warhammer 40,000 - Rogue Trader. I REALLY wanted the guys to like this, but it was never a go. I think we were so committed to the fantasy version that we just could not do two miniature games. Still, I read this book so much that pages are falling out.
In fact, I liked it so much that in University, I bought the 3rd edition, which is also in the basement there...
I even painted a full space marine army (Blood Angel Chapter) and played a few games while off in uni. I never got back into it on the scale of the high school years, but it was still a fun time. Maybe when Liam is older I can get him to play a few games. I am sure he will enjoy wargames of Space Marines vs Orks. I am just not going to get him going on the huge purchases like I had, ha ha ha.

I only took a photo of my army commander. I have done better paint jobs, but I think that it is not too bad. Another time I will put up some more fine examples of my wonderful painting skill. Remember this guy is only 25mm tall.

Breakfast Emergency

The other morning, shortly after I had given Liam his breakfast and wandered off to do my own household morning type things, I heard an urgent cry from downstairs.

PAPA! PAPA! PAPA!

I rushed down to see what the problem was. Everything looked ok.

Then Liam proudly explained to me;

"The robot not take my toast away."

I really have no idea what was going on, but the crisis seemed to have been averted and breakfast for Liam and Bobby continued normally. I never did find any robot.

Canada....

When most people in Europe hear I am from Canada, they immediately think of trees and bears. I don't really blame them, Canada really does promote itself through its nature over here. If I ever see anything about Canada on TV or in a magazine, there is a bear next to a tree, sometime holding a hockeystick while eating maple syrup. I hope to address all of these in this post.

I thought I could perpetuate some stereotypes by showing that my sister lives right next to a bunch of trees. This is Scanlon lake conservation area, just down the road from her place. I had more than my share of blackfly bites, another crucial part of the Canadian experience.

First off, we headed into the park, where as you can see, there are many trees. There are many very thin bears hiding behind these. As locals, the bears did not give us any trouble.
Covering the ground here are many many many trillium plants, that is the official flower of Ontario.Here is my sister walking along with Claire, they are playing some sort of clapping game.Adam was put to work at times, pulling the two little people in a wagon as my Mum walked along with them. I particularly like how unhappy Adam looks in this photo, like it is a major major labour he is undertaking. He insisted on pulling the wagon, so I don't know why he looks so grumpy in this moment.
At the first clearing in the park, there was of course a Maple Syrup making place. For those of you who have never seen this, you knock taps in to the maple trees and hang a bucket on the tap, collecting the sap. Then you go and boil all the sap in these giant tubs.Liam took a moment to pick up a giant rock, which he called an Easter Egg and carried around for the next 3 days. Sometimes he gets some strange ideas in his head.
Here are the two boys taking a little break from the action.
Then we had enough and went back home.But there was someone already waiting for us there.... Ah Canada, so many surprises.

Board Game Treasure trove... Part one

One of the things I was looking forward to when I headed back to Canada was rooting through the few old boxes I had left there. I knew that I had left some older games back there, but I was not totally sure what was in there.

Here is what I found...

The first exciting box in the memory pile was the game Hacker (1992). This was a game that HEAVILY borrowed from another game I have Illuminati. Like most Steve Jackson games, it was ok, overpriced and had not as much replay value as you would like. The basic idea was that you are a hacker who is competing with the other hackers to gain control of the most systems. The cards are full of clever "in-jokes" that get a little less funny each additional time you read them.Next up is Marvel Super Heroes, this is an RPG, not a board game. It is funny, this is a game that my friends and I played A LOT, but never really in a traditional RPG manner. Instead of adventures, we would normally create a pool of heroes/villains, then distribute them to each player and have some sort of free for all battle on a big city map. We did this regularly and I have to say it was awesome. The best was throwing in vastly under/overpowered characters into the mix. I am sure most comic fans wanted to know what would happen in a battle between Aunt May, The Fabulous Frogman, and Thor.A game I was thrilled to still have was this one. The Star Trek RPG and Star Trek Advanced Combat Simulator (1986) all in one box. I hardly ever played this one as it was pretty complex and in 1986 I think most of my gaming buddies and I were looking for a quicker fix than power management of capital ships in space. I still have all the books and every single counter, so I think I could still revisit this one, or maybe even EBAY it one day if I think I could need the cash.
Finally (for this post anyway) the single best thing I found was my old edition of Cosmic Encounter. This is the Mayfair Edition, which I purchased around 1992 or so. The original game is from 1977, and I understand it will be reprinted by Fantasy Flight Games later this year. I also owned the expansion, More Cosmic Encounter, but that one was sadly not in the box.

This game is one where you take on the persona of an alien race, and then strive for domination by capturing a fixed number of planets. Each alien race (there are MANY MANY) has a special ability that allows them to do something outside the normal rules. I played this in school and it was a blast. I had already planned to buy the new version, but now I will have to wait and see if it is a straight reprint of this one or contains any improvements.
Stay tuned, there was a bit more in the closet, there will be more posts on this topic coming...

Rock Stars

Something I think Liam enjoyed in the first days of the visit was the wealth of new toys that were now available to him. It was a whole rec room full of new stuff that he had never yet had his grubby little paws on.

Some things were more appealing than others, and he seemed in particular drawn to things that made a lot of noise.

Near the top of the noise list was a little guitar, Liam liked this right away and surprised me by knowing the english word for it immediately. I am sure we covered it in one of his books at some point.I think that he is already clearly showing that he has what it takes as far as the posing and ability to give the crowd what they are looking for...
He even worked on some different poses over the days, in this one I think he is trying to pull off some sort of Jeff Beck thing. It works for him.I even tried to join in the fun, I am trying to pose as if I actually have a clue as far as guitar goes. I think I was already testing my musical limits with this toy one, I have all the musical talent of a rock.

First meeting of cousin Adam

Well, one of the big attractions for the trip to Canada was of course to introduce Liam to his family over there. My sister has two little people of her own living in the house and this would be the first occasion to get them all in the same room.

Now, I know that Liam will fairly much get some geekdom forced on him with me as a father, what with my love of computers, video games, science, comics, board games, and other nerdy nerdy things, but I was not sure what my Sister's boy would like. My sister is fairly much a non-geek. She has always liked things like sports and traditional normal human pastimes.

Lucky for me, some of my old junk still lives in her basement. The kind of junk that her 5 year old son got his hands on...This is my sound FX Darth Vader light sabre, something I purchased in my 20s I will add. Adam had apparently taken a liking to that one and as luck would have it, there was a second light sabre in the basement for Liam.Not quite a duel on the level of Vader vs Obi Wan, but I thought it was great that the two little guys went right for this stuff all on their own, no prompting from me. I knew the geek gene ran strong in my family.