The Chips are Stacked

05.11.07

chips
I am absolutely a potato chip girl. So much so that I demand Marks and Spencer crisps from visiting Londoners. And while I've never been the salt-and-vinegar type, something caught my eye on a trip down south. It was a bag of Golden Flake dill pickle flavored chips that got stuck in my I've-never-seen-that-and-must-try-twice radar. I actually hand-carried the bag up north with me as a food curiosity. The first bite was eye-squintingly sour, but after the bag was allowed to "breathe" for a little, it seemed to open up the way a nice wine might.

Soon after, I couldn't eat just one. And before I knew it, the chips were done. Now I'm in a real pickle—no stores north of the Mason-Dixon line seem to carry them. If your local market does, do as the little poem on the bag says:

"Kids and pregnant women
Think they're tasty…
Try some yourself,
And don't be hasty."

But the pickle chips put me in such a tizzy, that I've hit a new low: Hooters. Of course it's the type of place that doesn't appeal to me…well, it was that kind of place until the words "fried dill pickles" made me cross a certain line. I went, I ate, I ate, and I ate, and I wondered: are the chips trying to recreate the fried pickles, or vice versa? For now, it's any port in a pickle-deprived storm, and while I don't love the surroundings (though I do love the shorts), I'll have to turn a blind eye and make do if I want my fried pickle fill.

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