The Shipps brought a number of spicy chips "so you don't have
to," and their son Bryan got into the swing of things and
contributed a couple more bags. tl;dr - don't go out of your
way for spicy chips.

From Kettle
Jalapeno "hot!" - the primary flavor was onion powder with a
little greenness; not very hot at all. Not objectionable but
not worth the carbs either.

Wasabi ranch crinkle cut had good heft and a pleasant mild
horseradish zing. The ranch manifested itself by muting the
goodness a bit, nothing more. These were widely regarded as the
best of a bad lot.

From Sprouts
Jalapeno #6 - greeny herbally, more green pepper than hot
pepper, and also not very hot - maybe a little more discernible
than the Kettle but not by much.

Red chili #8 had a little heat but no flavor. Gail complained
that whatever taste there was was on the surface only, and there
wasn't any depth to the chip. The numbers apparently don't have
anything to do with the heat level.

Paqui Haunted Ghost Pepper corn chips at least were substantially
hot, objectionably so to some. There was a bit of the rotten flavor
that things of the Habbie species share, but otherwise it was all
corn all the time. I found them vaguely unpleasant.

Luckily Steve wanted to play with his Vision, a ceramic green-egg
knockoff and had those nice strip steaks that cried out to be
cooked. The cooker heats up well above 500F, so the steaks got a
nice crust. I think they could have been taken off a couple minutes
earlier (what's this with inconsistent results from instant=read thermometers?), but they were still good, medium-rare to medium,
juicy and tender. I was pretty impressed.

The pork made in his pellet smoker and pulled the previous evening
also came out. As the preview promised, this was delicious, though
I found it a little lean in the modern style and wondered where the
rest of the fat went. Also a hair salty, but that's just me. Some
people here appear to have been under the impression that I used to
use a lot of salt; as a rule, that's not so, and I've always been
fairly sensitive to the stuff. Perhaps it was that I'd reported
difficulty making my 1000 mg quota on my cardiac diet; what people
didn't catch was that eating normally I couldn't get UP to that gram
unless I had a bunch of ham and stuff.

Accompaniments were Pennsylvania potato salad and cole slaw, of
which I had polite tastes, just enough to be able to report that
they were good. Not my sort of bellyfiller, though.

The meats didn't require the Rufus Teague's sugar-free bbq sauces
that ere on the table. I tasted both the original and chipotle and
found them too, well, low-carb, lacking in body and having that
irritating taste in abundance.

For dessert, Ruth's brownies, cakey rather than gooey, with
substantial crisp edges. sided by Publix organic vanilla ice cream,
which was nicely flavored but also a little on the lean side.
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