Junk Food Nation, for the past couple days I’ve been conducting a survey to see what you want to see changed, added, or removed from this blog.  One suggestion was to weave my stories more into the product.  Er….I’ll give it a shot with this blog post.  Why not?

I wanted to start out with a story I saw yesterday on my friend Albert’s wall about famous super hot Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi.  For those of you who don’t remember her, she was the star of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon(2000), Rush Hour 2 (2001), and Memoirs of a Geisha (2005). Plus she was the star of my fantasies back when I was in college.  Holy hell.  Well, apparently besides being a great actress, she’s also a professional whore!  Yaaay.  News broke yesterday that she had been paid millions of dollars to sleep with politicians and other high powered executives in the Chinese government.  Wow.  Those dudes aren’t lookers either.

And this is HUGE NEWS. When you’re the most famous actress in China, this is huge news. In the US, we’re used to sleazy politicians running amuck with high powered escorts…but this is akin to finding out that Angelina Jolie or Kate Upton was going around sleeping with Newt Gingrich, John Kerry, Rand Paul, and Joe Biden for MILLIONS OF DOLLARS EACH TIME.  This is a big deal.

And the thing I can’t forget is DAMN – I used to be REALLY into this chick.  Does this make her hotter or gross? Undecided.

Today’s junk food: Boulder Canyon Garden Select Hearty Cheddar Vegetable Crisps!

Boulder Canyon Garden Select Hearty Cheddar Vegetable Crisps were purchased at Costco, which means this is a really really REALLY big bag of chips.  Look I know we’ve all had a party size bag of Tostitos once in a while.  And I know we’ve all eaten that bag of Tostitos in one sitting before with nothing but a gigantic jar of spaghetti sauce. Right guys? Right?  (cough)

Anyways, when I saw these I was intrigued.  I’d been on the look out for healthier snacks ever since my foray into Snikiddy, Terra, Popcorn, Indiana, etc.  Cheddar flavored garden vegetable chips?  Yes.

Boulder Canyon Natural Foods has been around since the early 90’s, making incredibly interesting snacks. For example, Spinach Artichoke Kettle Cooked Chips.  Say whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

In other Say Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa news, Baltimore recently voted to have advertisements placed on its firetrucks. Really, it’s a revenue move – the hope is that the money generated can aid the city budget and PREVENT firefighters from getting fired or laid off.  So the intention is good.  But the natural reaction of Say Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaa is immediate, isn’t it? If I’m having a heart attack, I’m not sure I wanna see paramedics running into dressed like NASCAR drivers with a slew of patches and endorsements sewed to their uniforms.  “This Defibrillation is brought to you by RED BULL!  IT GIVES YOU WINGS!!!”

Me: “Red Bull is what GAVE me this heart attack, jerks!”

Boulder Canyon Garden Select Hearty Cheddar Vegetable Crisps are displayed here, rpesumably, with all the veggies that go into it. Cheese, tomato, looks like come celery and carrot, red onion, some kind of root vegetable, red pepper, green pepper.  Let’s remember these for later, shall we?

15 chips for 120 calories isn’t bad; in fact this may be the healthiest chip I’d seen so far.  and yes, there are apparently 165 chips in this bag.  That is a hell of a lot of chips.  Thank God I’ve got a big belly.

Remember the list of veggies above? How many are present in these Boulder Canyon Garden Select Hearty Cheddar Vegetable Crisps? …..I think all of them, and then some? These blikkies have KALE? AWESOME!

Even awesomer is the fact that the parent company of these Boulder Canyon Garden Select Hearty Cheddar Vegetable Crisps, Inventure Foods, has the NASDAQ symbol of SNAK.  How cool is THAT!? “Yes I’d like 100 shares of SNAK please. Then after that give me 100 shares of TUMS.”

Apparently, even the Rachael Ray audience loves these Boulder Canyon chips! Well, the potato chips that is. In all seriousness, that’s a HUGE endorsement.  Nice work, Boulder Canyon!

Boulder Canyon Garden Select Hearty Cheddar Vegetable Crisps has easy pictograms so you know what you’re getting into.

On a totally separate note, the NBA Draft lottery was last night.  And it was a total SHAM.  THAT’S RIGHT, I SAID IT!  For any basketball fan, you know how the draft lottery works. For the uninitiated: The NBA is a sport where one player can make a HUGE difference.  So, to combat teams losing on purpose to get the first overall pick in the following year’s draft, the NBA instituted a draft lottery.  In essence, the worse you are, the more “balls” you get in the ole lottery jar.  This means you have a greater chance to get the #1 overall pick – but it’s not guaranteed.  And because of the randomness of this process, it has spawned A TON OF CONSPIRACY THEORIES. The biggest of which was the 1985 Draft, where people accused Commissioner David Stern of fixing the draft to allow his hometown Knicks to get Patrick Ewing.

After David Stern, earlier this season, nixed the Chris Paul deal that would’ve sent him to the Lakers (my rant about this here), people all over the web theorized that the commissioner would make up for that colossal bullshit by rigging the NBA draft to allow the Hornets, who didn’t have the worst team in the league, to somehow jump up and snag the #1 pick in this year’s draft.

AND WELL LOOKIE LOOKIE WHAT HAPPENED LAST NIGHT THE HORNETS MIRACULOUSLY GOT THE FIRST OVERALL PICK!  UNIBROW TO THE HORNETS.  BIG FRIGGIN SURPRISE.

Plus, THE NBA OWNS THIS STUPID TEAM TOO!   I swear, if ESPN doesn’t explode this evening with stories regarding this ridiculousness…

When I opened the bag of Boulder Canyon Garden Select Hearty Cheddar Vegetable Crisps I smelled…onion and garlic powder. General savoriness.  Nothing too special.  By the way, the gigantic bag felt like it weighed 10 lbs.

I crunched on a bunch of these Boulder Canyon Garden Select Hearty Cheddar Vegetable Crisps, and they tasted…well, good.

The crunch: basically this tasted like a cross between a corn chip and a potato chip – very much like the Snikiddy chips I’ve tried previously.  Strachy, crunchy but not TOO crunchy, and medium weight – not a light chip, but not as heavy as a pita chip.  Just a standard starchy chip.

The taste: general savoriness.  Good amount of garlic and onion powder which gave this chip a normal savory taste, and throw in a bit of vegetable-y taste too (very tiny, like a hint of green pepper here and there).  The cheese powder was a little disappointing…while this snack did have a hint of cheese, I would’ve preferred more.  After all, this is advertised as HEARTY CHEDDAR.

Overall? I liked them and I’d eat them again, although I don’t think they really delivered on the flavor.  Still, for a healthy chip that tasted good, Boulder Canyon was a great choice.  $5.99 at Costco.

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

Sincerely, Junk Food Guy