Learned

My library, it turns out, is a great place to learn about snack products. Food fairies leave all kinds of foodstuffs on our breakroom table. I take advantage of the opportunity to do a little market research (as in, "What shall I buy when I do my marketing at Ukrop's this week?"). Plenty of it is chocolate; often, it's something salty. Hmm. That's about it. No one ever brings a pineapple, or even a new kind of granola bar.

This week, thanks to unidentified coworkers, I tried one product that looked fabulous, but disappointed me; and one that I had rejected when I noted it on the grocery store shelf, but proved to be quite tasty. Nestle Tollhouse candy bars sounded like they'd be moist and tasty, but turned out to be dry and disappointing. (I had one with a chocolate brownie, not a cookie brownie, as on this blog.)

On Sunday, I expected company, and thought it would be nice to have some cheese and crackers on hand. I went to the cracker aisle and stared blankly at the Wheat Thins section: fat free, low salt, honey covered, mixed vegetable, grass clippings -- what the heck? I just want crackers. I found plain ones and went home. This week though, one of the flavored varieties showed up on the table, and made a promising side for my sandwich. I tried a few: quite tasty, and would be good with a mild cheese on top.

And now the research process sidebar:

Nabisco has paid up so that when I Googled "wheat thins," their own site is the first hit after the "product search" results. Wikipedia and a Sandy Duncan site are two and three, as I write. . . .

Nestle's own site, on the other hand, didn't appear on the first two pages. I'd like to give my readers authoritative links, not links to random blogs I don't know about. I have seen Candy Blog before, so I don't feel too bad about that one.

And finally, as a closing thought, something I read in a book review for Frances Jacobson Harris's I Found It on the Internet: Coming of Age Online:

Today's youth are members of the 'millennial generation' (ages 13-24), and this generation has spent more time using the Internet that watching television.