By "Lays" I Meant Potato Chips, You Perv

I had a delightful morning spent first at brunch (eggs benedict, excellent fried potatoes, tea, only 50 RMB at The Den) and then with a friend doing girly stuff. By that I don't mean anything of a Sapphic nature (damn) but rather some quality time at the hands of beauticians. As we lay stretched out next to one another on a long divan I commented to my friend--who had three different staff members working on her at the same itme--that this was probably the closest to group sex that we'd ever get, a remark that so shook her that I think she would have walked out if not for the fact that her eyelids were taped shut and a weary-looking beautician was rasping her naked feet with a cheese grater. I don't know what's so awful about the comment, which was true, after all. But I hastily changed the subject to today's taste test, Hot and Sour Fish Soup Flavor Lay's, versus Blueberry Flavor.



The Challenger: Hot & Sour Fish Soup Flavor



Friend then starting showing signs of interest (rather than say, disgust.) While I rambled on about how shocked I was at the "weird" range of flavors (French Chicken, anyone?) she responded that most of those flavors are available in the UK. My turn to be shocked and horrified. In the US we have regular, barbecue, and maybe some salt-and-vinegar for the super fancy. Oh, you might find sour cream and onion, or cheddar ranch, but they're not that commonly found. OR ARE THEY? Is it possible that I have been away for so long that infidels such as Italian Red Meat Flavour have penetrated the local 7-11s and become the "new" standards? I was pretty shaken, actually, and started to describe my tasting process. First of all I don't bounce from one type of chip to another--I eat a fair share, then have a neutral chaser, such as a big slug of milk, before brushing my teeth, drinking a cup of tea, then starting on another batch. If something smells so foul that my dogs pass out when I rip open the bag, I don't bother to sample it. I was rather hoping that Hour and Sour Fish Soup Flavor would knock out one if not both of the dogs, but to my surprise they were unnaturally mellow when I opened the pack. and even less interested when I tipped the contents into a bowl.

These chips are thicker than the regular Lay's chip, and ridged to boot, possibly to hold more of that delicious fish soup goodness. I was intrigued by the fact that the package offered up the words "Intense & Stimulating" thinking that this was a description of the flavor, but these words probably just apply to the skank "singing star" who is pictured, chip aloft, chopsticks coyly posed, in front of a bowl of fish soup which has appeared like a burning bush in the lower right quadrant of the package. Taste? Hotter than hell, right? No. Kind of bland and mild. More like a barbecue taste, very light on the fish. In fact, I didn't really detect any fish flavor, and this batch of chips (crisps to you Brits, but by now you should have figured this out) was fairly fresh and had a good crunch to them. The dogs wouldn't touch them, which is an omen, perhaps,  but after stuffing two down my gullet, I was able to have a refreshing palate cleanser in the form of a Cadbury Creme Egg (it IS Easter after all) before trying Blueberry Flavor without any noticeable ill effects.



Yes, that's right: Blueberry



Blueberry is, according to the package, "Cool & Refreshing" and does not need the sexy presence of a skank to sell its strange and honest contents. What are blueberry chips like? Well, imagine you've just chewed some artificially flavored blueberry gum. You spit it out. You take a fistful of thin-cut potato chips and cram them into your mouth. You chew and swallow. That's what these taste like. Is it dessert? Not really. Is it a refreshing savory? Not really. Blueberry chips reside in that overlapping area on a culinary Venn Diagram called Not Really Anything. It's sweet. It's savory. It's not delicious and I don't know why anyone would bother. But then again, I say the same thing about certain sexual activities and that doesn't stop other people from enjoying them. (Or so I'm told.)

I have to go back to work tomorrow and I'm kind of hoping that something pleasant will happen, such as being invited out to dinner so that I don't sink into my Chili Cheese Dog rotation again. Whatever happens, you can be sure it won't be accompanied by the crunch-crunch-crunch of any tasty Lay's product.

A note: I found this photo and was staring at it for a while, thinking "That girl must have been wearing a SHITLOAD of eyeliner!" when two things hit me: first, note the presence of a home-made suit of armour in the right edge of the picture. Second, the girl was me, and the unsuitably sardonic smirk on my face clearly reveals that I would indeed spend the rest of my life around the sort of people for whom it is entirely natural to make a suit of armour from old Crisco tins to perk up a dull corner of the house. This was WAY before Martha Stewart. I shouldn't have smirked: at that time, as my mother was making our lives hell with a King-Kong outfit she was designing and the modeling of the head in clay took almost a year: we ate Thanksgiving dinner at a table which featured a lovely stuffed turkey and the head of a model wearing 26 pounds of sculpting clay and thought nothing of it. Ah, 17, the year people  (eg, Grandma) finally stopped calling me "Sandy" and stuck to the name I  have preferred, which is "Zanne." (If you are unlucky enough to be named Alexandra, be grateful no one calls you Alex or worse, LEXIE.)  And yes, Smart Asses, they had colored film back then, but the butt monkey who took this shot was an art student and preferred black and white.