Dirty Hippie Snacks

Calling this a flapjack is weird. I'm also confused by the name: POWER CAKES UNLEASHED. I've never seen a cake in bondage. But then, I'm not sure I've ever seen a POWER CAKE in the wild either. Maybe they're just so badass they must be kept in captivity. Which leads me to wonder: Where is the POWER CAKE zoo? Anyway. Flapjack. Pancake. It's neither of these things, but the name is misleading enough that I ate it with a fork instead of a spoon. It's more like thick pancake batter. You add hot water to the powder and stir to get something with the texture of pureed oatmeal. (Because I did it wrong. Update at bottom.) Is this what Cream of Wheat is like? Never had the stuff. If you don't mind the smooth texture (I don't), this actually tastes great. It's got hints of sweet from the "maple flakes" (which I assume are dehydrated maple syrup) and brown sugar, so that portion of its marketing is legit. It's a decent breakfast.

Look, I get that it's the cool thing to use "artisan" in your product literature these days, but this is a rectangle of nuts unceremoniously cut, like a bar of soap, from a much bigger rectangle of same. "Artisan crafted" in this case just means, at best, that "a human with a recipe poured ingredients into the form and later cut the thing into smaller pieces." You're not a blacksmith or a cooper or a tanner or a gunsmith or a stonemason. Drop the bullshit. Anyway, I like coconut, and this tastes like coconut. Unlike other mostly-nut bars, whatever sticky stuff they use to hold it all together is satisfyingly compliant. It's not an impenetrable brick. It's sweet, tasty, doesn't stick to your teeth, and doesn't have the grainy texture of many protein bars. I'm a big fan of our national parks, so I appreciate that they support the National Parks Foundation. The packaging is attractive. Each flavor features a picture and so

These sticks hardly look like poop at all. But they are deliciously beefy and salty, somewhere between eating an uncooked hot dog and a stick of cured sausage. That's meant to be a compliment. Sorry.