Sunday, January 13, 2008

John's Addiction: A real-life fairy tale

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, there lived this kid. Let's call him John, just for story's sake. John lived in a boring little town, in a boring little state, where he ate boring old food. Actually, the food wasn't old, it was just boring; had no kick, you might say. One day, John decided to take a break from his boring routine of doing whatever it was he did, and head down to the local general store- Gordon's Market, it was called- and poke around inside, see if there was some junk food or something he could buy. At some point or other, whether it was on his way in or out I don't know, he happened to look down at the chip rack near the door and noticed a small red bag of something new. Something he hadn't seen before. Something called... "Hot Jalapeño". But because he'd had no prior exposure to the Spanish language, he utterly and completely wrecked the pronunciation of "Jalapeño", pronouncing the first half like the word "gallop", but with a "j", and dropping the tilde off of the "ñ" - resulting in "jallopeeno". (This was a very long time ago, though, and he has since learned his lesson and continues to laugh about it to this day.) "Hot Jalapeño", he thought. "Intriguing." (He knew they must really be hot, as there were little red flames coming off of the word "hot" on the bag.) Now, keep in mind that due to his surroundings and what-not, his tastebuds were the equivalent of that ninety pound weakling who gets sand kicked in his face by the bully on the beach in those old Charles Atlas ads. But, he was still young and foolish enough to not be aware of this. Plus they were only 99 cents! So he bought himself a bag and went on his way to wherever the heck he ended up going that day. Along the way, he started in on the chips, but got no further than two or three in. All of a sudden,
his mouth was on fire!
And he was in love...
Fast forward nearly 20 years. Hot Jalapeño chips have been MIA for well over a decade, and John is now a tired old man, embittered by years of searching for a suitable replacement. Searching, but never finding. It's just been one disappointing wannabe after another. Either no heat, or crappy flavor, but mostly a combination of the two. Sure, there's those Tostito's with Hint of Lime, which are really quite tasty, (addicting, almost) but even they can't compare with the legendary Hot Jallopeenos.
Fast forward a couple more years. John had previously played around with making his own version of Hot Jalapeño by taking some random packet of ground peppers he'd gotten hold of and, borrowing a page from Tostitos' cookbook, mixed in the spice packet from a Shrimp-Lime Ramen noodle package, and then sprinkled that on some chips and baked them in the oven. Not all that great. But they did have potential. It was at this point in time that Fate smiled upon John. And so he smiled back and asked her what she was doing later that night. She slapped his face and called him rude, saying that she was just trying to be polite, but that if he must know, she had a date. With Destiny. (It figures...) So with that, John cashed in what little karma he had saved up, bought himself another beer, and headed home to plot his next move. On the way home he happened to run into Fate's younger half-sister, Luck, with whom he'd had an on-again, off-again relationship for years. Taking a chance, he smiled at her. And... and she smiled back! And thus began...
a new legend...




John's Addiction

Award-winning Jalapeño-lime tortilla chips.
(scroll down about 1/4 of the page. I'm under the snack/sweet heading)


Ok, first off, I really do put that much spice mix on my chips. I like 'em with flavor and I don't skimp on it the way all the commercial chip makers do. I didn't add more just for the photo, nor did I spend all day with a professional photographer getting just the right shot, and then fixing it up even more in Photoshop. This is how they look every time I make them. Personally, I think these chips are pretty much unbelievable. And I think you will too. I've already shared them with all my friends locally; now I want to share them with my out-of-town friends. So if you're on my mutuals list over on Stumbleupon and would like to try them, just contact me in one way or another and tell me where to send them, and I'll ship 'em on out! (On me, of course.)
Plan on it taking me about 3 weeks to mail them.

If you're
not on my mutuals list, well... better luck next time? No... just contact me with an offer that I can't refuse; I'm sure we can work something out.

2 comments:

Brickgrrl said...

I'm fascinated.
And not a little scared.

How's it Taste? said...

They're really not that hot. I mean, they're hotter than every commercial product I've tried, but I think most people can handle them. Besides, the heat is tempered with amazing flavor. : P