When snacking, the tendency is to automatically reach for whatever tortilla or potato chip is within reach. Pity, since there is a whole scrumptious world of other options. So, just in time to have everyone over to watch the big game, here are a few ideas to put something else in the basket on the coffee table and also a few suggestions about dips they might pair with.

1. Lime Tortilla Chips - Light-years ahead of the plain kind. Tostitos makes the tastiest ones. There go very well with fruit salsa, usually mango or peach.
2. Sweet Potato Chips - Everyone from Pringles to Terra manufactures these, though I would swing toward the latter, since the Pringles also have cinnamon. They match nicely with corn salsa or bean dip.
3. Banana or Plantain Chips - Yes, I know they're not the same thing, but close enough for my purposes. Another standout with fruit salsa, though I also like them with guacamole.
4. Pretzel Chips - A nice combo of two great salty snacks, the chips and the pretzel. Try with spinach or onion dip.
5. Tabasco Cheez-Its - Don't put anything on these. You'll wind up devouring much of the box and you don't want anything to get in your way.

A banana chip is a thin, deep-fried slice of banana. Once fried, the slightly sweet chips are crisp (often bordering on rock-hard) and oily. Because they look like fruit, some people mistake these for a healthy snack, but they are far from good for you. A one ounce serving has about 150 calories and 9.5 grams of fat, almost all of it saturated.

On Trader Joe's top 100 list, they included something called banana crisps. I only tried them recently, since nearby Trader Joe's seemed to be perpetually sold out of them. Unlike the traditional deep-fried diet disasters, these chips are baked. They are ultra-thin and akin to an ordinary potato chip in both looks and flavor, and actually make a great substitute for regular potato chips because they don't taste very banana-like at all, though they are slightly sweet rather than salty. Best of all, each one ounce (2/3 cup) serving has only 40 calories and 1 gram of fat.

[Banana crisp image via Trader Joe's Fan, which has a great review of them, too)

For many of us going "home" for the holidays means ill-fitting gift shirts, drug store chocolate, eggnog spiked with bourbon, abusive grandparents, drunken tears, broken glass, the wail of sirens commingling with Xmas carols, blackouts, stunned girl or boyfriends gaping in mute horror at our ancestral home decor, and nonstop football on television.

Isn't it amazing that a simple few items of nutrition can make this sort of trauma pass like it was a summer night under the stars with the Philharmonic and a loved one by your blanket? Sound too amazing to be true? It isn't, dear friends, gather 'round. I've learned the key to holiday survival, which is to assume that wherever you go, no one will understand your culinary needs. You will need to bring all your weird herbs and foods with you, in little marked packets, for your relatives to make fun of.