Canadians Love Their… All Dressed Chips

All Dressed chips are frequently sold in Canada and are a unique flavor not like anything found in the US.

The first time I had one of these chips, it was after picking up someone off the floor as they fainted when I said “what’s an all-dress chip?”

I hadn’t ever heard of them before, much less had them, and even once I was corrected and told that the term was “all dressed,” it didn’t exactly sound appealing. After all, when I ask for my burger to be fully dressed, it usually means that I want everything on it…and I do NOT want everything on my chip.

I had already experienced the beloved ketchup chip (beloved by the crazy Canadians, that is…not myself) and further explanation that the chip was “kinda like ketchup chips with vinegar, salt, and pepper” really didn’t make the case for me to jump on the bandwagon.

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The description, however, was surprisingly accurate AND it turns out the chips are delicious. Weird, I know. They really do kinda taste like a ketchup chip met up with a salt ‘n’ vinegar chip and said “hey, let’s experiment with a whole bunch of spices and seasonings that no one will be able to distinguish” and voila, Canadians favorite chips were born!

I suppose it’s kind of like the “everything bagel” of chips. You think it’s going to taste weird if you heard everything they put on it, but once you have it, you find that it’s actually pretty good (albeit, not for everyone, of course). They’re perfect for people who innocently dip their chips in ketchup or like stacking their chips directly on their sandwiches.

Canadians love their…. Mac and Cheese (Part 2!)

canada, Canadian, canadians, pasta | February 9, 2015 | By

(Part 1 can be found here: Canadians like their…Kraft Dinner)

The whole “American boxed mac ‘n’ cheese vs. Canadian KD (Kraft Dinner) obsession” is one of the silliest, strangest things I have to try to explain when I’m comparing the differences between food in America and Canada.

Considering there’s an entire section in the Canadian Culture portion of Wikipedia about how obsessed they are with KD, it really is something worth talking about. What I hadn’t seen before was a video like the one above about how they actually *taste* different, though.

Having tried both quite extensively, I can say they do have some differences, but when it comes down to it, both are still just cheap boxed pasta that gets covered in an unnatural orangey “cheese” dust that college students live off of and the rest of us still indulge in from time to time as a guilty pleasure.

(If you’re curious about more of the technical differences, check out this post from Garden Gnome’s Canadian Perspective. She does a breakdown that is quite funny at times and even reminds us that only Americans would need two sets of instructions for how to open a simple box of mac and cheese.)

The fine line between enforcing the rules and being ridiculous

A note sent home from a Canadian day care saying that a mom had been charged $10 for a pack of Ritz crackers because her child's meal didn't have the required 2 grains. The note fully says "Meals that are provided to children (by either the center or the parent) are required to have: 1 milk, 1 meat, 2 grain, and 2 fruits/vegetables. According to licensing guidelines, the center is required to supplement lunches that contain anything less than this. Today you were missing Grain -1. Had meat, potatoes, mlk, carrots, organge. Your account will be charged $10.00. Motion: Parents will be charged $5 per child, per item missing, if the child's lunch is not a balanced meal according to the Canadian Food Guide effective April 17/12. Carried.

The mother, Kristen Bartkiw from Manitoba, sent homemade roast beef, potatoes, milk, carrots, and an orange for her kids’ lunch that day. Because the lunch was missing its second grain, the school gave her kids Ritz crackers to ‘supplement’ the meal and she was subsequently charged $10 ($5 per kid).

Now the price sounds ridiculous for a pack of crackers, but I understand setting it high like that to encourage parents to pay close attention and make sure they’re sending a fully balanced meal. And hey, if they don’t want to go through that effort, I’m sure the school provides a balanced lunch they can choose to buy instead.

The part I find ridiculous is that a pack of crackers doesn’t logically make this meal that much better for the kids. I read in one article that quoted the school worker (or maybe it was a daycare worker?) as saying that she could send microwave Kraft dinner with them every day and it would count as the grain.

I know they’re just enforcing the rules and if they let one bit slide, then it opens it up to a lot of interpretation and conflict….. but come on. Is it really worth their time to go around to every meal and count to make sure each kid has the right number of each type of food? And even if they somehow have nothing better to do, this is no way guarantees the kids will even EAT those foods, so what’s the point?

If I were in this boat, I would probably just toss an extra pack of crackers into the bag every day and be done with it. I don’t think having two grains is nutritionally better for them and would rather add more veggies or fruits if the kids would eat them. I had a hard enough time making sure the bento boxes I used to make had all the right proportions as it was….but to try to make sure I was fitting the school’s guidelines, too, by having separate grains instead of a single, larger portion of one? Ugh.