Weather, allegory and food addiction confessions

In my last post I talked about the weather.
Since then, it has snowed, sleeted and coated every exposed surface in a layer of freezing rain.  It's about as bad as precipitation can get without being a blizzard or hurricane.

Staying inside because I don't want to drive in these conditions, I had plenty of time to ponder the situation.  Last evening I got to remember how the last few winters have been.

I don't think it is my imagination at work here but it seems there is a pattern to the winter weather if one would closely observe the events involved.

Over the last three years, it seems that we have gotten our worse weather outbreaks AFTER Groundhog's Day.  It's as if Nature watches news broadcasts and notices when old traditions indicate that winter has only six more weeks of influence.

It seems to this observer that Nature acts much like a woman who is embroiled in a messy divorce...one that becomes very vindictive.  It's as if she recalls all the remarks she has overheard as to what we hate most about winter and then, just before she exits the relationship, she plans and executes that which she knows her soon to be ex-spouse hates more than anything else about her...just to piss him off.

Also, I was talking with some neighbors yesterday and the subject of allergies came up. For some reason that motivated Bobbert to share a story with me about a couple he knew some years back that got divorced.  He said the wife knew her husband was very allergic to Tide laundry detergent and strangely enough, as a last deed, one that had the appearance of being a considerate and good deed, she washed all of her soon to be Ex-husband's clothes just before she helped him pack up and get out of the house.  You guessed it!  She washed them in TIDE. The first time he changed clothes after their separation, he broke out in an awful, itchy rash that covered his entire body.  Can't you see and hear him in your imagination as he realized what his ex-wife had done. 

Actually, it hasn't been a BAD winter, so far as normal winters go around these parts and it could be that the winter spirit just wanted to show me and others like me how bad it COULD have been and that we should be thankful and not so anxious to see her go.
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Now! On to the food addiction portion of this Tuesday post.

I love snacks!  A vast array of snacks.  Being diabetic I should be very careful about my diet and I do try to be just that...CAREFUL.  I do eat some things that have sugar in them but it is a reduced sugar content and I try not to eat large portions of any of those snacks.  I say "I try" but I'm not always successful.  Simply put, I'm just tired of constantly doing without things that I like to the point of being addicted.

Imagine how pleased I was to discover that Pork Rinds contain Zero Carbohydrates and no sugars. I find that I must keep reminding myself that they still contain calories and that I shouldn't over-do it when I'm snacking on them.

I am not addicted to ALL brands of Pork Rinds.  I'm pretty particular as to what I like about pork skins and not all brands out there possess what I like most.  I like my pork rinds flavored.  Hot and Spicy Barbecue flavored.  When a package advertises "HOT and Spicy" by golly it had better sting the back of my throat from the first bite to the last.  Also I should be able to detect the flavor of bacon now and then in a few of the morsels I'm consuming.

A year or two ago, the girls that do all of the shopping heard me when I asked them to keep their eyes open for any variety of pork rinds and to buy one bag of them when they find them so I could try them and see if we could find something I really liked.  One Saturday they came home with a bag of "Yoders Hot and Spicy Pork Rinds."  Oh my God! They were fantastic. 

Mind you, this is just my opinion.  Here's how I think the perfect pork rind should be.

The pieces should be bite sized and almost flat.  They should be thin and yet still be puffed up, light but not too airy, certainly they should not be large and curled or rolled up on themselves.  I hate that about most brands of pork rinds.  The flavoring is put on the rinds AFTER they are fried and the curling affect takes place during frying. That means that the inside of those large, curled up pieces hardly ever get any flavor coating on the inside.

My relationship with Yoder's Pork Rinds went along smoothly for about a year after we finally got the local grocery store to keep them in stock.  At first they were not available every week.  That's the grocery store manager's fault.  It was a new product and they were in a test period.  I can see why a manager would want to keep tight control over new products.  I don't know what the manager at the store we regularly shop was expecting.  Perhaps he was waiting for customers to start complaining about the lack of product constantly.  We DID complain and ask him to make sure they kept them on hand but maybe one customer wasn't enough.  Our experience told us that it pays to be persistent.  He finally got our message and our future purchases began to go smoothly.

THEN, the worse thing that could happen to a dedicated snacker's supply happened.  The product began to change for the worse.  It got so bad that I told the girls to cut back on the amount they purchased each week until I had a chance to communicate with the manufacturer. The few bags we did buy continued to decline in quality (in my opinion.)  Finally I had all I could stand so I went to the manufacturer's website, filled out one of those contact us, feedback forms and waited.  They promised that someone would be contacting me within 48 hours.  I'm sorry to say...they failed in that promise.  Some time later I got an email, thanking me for my input, reassuring me that they were looking into my complaints.

I had all but forgotten about my communication with the supplier.  I don't remember how long a span of time passed.  What I can say is that the packages the girls were buying each week started to improved and then they went too far the other way. They got to the point of adding too much flavoring powder...so much that it covered up the other small nuances that make good pork rinds so tasty.  Also, the pieces were still too large and many of them were still rolled upon themselves.

Yesterday, a UPS truck pulled up in front of our house.  We weren't expecting any shipments from anyone.  We supposed that he had a package for one of our neighbors.  But NO! He was coming up our driveway with a large box. Inside the box was three FREE bags of Yoder's Hot and Spicy Pork Rinds and an envelop.  Inside the envelop was this well written, informative letter from the corporate QA manager. He apologized for my disappointment with their product and hoped that the replacement packages he had shipped to me would be more to my satisfaction. I'm sorry to say, they were NOT.  They too had way too many large, curled up pieces that appear to have only a very light coating of the flavoring I like so much.  The pieces are much too puffy, not much body to them, if you know what I mean. Light and airy is good when it comes to cheese puffs but when it comes to pork rinds, it's like eating very dry, flavored cardboard. 

I did learn one or two things from the letter I got with them however.
I had no idea that they process approximately two million pounds of raw pork skin per week from different suppliers, nor did I consider the fact that the pork skins come from a variety of locations around a pig's body.  I can see that it would be difficult to control the size of each piece of processed skin.  If they simply began to chop up all the pieces of skin they receive, the large pieces would become smaller but so would the small pieces and during the frying process, much of those small pieces would simply disappear into the oil vat. I understood that there is such a thing as too small a piece of skin for them to work with.

I have concluded that uniformity is a problem most manufacturers of pork rinds are unable or unwilling to attempt to work with.  They say they are doing the best they can to keep the price low and the quality at maximum considering what they are working with.  I guess I may be too picky for my own good. Still I can't help but wonder if they might not be able to set appropriate standards for their skin suppliers and see if that might help.  They might balk at demands for maximum piece size standards and insist they they receive more for the increase in processing they may need to do to the skins before shipment to the pork rind plant.

I thank the corporate QA manager for taking the time to hear me out and for explaining some of the details I was ignorant about pertaining to the production of Pork Rinds.  I also appreciate the three bags of pork rinds I received. Yet, the problem is not fixed in my opinion and that company needs to get better control on their production process to insure a more constantly uniform product.