Louisa Simmonds

It’s not that I’m resistant to healthy eating, but one of the bonus aspects about not being able to cook, of course, is that you have a monumental excuse to replace meals with chips (crisps).

English: A pile of potato chips. These are Utz-brand, grandma’s kettle-cooked style. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I admit that I have spent a large portion of my life just thinking about potato chips . I think about them a lot more than sex, if I’m honest. And then I act upon those impure thoughts.

More often than I should.

I think a lot of women can relate to the latent attraction of the potato chip. They are ‘comfort’ with a C. A good bag of chips can hit the G spot in seconds; (and that G is not for gluttony).

Here’s a little potato erotica just to remind you of what you’re missing, if you’re some loon on Atkins or a carb-free diet:

Sausage, beans and mash….potato gnochi in melting butter, potato dauphinoise, hash browns and bacon ………yes, Yes, YES!

Cast your mind back to the seventies if you can, when the potential of space travel was a hot topic and everyone was getting all hyper about stuff that was BOUND to happen in our immediate future; like the seemingly ridiculous possibility of being able to replace everyday meals with a simple pill. I remember guffawing with my own family as we watched the black and white ‘box’, soaking up this wonderful news, and fantasizing about the thought of never having to eat real vegetables again.  And it did sort of happen, if you can call replacing meals with shakes ‘progressive’.

But I obviously don’t replace meals with chips for diet reasons; I replace healthy meals with chips because I am domestically intolerant.

And my chip cravings got seriously out of control this week. I experienced the sort of intense physical yearning that only an obscene amount of cheese Twisties can cure. And it didn’t actually stem from one of those atypical carb-fix triggers this time, like when I need to feel confident at work for example, or even want to celebrate finishing work. I can’t say it was even a ‘Friday Night Potential’ need, a sort of chaser to help me celebrate the weekend, or a morning after carb-cure, so effective at soaking up the alcohol of the previous night’s ‘potential’.

Because that’s the thing about chips, they’re just too f*cking versatile for their own good. They should be categorized as a ‘wonder’ food. Energizing, filling, depression-fighting, weight-gaining……. it still blows me away that the innocent potato can ‘give’ so much.

No, my chip hyperfocus this week began with the HSC Queen, during one of our usual banters about what food products we’d like to nominate into the ‘healthy food-disguised as crap’ food group. (Dark chocolate orange segments are already made an early entry). Anyway, she was assuring me that the combo of KFC hot chips, mash n’gravy  (which she has an insidious passion for) qualifies as ‘healthy’ because this subtle mélange is actually ‘vegetable on vegetable’, which apparently, effectively makes it a salad.

Added to which, (as if I didn’t have enough ‘chip’ science to mull over), a friend of mine then went to one of those market research days for a well-known chip brand; where she was actually PAID to eat chips, like ALL DAY, in the guise of  product testing.  The research was for a particular brand of potato chip (which I obviously can’t name or I’d be forced to kill you), Red Rock Deli, and the company was trying to discover exactly where their product sits in the chip market demographic by celebrity chip association. For example, ‘Sea Salt’ flavour might be associated with Hugh Grant or Matt Damon, ‘Lime and Black pepper’ could be someone a bit more racy like Rihanna  or Johnny Depp and Sweet Chili and Sour Cream might be an odd couple like Brangelina or Tom Cruise and Cher.

Which got me thinking about what my chip alter ego might be. So I took a little chip (sorry!) down memory lane and had a bit of a tear-jerking reminisce about all those special chips that had played a defining role in my life so far.

There was obviously Walkers and Smiths and Golden Wonder, and I even shed a tear or two for Smokey Bacon flavor and the bag rape of Salt and Vinegar (to a less distinguished shade of green which was a shocking event in British chip history), and I drew comparisons with the modern day, semi-pretentious chip equivalents, like Kettle and Red Rock.

It’s not actually as straightforward as you might think, picking your chip alter ego. You see, a lot of the modern brands have over-complicated chip styling which has destroyed the honesty of the common chip. New brands seem to be marketed less at the common ‘chip’ man, and more at the ‘dip’ man. Which made it quite difficult for me to distinguish between branding and flavor, even though I did realize that beauty is indeed skin deep.

What I did realise, however is that Chip therapy is a damned sight cheaper than real therapy, when I came to this shocking self-evaluation.

That I am more fantasist than realist. That I like living in a world where I might be perceived as something that I’m not. That I would love to project an element of je ne sais quoi (or ‘bollocks’ in layman’s terms), an element of danger, of mystique, even though I know that this is not my reality. That I’m an eternal romantic and see myself as the mysterious woman of perfume ads, charging through the streets of Paris, sheathed in a black cape or stunning, metallic designer dress, forever in search of someone or something…….

Probably chips.

So I’m veering towards a sea-salt Kettle chip, with the slightest hint of matured Balsamic and Cheddar, as my chip alter ego.

What chip are you?

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