Junk Food Nation, hello hello?  If you’re reading this, it means that the WordPress boycott has not affected my blog!  Hurray.  If my blog is blacked out because of the protest, then…well….er…. see you Thursday?

I want to welcome all the readers from the Girl Meets Food blog, where I just did a guest post about today’s junk food!  Before I get to my review, I wanted to talk about something awkward that happened to me earlier this week:

I was on the subway coming home and was seated facing another row of chairs down the aisle.  In that row was an older man who was staring at me. I looked at my phone, looked up, and he was still staring at me. I tried turning my head, glanced back; still staring.  I looked out the window, looked back – he was STILL STARING AT ME.  Then something happened which blew my mind away.  He twitched; one eye moved, but NOT THE OTHER. I almost shrieked out loud.

At first, I was like, “Does he just have a lazy eye?”  You know, like one eye’s looking at ya while the other’s looking for ya? (Stay classy, me.) But then I realized: He had a GLASS EYE.  HOLY MOTHER.

My friends and I always joke about deal breakers in dating.  “Would you ever date anyone with a different religion than you?” “What if she hated sports?” “What if she had a third nipple?” Etc etc etc.  We’ve all played this game before.  What’s the one thing you wouldn’t tolerate in another human being?  Well, ladies and gentleman, mine might be a glass eye.

I know its not PC, but hear me out!  I don’t care if this girl looked like Megan Fox on the back of that motorcycle in Transformers – as soon as she “blinked” and one lid didn’t go down all the way, I’d freak the eff out.  Imagine this – you’re laying in bed with your loved one asleep, you wake in the middle of the night, roll over to face your lover – and that ONE EYE IS WIDE OPEN STARING AT YOU!  Um, horrifying.

Whenever she laughed, or cried, and her face crinkled to fit the mood – that ONE EYE would remain the same. The constant.  Staring at you. Lifeless. <Shudder> Plus, I don’t know if that glass eye has laser beams or cameras built into it!  She might be a Terminator! And I know I wouldn’t be subtle about it: “Hey honey, great chicken, can you pass the saltGLASSEYEGLASSSEYEGLASSEYE.” <hand clapped over mouth>

So thanks, man on subway. You reminded me of my shallowness.  Onto today’s junk food review: Lowrey’s Bacon Curls Microwave Pork Rinds, Hot & Spicy!!!

To be fair, I didn’t find these Lowrey’s Bacon Curls Hot & Spicy Microwave Pork Rinds, my sister did. Available readily on Amazon.com, I was floored that I’d never heard of this before.  Microwaveable Pork Rinds??  This invention ranks for me somewhere between the iPhone and that rubber thing on my dashboard that prevents my sunglasses from sliding around.  That thing is incredible.

This product does beg the question: are the eaters of pork rinds so lazy that they wouldn’t walk to the store and purchase a bag, preferring instead to NUKE THEM in the privacy of their own homes? I think the answer is a resounding YES.

Lowrey’s is a company under the parent group, “Oh Boy! Oberto” (you know, the one that makes all that weird beef jerky?)

If there’s one thing that I noticed about this package right away, it’s that it was more colorful than a pinada and had more warnings and messages about how to use this product than one would expect.  I mean they’re microwave pork rinds – how hard can this really be?

Apparently this snack is HOT and CRISPY!  Hey waitaminit…

It’s HOT and SPICY!  Well, which one is it, Lowrey’s???  Mixed messages here.  I love the random cartoon pepper just thrown onto the package – that’s a nice touch.

Open, and shake it like a Polaroid picture. Then microwave until the bag stops expanding.  SO MANY THINGS TO REMEMBER, LOWREY’S!

Are these really, “Helpful Hints,” Lowrey’s? Or are you just nagging us? “Be sure the surface of the microwave is clean and dry.” WHO ARE YOU, MY MOM???

The whole popped bag has ~210 calories.  Not bad.  For the main ingredient of these pork rinds…it’s PORK RINDS? Now, I KNOW you’re tricking me, Lowrey’s. You can’t define a word using the word itself, and you can’t list as your first ingredient of a product the effing PRODUCT ITSELF.  Everyone knows that; read the rules!  The unpublished rules…in my head.

Lowrey’s Bacon Curls Microwave Pork Rinds, Hot & Spicy, unwrapped!  What’s that orange stain?  Wait, is that…

…oh, yes it is.  Oil soaking through the bag.  We ARE in for a treat, aren’t we? More oil and this bag would be clear!

See, these are the same damn instructions as on the cellophane wrapper!  Hopefully, that’s all she wrote. We’ll just open the bag to lay it flat, and…

HOLY HELL it’s the instructions AGAIN, this time with more illustrations!  If you’re so worried about liability, Lowrey’s, then WHY MAKE THE PRODUCT??

Just another shot of the lovely ORANGE oil seeping through the paper bag. Mmmmmm tastes like cholesterol.

And with the magic of the blog, there you have it: a “popped” bag of Lowrey’s Bacon Curls Microwave Pork Rinds, Hot & Spicy!  The bag didn’t pop at all while microwaving, however. The pork rinds didn’t so much “pop” as much as they “inflated” when the radioactive torture hit them.  It was eerie – like watching a microwave popcorn bag on mute. One second, it was a flat paper bag, the next thing I know, the thing is expanding faster than a pubescent lad’s erection during the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.  Yeah, sorry about that imagery – moving on…

I opened the bag to find…that it was half full????  What the – let’s dump these out…

Ok, so these Hot & Spicy Lowrey’s Bacon Curls Microwave Pork Rinds filled an average cereal bowl. They were still crackling when I opened the bag and dumped them into this bowl. Smelled great, like pork and Cajun spice.

See? Now that’s a promotional shot if I ever saw one.

Up close, you can see the inconsistencies in the “popping.” Some pieces cooked fully, while others are stuck in half-popped and non-popped form.  The following are some pictures of the luscious fully popped chicharrones, which is Spanish for “EAT YOUR PORK RINDS, FATTY!”

These Lowrey’s Bacon Curls Microwave Hot & Spicy Pork Rinds look great, don’t they? And let me tell you – they tasted even better.

Covered in spicy Cajun seasoning, these flavor was similar to cajun spicy peanuts you find in a bar – super salty and super creole spicy.  The texture of them was perfect – you wouldn’t even know they were microwaved.  Each pork rind melted perfectly when chewed, and gave off a really nice pork flavor.  They were light, crispy, and airy like a good pork rind should be. These tasted porky, salty, spicy, and delicious.  Porktastic!

One caveat: Just don’t try to chew any half “popped” ones like the ones in the picture above – you’ll break your teeth. Seriously – I thought maybe I’d just try crunching a few after all the popped rinds were gone. These destroyed my teeth and my confidence.

But then, ding! Brilliant idea: MICROWAVE THEM AGAIN!

And, just like that we are back in business!  These pieces tasted just as good as the first round, showing no side effects of an initial round of chemo.

Would I eat these again?  Absolutely.  I mean, who has TIME to buy an entire pork roast, remove a thick layer of fat, cut the fat into small pieces, get a large bucket of lard, heat until boiling, drop the rind pellets in for 3-5 minutes, remove, cool, season, and then eat? I mean, between doing that and drinking beer, I’m barely leaving myself enough time to play Xbox and watch How I Met Your Mother.

Thoughts? Tell me in the comments below or hit me on Twitter @junkfoodguy or on my Facebook Page.

Sincerely, Junk Food Guy