It's Guinness Season

Another St. Patrick's Day has come and gone without my indulging in green beer or other nonsense. To be fair, I did scribble my math lecture at JSNN in green marker, so all was not lost. But in the days leading up to this glorious day, I found myself with number of Guinness-themed options.

Apparently Guinness flavored chips now exist... (and they're made in England). I once commented to a gentleman in Cork that either Guinness travels poorly or they just ship the skunk batches to the states. He simply said, "No. We keep the best for us, but we send the worst batches to England." I snagged a single bag from the local Harris Teeter, but if commitment is your thing, you can order a large case from Amazon.

Like many all of my favorite foods, this is "not suitable for vegans," as is clearly printed on the back. A proper side dish for this side seemed like a thick-cut bacon & white cheddar grilled cheese sandwich. I've never been much for flavored potato chips, but all the strange extract powders combine to create a potato chip that tastes as if it were dunked in Guinness and then flash dried (but in a good way). It's like eating Guinness... with bacon and cheese and locally brewed beer on the side ("the best beer").

For a proper ending, we have a Guinness flavored cupcake, courtesy Maxie B's, Greensboro's own frilly bakery. Supposedly, there's Guinness in there, but it just tastes like a $3.50 chocolate cupcake. It would have been $2.50, but the "decorations" tack on an extra dollar. Pictured beside it is a 7Up cupcake, which, quite fittingly, tasted like a $3.50 "yellow" cupcake with a zap of citrus. Luckily, this one was not "decorated," so it only fetched $2.50.

So here we are in the post-St. Patrick's Day portion of 2015. 2014 feels like just yesterday, but Easter is just around the corner. Here's to a happy March onward.