Junk Food Nation, the Junk Food Gal and I have perfect sidewalk etiquette. Here is my Junk Food Guy sidewalk etiquette 101: when there are two of you, and another person is walking towards you on a narrow sidewalk, you move so that the person can pass.  It’s the polite thing to do.  I like to test this out on people as I am walking towards them on the sidewalk – are you gonna move to let me through, or are you gonna be a dick?  Oh, you’d prefer for me to move off the sidewalk on to the grass so you can keep taking up the entire sidewalk? RIGHT AWAY, YOUR MAJESTY.

This etiquette is especially crucial because some jerks in DC love to ride bikes on the sidewalk. Despite the fact that you’re supposed to ride your bike IN THE BIKE LANES DRAW ON THE EFFING STREET, people insist on riding up on my ass while I’m walking on the sidewalk. Whenever they ding their bell as they ride by, I always panic as I’m never sure which way to jump to avoid getting tire treads on the back of my head.

This morning, the Junk Food Gal and I were walking to the subway, and we heard a girl walking up very quickly behind us.  I, trying to be polite, slowed my pace and walked behind the JFGal, allowing the girl to pass on our left.  As she passed and I quickened my pace in order to get back to side-by-side with the JFGal, I heard from behind me tires and a dude panting “EXCUSE ME.” Immediately, I thought, “Oh here we go with the bike” and backed up to walk behind the JFGal. I turned to my left and saw, not a bike, BUT A GUY SWERVING ALL OVER THE PLACE RIDING A UNICYCLE.

Like, a full on friggin Unicycle, where the seat was, like, four feet off the ground.  Seriously. I was bewildered by this.  Why the HELL are you riding a unicycle at 7:15am?  And where was he going? He had on shorts, a long sleeve sport top, and a backpack.  Where was he going??  Clown school?

And here’s the other thing: HE WAS NOT GOOD AT THE UNICYCLE RIDING.  He kept almost falling over, swerving off the sidewalk into the grass and then twisting his body to keep balance.  And he screamed past us, he almost ran into the girl who had walked ahead of us, until he swerved to miss her at the last second, and fell over onto the grass.  Undaunted, he walked his way over to a telephone pole, hoisted himself up, and went on his highly-dangerous way.  WTF.  We watched as he rode ahead, narrowly avoiding decapitating people and crossing roads against the red light.

Tell me, Junk Food Nation – how would YOU have reacted?  The whole thing was CRAZY.  And do you have sidewalk pet peeves? Let me know in the comments below.

Today’s junk food: New Snyder’s of Hanover Sweet and Salty Maple Bacon Pretzel Pieces!

New Snyder’s of Hanover Sweet and Salty Maple Bacon Pretzel Pieces….oh baby. I’ve reviewed the other two varieties of Snyder’s Sweet/Salty on this blog before (Cinnamon Sugar and Salted Caramel), and LOVED LOVED LOVED them.  Like, dangerously loved them.  I couldn’t stop stuffing them into my face – that sort of love.  So when I saw these on the interwebs, I reached out to my good friends at Snyder’s, and they delivered. Let’s do this.

Snyder’s has created these new Sweet and Salty Maple Bacon Pretzel Pieces as an awesome addition to the former two flavors. We discussed these on the Nosh Show recently, and I know we were all curious about the actual bacon flavor.  If you think about it, you’re constantly inundated with fake bacon flavor – Bacos, for example, or any other chip out there that claims to taste like bacon. Getting that bacon flavor spot on is hard. Does the bacon flavor come from bacon salt, bacon bits, pork fat, or just smoke> It matters.

Also a thought with these New Snyder’s of Hanover Sweet and Salty Maple Bacon Pretzel Pieces – is this bacon flavored with maple, or is it maple flavored with bacon?

New Snyder’s of Hanover Sweet and Salty Maple Bacon Pretzel Pieces don’t contain any smoke…unless it’s in the “natural flavoring” part of things.  I do see soy and brown sugar though. Hm. Interesting.

One thing that is undeniable is when you open this bag of New Snyder’s of Hanover Sweet and Salty Maple Bacon Pretzel Pieces, the smell that comes wafting out is PURE MAPLE SYRUP.  The sugary familiar brown sugar-y smell permeated my nostrils, and clubbed me over the head with maple.  POWERFUL aroma. I was immediately excited. Maple brown sugar smell IN THE HOUSE.

When I placed a bunch of these New Snyder’s of Hanover Sweet and Salty Maple Bacon Pretzel Pieces in my mouth and chewed…I have to admit, my first thought was CONFUSION. Tasty confusion, but still…CONFUSION.  Explanation? Because…they smelled so sweet…but…these were NOT SWEET.

Ok, let’s back up.  The short answer to my earlier inquiry is that these are definitely bacon flavored and accented with maple.  Despite the amazing smell of these pretzel pieces, the first flavor was NOT sugar, not maple, nor anything sweet.  While the Cinnamon Sugar and Salted Caramel Snyder’s Pretzel Pieces were DEFINITELY of the sweet variety – these were definitely a more savory snack than I anticipated.

But these tasted…sort of incredible. The first taste I got was of a porky meaty flavor…these weren’t SUPER salty, so the bacon flavor wasn’t biting and salty like we’re used to in sandwiches.  Instead, I got a strong (and unexpected) porky flavor that was smoky and meaty and had the right bacon-y notes that touched certain areas of my tongue.

The flavor matched the pretzel piece perfectly – the normal bread-y semi-bitterness of a crunchy pretzel piece did not detract from the flavor of the bacon itself. Like I’d said in other reviews, the problem with the pairing of potato and bacon is that its good but you always get the potato drowning out the bacon eventually.  Not so, here.  The pretzel stayed in the background for much, if not all, of the time. It was like I dipped a pretzel piece into bacon fat – the flavor was oddly spot on.  And STRONG.

So where does the maple come in?  Toward the middle-end of the chew…the slight slight sweetness comes in and helps round out the flavor.  At no point did the maple flavor ever come close to overtaking the bacon flavor. Despite the strong aroma, the maple brown sugar is really only there to help make the bacon flavor more savory.  Bacon, not maple, is the star of the show here.

So did I like it?  I…I think I did!  Sorry to sound so confused…the flavor was so spot on and so strong, that I teetered between being unable to stop tasting them and needing to stop because I was getting overwhelmed with the flavor and was afraid I’d start to hate them.  The Junk Food Gal tried them, her eyes widened, and she stated that these were wonderful. She thought that without the strong salt flavor that bacon usually has, the balance of these was perfect.  So there ya go.

In summary, I think Snyder’s perfected these.  The flavor is still surprising to me with each bite because I WANT them to be sweet, but it’s clear that bacon is the flavor they’re trying to punch you in the face with.  These are good.

PURCHASED AT: Mailed to me, but I’m sure you’ll be able to find it everywhere soon!

COST: Apparently, $3.69.

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,

Junk Food Guy