JFG Nation, have you ever used crutches? They suck, right? While my buddy insists that crutches made him a chick magnet, the fact remains: crutches are poorly designed. It’s like someone sat down and thought “How can I use my own body weight to cut blood off to my arms? I know, I’ll jam a plank up into my armpits! Plus, I get to balance on one foot as I try to maneuver both crutches into one side if I need to reach for anything? BONUS.” Awful.

Then I saw this:

WHOOOOA. Now THAT is cool. And it makes sense – using your elbows/upper arm, where you actually have muscle and leverage, to support your body weight seems completely obvious. Even those squishy rubber footpads – even THOSE seem awesome to me. Why don’t regular crutches at least have THOSE? Instead you get this hard round peg which seems designed to slip. “Guys, we need to figure out how to make the ends of these crutches so that people feel safe walking around.” “How about we end them with pencil erasers? That seems like enough traction for a 150+ lb. human.”

Now, does it look like you’re adding two insect legs to the front of your body? YES. But who cares? I’ll spray paint those things green and pretend I’m a praying mantis.

What do you think, JFG Nation? Do these look like a good idea or totally weird? Can we at least agree that regular crutches are the worst? Let me know in the comments below.

Today’s junk food: Cape Cod Americana Barbecue Brisket Potato Chips!!

Cape Code? Making a meat flavored chip? I guess Herr’s, Lay’s and Pringles HAVEN’T cornered the market on meat chips. Well, ok – Cape Cod Americana Barbecue Brisket Potato Chips. Let’s do this.

Americana is a weird term to use here – it really refers to a swath of historical items that reflect American history; it’s not really a food term. It’s like Cape Cod just decided it sounded good and slapped it on the bag. You can’t just add genres of other things to a food title. It’d be like if I named something, “Disco Era Pumpkin Spice Donuts.” You’d be like, “Uh…that doesn’t make sense.”

Cape Cod Americana Barbecue Brisket Potato Chips are only around til July 4. Which is definitely the most unique way of saying “Limited Edition” I’ve seen in a while.

BUT CAN I TASTE THE AMERICANA, CAPE COD?

On this website, I’ve eaten two steak/beef potato chips before, with varying results. The Herr’s Kansas City Prime Steak Chips were salty as hell and tasted like I was eating a ramen noodle seasoning packet. The Ruffles Max Flame Grilled Steak Chips were better. How would these Cape Cod Americana Barbecue Brisket Potato Chips stack up?

When I opened this bag of Cape Cod Americana Barbecue Brisket Potato Chips, I could smell a meaty char aroma…despite no liquid smoke in the ingredients, these chips smelled smoky.

I stuffed two-three chips into my mouth and chewed…whoa. VERY interesting. Right off the bat, these were more Lay’s Flame Grilled Steak than the Herr’s variety. They weren’t too salty, and the base Cape Cod chip was light and crunchy.

The flavor of these Cape Cod Americana Barbecue Brisket Potato Chips teetered between bouillon flavor and pretty damn accurate steak flavor. The meatiness of the beef matched how a well done piece of beef tastes – beefy, smoky, and full of char flavor. Sort of like the outside of a steak on a grill.

But was this BRISKET flavored? I guess – unlike the other two steak chips I’d had, there was a nice light sweetness to the chips that SORT of reminded me of BBQ. And that was it – to me, calling these a BBQ chip is a bit of a misnomer – you’re clearly going into these chips hoping to taste beef. And I think Cape Code got it right.

NOW. Whether you WANT chips that taste like beef is another story? You might try these and find the combo completely alarming. I definitely had the same sensation – I took a crunch and was like, “Are these good? Do I want to keep eating these? Am I tasting burnt rubber or a nice steak-y char?” All valid thoughts.

In the end, however, I think these chips were successful for what they wanted to accomplish. B+, Cape Cod.

PURCHASED AT: Giant, Van Ness, DC

COST: $3.50 on sale

Thoughts? Please comment below or hit me up on Twitter @junkfoodguy or LIKE my Facebook Page and message me there. I also have Google+!! Let’s hang out.

Sincerely,

The JFG