Crackers

Ever find yourself with a good (or at least passable) idea for an article, but without an idea of how to start it? And then when you come up with an idea for an opening, you realize that this opening would work so much better on the main page, and using it in both places would be a bit tacky. Well, that is exactly what has happened to me today. This column is rating of a few different types of crackers, and while I have a good idea already of how I am going to rate said crackers and what I'm going to say about them, I don't have a good opening idea, and I generally do my openings first, which only makes sense. So without further ado, on with the ratings.

Nabisco Premium Plus: This humble saltine is the most simple and basic cracker ever to be entirely too popular (Nabisco says this is the most popular cracker they make), and is what I envision when someone says "cracker" without any other description. Plain, dry, and about as exciting as a galvanized pail full of tapwater, these crackers exist primarily to crumple up and put in soup. They are also one of the few things that you can safely eat when you have a bad stomach flu. The thing is that any number of different crackers can be crumbled into soup, so Premium Plus crackers are hardly necessary. And lets face it, sick food is Bad.

Breton Wheat Thins: I remember these being called Breton Champagne crackers, but the Dare website makes no mention of this, so I'm guessing they dropped the champagne part of the name. The champagne name brings up connotations of eating these crackers with caviar and white wine while listening to a Mozart sonata. Maybe they wanted to blue-collar it up a bit. I don't know why they'd bother, after all the Ritz name brings up the same images, and Nabisco has done very well with the Ritz brand. Name aside, these are great crackers. Light and tasty and large, they have enough flavour to snack on without any toppings, which is something that can't be said for a lot of cracker varieties. Breton Wheat Thins are Good.

Melba Toast: Possibly the driest thing ever to be sold as a food product, Melba toast are actually not half bad when you cover 'em with peanut butter or cheese spread. Plus these are on the big side, so you can use a lot of your favourite spread. Also, stack a few up and you'll notice that they start to resemble a little loaf of bread, which is kinda cool. But the best thing about melba toast is the way they expand when you crumble them into your soup, they rehydrate and double in size, so these are ideal for adding some texture to a watery soup, which is a Good thing.

Triscuits: These are perhaps the most complicated cracker I've encountered, which illustrates the whole problem with them. Triscuits are like a guy who really wants to fit in with the group and therefore tries way too hard to make everyone like him, but only ends up in becoming too annoying to deal with in anything more than a small dose. Everyone knows someone like that, and if you don't, I have bad news for you. . . But I digress. Triscuits have too much going on to be taken seriously. They are heavy for a small cracker, their texture is more over done than a Britney Spears music video, and the flavour gets old well, about as fast as a Britney Spears music video. After you've munched down half a dozen you start to ask "Why did I buy these anyway?" Thing is, you'll buy them again six months later. How Ugly is that?

Cheese Nips: While Cheese Nips are certainly very flavourful, I am left with a bad taste in my mouth because of the name. For those of you that are too naive or young to know, "Nips" is a derogatory term for Japanese that was used during the second world war, deriving from the fact that the Japanese name for Japan is Nippon. Perhaps not the most insulting racial slur out there, but that hardly makes it right. While these might be the tastiest racist snack food on the market, it still leaves them firmly in the Ugly column.