POTATO CHIPS

Did you know that the annual take from the manufacture of potato chips is over 6 billion dollars? I once heard a person describe the appeal—and the mission of—potato chips. It is big taste, short duration. As you pop one of those beauties into your pie-hole, the flavor veritably explodes in your mouth! But it’s over in a fraction of a second. So you have to pop another one to continue the flavor explosion. And so on and so on, until the manufacturers get to collect their 6 billion.

I heard an interesting story about the invention of potato chips, and the Internet verifies most of the truth of it. The way I heard it told, in 1853, a member of the prosperous Vanderbilt family went into a resort restaurant and ordered potatoes that he was totally displeased with and had them sent back to the kitchen. Evidently he had done this before, and, in fact, had done this several times, rejecting even the subsequent attempts by the kitchen to offer better potatoes. But this time, a Native American chef named George Crum had had it up his eyeballs with Mr. Vanderbilt’s unreasonable request, so he broke every rule and principle of preparing potatoes while making the corrected batch of potatoes, fully expecting to get fired as a result. First he cut them so thin that he knew Vanderbilt would have fits trying to pick them up with his fork. Then he over-seasoned them to the point of no return, and finally he flash-fried them, knowing that this would be the last touch to absolutely destroy the food and render it totally unacceptable. The plan backfired, however, as Vanderbilt praised the chips, declaring that this is exactly what he had in mind, and the rest is history!

I have a friend named Charley who lives in Georgia, and he won’t eat potato chips. High blood pressure, diabetes, and other physical problems make it a very bad idea to have much to do with salt, sugar and even other spices that folks normally use. I mentioned Charley because he’s the one who convinced me that sugar and salt and several other foods and spices are an acquired taste. We can live very healthily without them.
Anyway, the other day I went to the supermarket and found a packet of pork shoulder meat without the bone in, and the price was a respectable $5.58. I was overjoyed. I took the pork shoulder meat home and began to prepare it for dinner for the wife and myself. First I cut open the packet and sprinkled granulated garlic over every side of the pork. Then I turned the pieces over again on all sides and added onion powder. Finally I grabbed a shaker of Tony Chechere’s Cajun seasoning and sprinkled it on all sides. Then, as I laid each piece in a cooking dish to pick up the flavor of the "rub", a sudden thought struck me: although I had used pork instead of potatoes, I was essentially just making potato chips!

Moral of the Story: BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU EAT! IT’S WHAT YOU’RE MADE OF!

Stay turned for the next exciting episode of----

THE JUICED AVENGER!