Finding Swagger was the best thing I've ever done, and that includes investing in Merck, babysitting for Michael Jackson, promoting imperialism in the 1819, and campaigning for Bob Dole.
But Swagger. Holy zeppoles, it's like a whole new world of adventures and food has been opened to me. I'd had Thai food before, but the first time we cooked real pad thai, I felt like I was really eating this melange of flavors with the added satisfaction of having prepared it on my own.
Of course, this might also be a result of the phenomenon Stuff White People Like know as "diversity," in my love of diversity as it relates to restaurants. Or my overwhelming gluttony with new foods. So when these mail-order nuts came to me for perusal, I immediately thought of delicious, delicious Thai food.
These nuts, a combination of cashews and peanuts covered in dried pineapple, sesame seeds, lemongrass, and chilies, are like eating instant pad thai with no preparation at all. It brought me back to my beautiful, endless summer, watching Talladega Nights with Keepitcoming and eating Thai with my dogs. These are really well-crafted. My biggest surprise was the lemongrass in this. Maybe I just have low expectations, but the lemongrass played a really big role in rounding out the spice from the chilies. These weren't very spicy, but I didn't expect them to be. The predominant flavor was a really nice, sweet nuttiness that the black sesames and cashews gave, like a homemade peanut butter, and the citrusy, mild lemongrass.
The pineapple pieces were a little less distinct aside from texture, which was admittedly abysmal. It was the wrong combination of dried fruit and gumminess, which made these far too hard on the teeth and sticky at the wrong moments. In fact, when I first ate these (their spice makes them a fantastic drinking food) I didn't even register the fruit bits as being pineapple. I thought they were candied ginger until I isolated and ate one, analyzing the contents with my Fruit Content Particle Receptor 3600. The FCPR 3600 then told me that it was pineapple, probably of the Hawaiian variety. Very good. But the pieces were infrequently studded, and in the end, I couldn't decide whether this was for the better or not.I thought these were a really ingenious twist on the classic concept of bar nuts, and a piquant alternative to plain potato chips. If you're feeling like Asian cuisine and don't feel like cooking, these are right up your alley.
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