When My Chips Are Downby Wendel James PotterMarch 24, 2007
I can't even imagine eating a sandwich without an accompanying side dish of potato chips. There's something about a super-handful of fresh, crisp potato chips that just seem to go hand-in-mouth with a sandwich.
It makes no difference whether the bread is spread with peanut butter and jelly, loaded with chicken salad or plastered with baloney, the sandwich just begs to be eaten along with potato chips.
It may sound un-American, but I prefer chips over French fries. Yes, even with a cheeseburger. My apologies to Jimmy Buffett.
So I'm rather particular about my potato chips. That’s why I’m so concerned with the miserable state our chips have fallen into these days.
You see, potato chips should be large, thin and sort of saddle-shaped. All of them. In other words, the entire bag should be overflowing with equally perfect chips.
This never seems to happen in my world.
Every time I buy potato chips, it's the same old story. I buy Lay's - the original, "classic" style - because after 54 years on this earth, I find it's the only chip that tastes like a potato chip should. And they're reasonably priced. I'm frugal, you know.
Over the years, I have been fair and have occasionally given other brands a chance. Some aren't too bad for the money, but I've gotten burned on others. Sometimes, it was the chips themselves that were burned. There's nothing worse than sitting down to a turkey sandwich and discovering that your potato chips look more like French toast.
So, when I get my Lay's home, I slit open the bulging bag and the air that was sealed inside in order to keep the chips fresh comes rushing out in a potato-scented whoosh. Ahhh! I love that aroma!
I've also discovered that in a 12-ounce bag of potato chips, there seems to be about 11 ounces of air!
Once the air has been let out, I peer inside to discover that I have to dig about two-thirds of the way down before I even find any evidence of actual potato chips in the bag. It wouldn't surprise me if Frito-Lay, the company that makes Lay's potato chips, also makes the air bag in your car. It looks like it would be something they know about.
That aside, I do enjoy the potato chips. Until I get past the first few.
So, my next question is - and this applies to all brands - who is it that's crushing the potato chips in the bottom of the bag?
It never fails. The bottom fourth of the bag, where most of the salt and oil has settled, contains nothing but a pile of crushed and crumbled salty, oily chips, each about the size of a freckle on a flea's butt.
You have to scoop these chips out of the bag and eat them with a spoon. Who's doing this to the potato chip lovers of America?
Is it a savage factory worker, disgruntled because he gets docked a buck for every potato peel that shows up on his chip assembly line? Is it an insane stock clerk at the grocery store who carries around a ball peen hammer and smashes every bag of potato chip, in the same fashion as that nutcase who took a hammer to Michelangelo's Pieta? Or is it the work of terrorists who hate America? And do they hate potato chips as well?
I contend that the chips are pre-crumbled at the factory. Because it makes no difference which store I shop in. It still happens just the same. One store in particular sees to it that my loaf of bread looks like a whole-wheat accordion by the time I get it home, but that appears to be an exclusive service of that supermarket. I get crushed potato chips everywhere I shop.
And, like an idiot, I put up with it. But would it do any good to complain? Would Frito-Lay's vice president in charge of Potato Chip Security contact me with an immediate apology and offer me a lifelong supply of non-crushed chips? I doubt it. Customer service, too, has gone out the window these days.
So, frugal as I am, I'll continue paying for a bag of air and a pile of potato chip remnants, just so I can enjoy that handful of perfect chips I get off the top.
Or, I may give up eating sandwiches. Soup, anyone?
Copyright 2007 Wendel James Potter
|
|
