Yesterday, two things in my life ended.  The first was the closing of the pizza joint in the lobby of my office building.  Despite charging an arm and a leg for a slice of pizza (something absurd like $4 a slice), it was damn good pizza.  Bon Voyage, Mamma Ilardo.

The second thing that happened yesterday was the final space shuttle launch, as the last NASA rocket was launched before retirement.  Now, I’m not here to talk politics – not going to debate the financial viability of NASA, new shuttles, etc.  But I just feel sad since all my life there has BEEN a US shuttle-driven space program.  I remember being a kid and hearing about Space Camp.  I remember when Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang went into space.  I remember the horrible Challenger disaster, with my teacher sobbing in the front of the classroom.

So while I understand that politics, ideology, and I’m sure other factors led to yesterday’s Atlantis blast off representing the final shuttle launch, I can’t help but to feel a bit of loss.  More on this after my review of today’s snack: Triscuit Thin Crisps Quattro Formaggio!

The Money Shot

First, everyone loves Triscuits.  Originally the plain woven wheat cracker founded in the year 1900, Triscuit now has fifteen distinct flavors and a whole lot more profit.  (Seriously, why did it take until 1984 for the execs to suggest new flavors??  THEY’RE.  CRACKERS.  FLAVORS = CASH MONEY.)

I love a good cheese cracker, hence my obsession with Cheez-Its.  So whenever I see another cracker label step into the cheese realm, I take notice.

Recipes? No way, Triscuit!

I wanted to know what the Quattro Formaggio or Four Cheeses were, so I spun to where I thought they’d explain it – on the back of the box.  Negatory.  Recipes, that’s what I found.  Hey Triscuits, quit dicking me around with this tapenade and dip nonsense, and tell me what I’m eating.

It's like the inside of a greeting card

Side of the box?  Nope – Haikus or Limericks, that’s what I found.  Although what they wrote is beautiful.

The four cheeses could only be found in the ingredients listing: Romano, Parmesan, Asiago, and Cheddar. Shouldn’t this be front and center on the cover of the box??  But no.  Look back up to the cover of the box – what’s pictured?  MORE DIP!  This is a big red flag as to how they feel these crackers taste.

Like a path of Winter Wheat

At first glance, they look decent, as Triscuits always do.  The Thin Crisp variety has smaller threads of wheat and are triangular.  Because each cracker is wrapped tight like a sweater, you don’t get too many broken pieces.

Triangle of flavor

A single Thin Crisp is thinner than a normal Triscuit and smaller.  Almost like a choking hazard, but hopefully more flavorful.  You can see on the surface some arbitrary green specks of…basil/oregano? And there are darker brown splotches of what I’m guessing is cheese.

Structurally sound!

ONE BITE AND THE TRIANGLE HOLDS!  Wow, that is creepy.  But also, pretty awesome.

They should build bridges out of Triscuits

A closer up look at my bite.  Inside this thin cracker it looks like a buckyball of wheaty support, able to withstand even the strongest of bites.  I feel like I have Superman jaws, to be able to crunch this sucker.

Woven with crumbled cheese - I think

Unfortunately, the flavor just didn’t add up.  Sure it had the initial tang of cheesiness, but I couldn’t distinguish the cheese flavors, and that’s always the problem with these four, five-cheese combos.  Why are you trying to mix them together?  The sum total isn’t always greater than the parts.  After a few chews of the cracker, the cheese flavor melted away into plain ol Triscuit-town.  Which is fine – but I wanted a cheese explosion.  Definitely underwhelmed.

And I know what you’re thinking, Triscuits, but I won’t be dipping these into any cheese sauce.  BECAUSE I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO.

—-

For me, the space program was never really about finding aliens or finding other planets to inhabit, although I guess I did speculate about that when I was a little kid, watching Star Trek and Star Wars and a whole slew of sci-fi movies.  No, the space program to me represented a push to explore uncharted areas of our existence, similar to the deep sea, the human genome, and the like.

Moreover, pushing to figure out these new frontiers led to forced adaptation, and it was within these forced settings that a whole slew of new technologies developed.  Just a taste of what we got from space: Cordless power tools, smoke detectors, personal filtered water systems, padded football helmets, remote robotic surgery, Jaws of Life, portable life support, microlasers, and SATELLITES! HELLO? EFFING SATELLITES!

Where would we be without satellite communications?  Back in the days of non-HD and the Olympics being played twelve hours after the event occurred.  You might as well watch ESPN Classic through a pair of goggles underwater.

I admit, on a day to day basis, I never give NASA one thought.  We all tuck into our small bubbles, grinding the day, dealing with real problems.  It was always reassuring to me, however, that somewhere out there, there were talented people working to bring new things into this world.  And there still are, of course, even with the final shuttle launch  – I know we’re still going into space with international rockets, I know that NASA will still exist.  But going forward – the future seems just slightly less robust.

Sincerely, Junk Food Guy