adventures with my tongue

I have been a junk food eater for as long as I can remember.


I can easily pass up a piece of cake.  But give me salt and grease, and I am in pig-out heaven.


When I moved to Mexico, I was enthralled with the chili-lime flavor on snacks.  For the first month or so.  Then I really got tired of it.


I started looking for new ways to scratch my junk food itch.  And, as we learned in cheating with cheetos, it is hard to avoid the chili and lime conformism.


Hard, but not impossible.  Now and then I see something new at the checkout stand. 


Our cashiers are not surrounded with magazines featuring the shocking confessions of Michelle Obama and Brad Pitt.  We have lots of junk food.  The kind you eat, instead of the kind that eats the mind.


As I was leaving Walmart the other day, I saw two new flavors of Doritos.  I knew they were new because of the fancy black packaging and the gaudy neon yellow highlights around "NUEVO."


The first was labeled "Jalapeño Poppers."  The taste was easy to predict.  Cheese and jalapeños.  And I was correct. 


It was just "all right."  Nothing special.  Nor new.  There are similar snacks in the United States.


It was the second package that really caught my eye  And actually got me salivating. 

 

"Jocho."  I didn't know the Spanish word.  And no one around here knows it either.  But the icon indicates the flavor should be hot dog with mustard.  And the Spanish words for "hot dog flavor" are at the bottom of the package.


Let me stop there for a second.  I am not a big wiener fan.  Never have been.  I will eat a hot dog when I go to a baseball game for the same reason I eat escargot in France.  They seem to go together, and within those boundaries, they both taste good.


But I do not eat hot dogs anywhere else.  Even in Mexico, where you can find wiener parts in almost anything imaginable -- snacks, pizza.  I wouldn't be surprised if their is wiener flavored Jello.


So, I was a bit surprised that I had the Pavlovian response when I saw the package.


The good people at Frito-Lay (Sabritas down this way) were not misleading me.  One bite of the fiery orange chip exploded mustard and meat byproducts in my mouth.  For a moment, I was in Fenway Park.  But just a moment. 


Within seconds, the chip simply tasted like another artificially-flavored snack trying to be something it isn't.  And because I was not in Fenway Park, the wiener taste -- artificial or not -- was simply not very good.


I should quickly add -- that is good.  I do not need to find a substitute for my no-longer-lamented Snyder's pretzels.  I can simply do without.


Of course, I will find far too much junk to stick in my mouth on my upcoming cruise. -- in just another four days.