A Taste Test and a Cautionary Tale

It is a rare thing that I find a potato chip I don't like.  I love love love salt.  Now I try not to purchase chips very often, or if I do have them at home, find a kind that I'm only half way interested in.

This summer Lay's has four new flavors of potato chips to test:

1.  Greektown Gyro
2. New York Reuben
3. Southern Biscuits and Gravy
4. West Coast Truffle Fries

And we couldn't pass any of them up.  Last weekend when we grilled one night we decided to give these chips a taste test.

With the five of us trying them (and my mom, her friend Julie, and our dog Sam), we still didn't have any clear-cut winner.  My husband and I liked The New York Reuben the best.  And they did taste like reubens.  The girls liked biscuits and gravy, and west coast truffle fries were enjoyed, too.  The dog, who eats everything, didn't eat biscuits and gravy.  But even though I'm not mentioning Greektown gyros, they were good as well.

So....which ones should you buy and try?  Honestly, if you like a chip, none were too bad.  And we had a fun time trying them all.  Now my girls are thinking up flavors of their own to recommend to Lay's for next year's four new flavors.

The next part of my post is a cautionary tale.  It is something for you to remember the next time your child (or you) want to do a little baking and you don't read the directions in their entirety on the box. 

Middle Sister and her friend decided to bake an angel food cake yesterday for breakfast (yes, I said they could.  It's summer.  Why worry about nutrition?).  Things were going along just fine and I helped them by putting the cake in the oven.  

Only no one told me the part about needing the bottom rack.  And I didn't know that the cake would rise so much.  

Or spill out of the pan onto the oven bottom.

Or bake itself onto the heating coils at the top of the oven.

Or that our house would smell like burnt marshmallow all day.

Or that I would get to attempt to pick it off the heating coils with my fingers.

I did use the self cleaning option on the oven which worked well, but it still isn't quite back to normal.

And we didn't even get an angel food cake to eat out of the whole deal since we had to abort the whole baking project.

So think about this the next time you decide to make an angel food cake.  Apparently it's a lot trickier than I ever thought.

In the future, I hope to share some baking successes.  I do have some of those, too, but this was not one of them.

While you're waiting for one of those posts, head on over to Beth Fish Reads, where she hosts her weekly weekend cooking meme.