Living in Florida, we are able to get to the beach a lot. I know when my sister and I were little our parents would take us quite a bit. We would sometimes rent a house and stay for a week. Ahh, those were the days.

I remember snacks always being super-important when we headed to the beach. Must be the salt and sea air that would make us extra hungry. My sister and I were big snackers when we were young. We loved chips and crackers (Funyuns-yelp), candy- anything quick and easy. Snacks + beach = awesome.

For some reason one particular trip to the beach sticks in my memory. It was the summer before I was going to start high school. We were staying at a hotel-type place on Daytona Beach. It was busy and I remember having to wake up super-early to go put towels on chairs to hold our place once we were ready to head down. The days would consist of this, wake up, eat breakfast, head down to the pool. Swim until it was lunchtime, head up to the room to eat, go back down and play at the  beach until the sun started to set. On this trip my mom made brownies to take with us. One day after swimming all morning, I was particularly hungry, (considering I probably ate a cinnamon roll or something equally as sugary and non-filling for breakfast). I was so famished I remember grabbing a brownie, shoveling it into my mouth and chasing it with a handful of salt and vinegar potato chips. Hope you are still with me. I did say salt and vinegar potato chips. I have no idea how this combination came about, but knowing my sweet/savory fondness it really doesn’t surprise me all that much. Can I tell you my mind was blown. The combination of fudgy chocolate with the super-salty-sour-crunchy chip was so good. You are probably thinking I wrote this on April 1 and forgot to publish, but I am completely serious. So good.

It is so funny how food can bring back such intense memories. I am hoping I ate something other than that for lunch (probably a sandwich of sorts) but I don’t remember. All I remember is that crazy-stoner-type-food-combination that was so delicious.

That brings me to what happened this week. I don’t know if I was feeling nostalgic or maybe just hungry (when will Paleo get easier?) but I needed the chocolate/salty-sour combo STAT. I should have saved one of my Dark Chocolate Brown Butter Brownies for emergencies but who am I kidding? Those puppies were gone in two days. I didn’t have the foresight or patience to make/keep brownies so I melted some dark chocolate in a bowl and dipped flipping salt and vinegar potato chips in it. Dead.

I have seen lots of chocolate covered potato chips out there so the combination isn’t so crazy (I’ll just keep telling myself that), but I didn’t see many where salt and vinegar chips were the vessel. It is definitely the way to go. This combination is really good. You get the sweet-bitterness from the chocolate and the salty-vinegary crunch from the chip. I used kettle cooked but you could use any type (as long as they are salt and vinegar flavored).

Our beach snacks these days are more fruit/cracker less chip/brownie but let me tell you, if I came home from a day at the beach and had a bag of these babies, I would surely devour the whole thing.

Don’t be afraid. Try new weird things! You’ll realize maybe they aren’t that weird after all and they might even turn out to be delicious!

Do you have any crazy food combinations that ended up being tasty? Tell me!!

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

xo