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Back during the spring, Shearer’s, the snack company, offered to send me a huge box of chips. My response was something resembling language, but was mostly a lot of exclamation points and grunts.

Shearer’s wanted me to know about two things: the measures that they’ve taken to become a “greener” company and some of the new delicious snacks that they’re rolling out. After reading another blogger’s report about their new manufacturing plant, it’s pretty impressive. Shearer’s earned platinum LEED certification from the US Green Building Council for their manufacturing plants, which feature lots of natural light, rainwater collections, and energy recycling. Awesome, right? Right. Now, what of the chips?

The idea was for me to have a party where my friends and I could sample some of the classic and new Shearer’s chips. I scheduled a party and was really looking forward to it…until the husband realized that he had double-booked himself. Argh. I made a couple attempts to reschedule, but then we started getting into the really busy parts of summer and the opportunity to have a party simply slipped away. But! I still had a huge box of chips and several family vacations to take. I had chips in the car on the way to Conneaut Lake, Washington D.C., and the Outer Banks, and plenty to go around for my whole family. It was cool! I became like my family’s own snack caterer. I would bring bags of chips to the lake or to the beach and say, “Please eat these!” Luckily, chips aren’t a hard sell.

I gave everyone free reign over the traditional flavors like barbecue and sour cream and onion. But some of the alternative (?) snacks were so delicious that the husband and I squirreled those away for ourselves. The two bags of whole grain Shapers in cheddar and cinnamon were quickly gone. The cinnamon started out kind of tasting like light churros, but were sweetened with sucralose which was all that I could taste. However, the cheddar flavor…

Yeah.

They also sent me a few bags of their riceworks snacks, which are so, so good. They’re kind of like rice cakes but chips, if that makes sense. I saved the sea salt flavor for the drive to the Outer Banks. It almost lasted a whole five seconds into the 10-hour trip.

Disclosure: Shearer’s provided me with several bags of their snacks and a $250 gift card to Giant Eagle to purchase party supplies. Since I didn’t have a party, I put those funds toward drinks and dips and whatnot during our vacations.

Aside to regular readers: I know product posts like these are considered increasingly gauche, but I like to support businesses and events that are in or near Pittsburgh. Shearer’s is from Brewster, Ohio. And while their likely allegiance to Ohio sports teams is unfortunate, I’ll support them anyway. 😉

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 8th, 2011 at 10:00 am and is filed under food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.